Ucas is now a brand, exploiting students not serving them

By Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett. By handcuffing marketing emails to university newsletters, Ucas is giving a grubby illusion of choice to hard-up students. If you needed further proof that education has become little more than a commodity, then the news that Ucas is selling access to millions of students to advertisers might just be it. Leaving aside for a moment the murky moral implications of making information about children available to private companies for the purposes of profit (and they are children – the vast majority of those applying to university are under 18), there's also the fact that prospective students' hands are being forced. More...