Planning, Insight & Analytics

SFC Recruitment and Enrolment Thresholds

The SFC require that Universities fill their SFC funded student places while not over-filling against consolidated student numbers.

For both under-enrolment and over-recruitment there are tolerance thresholds in place.

The details of these rules and the consequences for breaches are set out in SFC Annex C - Conditions of University Funding AY 23-24 (pdf)

Over-Recruitment

For non-controlled subjects there is a 10% threshold for over-recruitment against our consolidation numbers. This applies to full-time (and sandwich) Home fee paying students.

Consolidation numbers are sourced from SFC Final Funding Announcement, Table 5 - Consolidations Numbers (xls)

The over-recruitment threshold varies across controlled subjects. 

Initial Teacher Education and Nursing & Midwifery both have a 10% or 10 FTE threshold (whichever is larger).

Dentistry has a 5% threshold.

For Medicine, over recruitment is measured against Intake Targets for all Home/RUK, rather than overall consolidated numbers. There is a 10% threshold for over-recruitment.

Under-Enrolment

Under-enrolments are monitored against the Funded Places set out by the SFC in Annex B - Funded Places and student number targets AY 2022-23 (xls)

For non-controlled subjects there is a 2% threshold for the under-enrolment of Home fee paying students against our available funded places.

This total includes both Undergraduate and Postgraduate Taught funded places.

Controlled subjects measure under-enrolment at course level.

Dentistry, Pre-Registration Nursing & Midwifery and Initial Teacher Education each have an under-enrolment threshold of 3% against their available funded places.

From 2019/20, under-enrolment in the controlled subject of Medicine has been measured against the Core intake target for Home students, rather than against overall funded places. There is a 3% under-recruitment threshold.