Responding to this point separately:

> "I think we all (management and potential investors both) should be aware of the risk that the target UK student population was in a bubble and may shrink a lot."

Well, it's hard to point at anything in the market lately, any asset class or sector, that isn't in a bubble of some sort.

It's also hard to point at anything in the market at any time in history that is invulnerable to 'shrinking a lot, maybe'.

But in this case there are some numbers from which we can gauge the issues of bubbliness and maybeshrinkiness.

The UK as a whole experienced a drop of 1% in student numbers in 24/25, essentially all from decline in international students.

However, at the Russell Group universities (the 'high tariff' unis that Unite talks about and primarily works with), numbers are rising, even though they are rejecting about 1/3 of potential applicants - i.e. demand consistently exceeds supply of places by 50% at high-tariff universities and there is considerable room to grow intake.

Further, basic degrees aren't enough any more, the forecasts are for the number of people taking 2+ degrees to grow by 53% in the next 10 years. So there are actually three aspects to the issue of demand that need to be considered; one is the number of people; one is where they actually want to study; the last is the number of years they study.

russellgroup.ac.uk - Response new hepi report changing demographics and recruitment behaviours

Current expectations are for bachelors intake of students at high-tariff universities to *grow* for the next few years, as the UK population bulge for university-age people gets bigger - you can see in the link below for 15-19 vs 20-24 and 10-14 vs 15-19.

In practice this probably means that low-tariff universities are likely to suffer later on (about 10 years in the future) from the predation by high-tariff universities, the demographic trend, and less appealing second degree options. You can read a negative report on the issues at the second link below.

populationpyramids.org - United kingdom

hepi.ac.uk - Demographic decline and predatory recruitment the twin threats to english higher education into the

TRS