UK universities and higher fees
Today’s UCAS statistics are pretty grim: the number of people applying to UK universities is falling, and the drops are big. A 6 per cent fall in applications since last year is a big deal.
At the same stage last year, 321,908 people had applied for places. This year, it is 303,861. At the 2011 peak, it was 344,064. These are preliminary results: lots of students are still weighing their options and will apply in the coming months, but it is a big fall. Read more
What can other countries tell us about Britain’s labour productivity puzzle?
Labour productivity continues to fall in the UK, today’s latest ONS release shows.
Output per hour dropped by 0.2% in Quarter 3, 2012, compared to the previous quarter. This means a fall of over 2% compared to the same period last year and over 3% compared to the pre-crisis period. This is a particularly striking drop considering than in the five years before the financial crisis labour productivity rose by over 12%.
The reasons for this remain rather a puzzle. And a look at other European countries confirms that the UK is unusual. But it’s not unique. Most core European countries had a drop in productivity levels compared to those in the US. But their performance varied considerably during the last few years of economic crisis, as this chart highlights … Read more
Long lives: the end of Empire
Someone who was born on the last day of 1899 would now be 113 years old. There are just a handful of people of this age left on Earth. They are the last remaining survivors of the 19th century; what in Britain was the Victorian Age and internationally historian Eric Hobsbawm dubbed the “age of Empire”.
Only 16 of these links to history now remain alive*, according to the latest data by specialist research team the Gerontology Research Group.
The vast majority of these super-centenarians live in Japan and the US. Four of the world’s five oldest people live in Japan. Japan is also the stand-out leader in population density terms, with 12.8m citizens per 19th century survivor, compared to the US’s 28.4m. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Kate Allen works in the editorial statistics team in London. She previously specialised in housing data reporting for a national trade magazine.
Chris Cook works in the FT's comment team. After joining the FT in 2008 as a Peter Martin Fellow, he worked for two years as a leader writer and then as education correspondent.
Emily Cadman joined the FT in 2010 and is head of the interactive desk.
Martin Stabe works on the FT's interactive team, specialising in databases for interactive graphics.
Keith Fray heads the editorial statistics team, providing data for articles and graphics. His background is in economics, studying at Birkbeck College, London.
Norma Cohen is the FT's Demography Correspondent.
Valentina Romei is a statistical researcher at the FT. She joined the FT in 2008 after working both as an academic and market researcher.
