I hadn’t fixed up a gap year, had no money for travelling and no desire to spend months working in a job I didn’t enjoy, so on results day I was presented with just one option: Clearing I’d been to York on an open day and fell in love with it Basically, I had my heart set on going there. Although there were no BA courses available, I was intrigued by the educational studies course. I looked at the prospectus and realised that, although I had never considered it while still at school, it was right up my street. I called the university, who said the course was full but that my application would be considered anyway. After a long week, they called me back to say that I seemed an ideal candidate and they could squeeze me in I was overjoyed I love the course. It’s opened my eyes to my real ambition: to be a primary school teacher.

I’ve spent this summer working in a preparatory school teaching four, five and six-year-olds. Clearing certainly worked out for me! ‘If anyone is considering Clearing, I’d say, “Go for it!”‘ Craig Boldy, 19, received results that fell 60 UCAS points short of the BBC he needed to get into his first choice university. After going through Clearing he was offered and accepted a place at Bradford University, where he is now about to begin his second year of computer science. When I got my results last year I was really tempted to jack it all in and get a job instead of going to university. I hadn’t got high enough grades to get into either Surrey or Essex, but my teacher persuaded me that I should give it a go anyway. I come from Wakefield and was keen to stay around the North, so when I saw that Bradford had places left for computer science I got on the phone.

Within 10 minutes, the head of department had called me back and talked through my A-level courses with me. He offered me a place, explaining that the courses I had done were harder than average and that if I had done the normal ones I would have got the grades easily. I went up to see the campus, which I really liked and, by the Monday after results day, the letter of acceptance landed on my doormat Clearing worked out brilliantly. Bradford is one of the best in the country for computer science. If anyone is considering Clearing, I would say, “Go for it!” You’ll have the time of your life.. British universities are on the skids, right? Everyone knows they have run-down laboratories, overcrowded lecture halls and squalid student rooms where it would be hard to swing so much as a small rodent

Wrong. British universities are currently investing in new facilities like there’s no tomorrow.

Which, in fact, they know there won’t be unless they can beg or borrow enough cash to haul their facilities into the 21st century.

The impending arrival of top-up fees, the growing competitiveness of the lucrative overseas student market, and the awareness of individual universities that not only do they need centres of excellence to mark them out from the crowd, but that these centres need to stay at the cutting-edge of research and technology, have come together to turn the British higher education marketplace into a veritable boom town of revamped labs, glittering new buildings and plush student accommodation.At one end of the scale are refurbished halls of residence; at the other, the kind of world-class buildings by leading architects that are landmark investments. In between is a whole raft of new laboratory and learning environments that mean that, whether you want to study engineering or accountancy, someone, somewhere will offer state-of-the-art facilities for you to do it in.So if you are a parent or prospective student planning to visit university campuses, expect to find plenty of new – or at least renovated – facilities. And if all you are confronted with is an expanse of run-down 1960s concrete, then definitely ask why!Because, as John Lauwerys, secretary and registrar of Southampton University points out, while this might have been par for the course in the 1980s and 1990s, when no capital money was coming through from government and “many universities were looking a bit sad”, times are changing.At the start of this year the Higher Education Funding Council for England announced nearly £1,500m in capital funding for universities for 2006 to 2008, what Sir Howard Newby, its chief executive, pointed out was “the most substantial capital funding announcement in recent years”. Higher education institutions are also digging deeper into their own pockets, and working harder to win commercial sponsorship, to upgrade their infrastructure.Southampton, for example, has been working on a 10-year revamp which has so far seen £110m invested in a remodelled campus and £75m on student accommodation, with another £120m still to go. Much of this has gone on high-level research facilities, but Southampton has also invested £20m in its student union and sports facilities, and £8.5m on its library.”People with three As at A-level can choose where they go, and are likely to look at the totality of the experience any university is offering,” says Lauwerys. “In a variable-fee economy, students want to know what they are going to get for their money.” Also, he says, many of today’s students come from comfortable homes and will have been used to good facilities at school.This is especially true of halls of residence.

These days, students can confidently expect an internet connection, multiple electric sockets and either an en-suite bathroom, or at the very least a large number of bathrooms and loos.At Royal Holloway, University of London, a new 500-bed hall opened last year, both in response to the demand from students for higher-grade accommodation, and with an eye to renting out facilities for the lucrative holiday conference trade.The new rooms are larger than the existing ones, with all mod cons, including a sedum-covered roof, which changes colour with the seasons, and – at the request of the student union – double beds in every room. However, with countless thousands of courses out there, your search has to begin somewhere. A good place to start is by looking back nine months to when you first applied to university. What sort of courses and places did you consider before making your final choice? Once you’ve narrowed things down to a manageable number of options, say half-a-dozen, you can find out more about the courses, first by looking at the university websites, and then, if you’re still interested, by picking up the phone. Here, the policy that is recommended by most in higher education is to stay calm, keep an open mind and don’t make any snap decisions. This can open the possibility, in the second or third years, of transferring back to the original course, but Chambers advises against students simply assuming they will be able to do this.