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Ucas data suggest that Leicester-based university made several “conditional unconditional” offers in 2020-21
De Montfort University has said that a “coding error” was responsible for official admissions statistics showing that it made so-called conditional unconditional offers to university applicants in 2020-21, despite the practice being banned by the Office for Students.
In July, the OfS introduced a temporary rule that banned conditional unconditional offers—whereby students are accepted onto a course provided they meet certain stipulations, such as making the offering institution their first choice.
Despite this, the Ucas end-of-cycle report, which contains data on the 2020-21 admissions round, showed that Leicester-based De Montfort made five offers that the admissions body classed as “conditional unconditional”. It was the only university listed as having made any such offers.
Universities minister Michelle Donelan has previously said there was “no justification for conditional unconditional offers” and time-limited rules to prevent their use during the pandemic came with the threat of fines of £500,000.
A spokesman for De Montfort University told Research Professional News that as a result of a “coding error”, a “small number” of offers were made by mistake. “As soon as we were made aware of this by Ucas, we deleted the code so no further such offers could be made,” the spokesperson added.
Research Professional News sought clarification on whether the five offers classed as conditional unconditional resulted in a student being placed at the institution, but the university declined to offer further comment.
The OfS also declined to comment.