THE number of students starting university courses in the UK has topped one million for the first time, according to new figures.
In the academic year that started in the autumn of 2003, there were 1,012,215 first-year students in higher education, the figures showed.
Women continued to outnumber men with 58.8% of the share of first-year places, the Higher Education Statistics Agency said.
And there was a rise in the proportion of foreign first-year students - up from 142,000 in 2002 to nearly 155,000 in 2003.
