[quote]aa - I would have thought that the continuing desire to get young men/women into a cockpit combined with record numbers of university applications would have put a greater financial pressure on the bursary, not the scholarship. my point still stands, unless you are at oasc in which case i will politely apologise and yield to the figures that i'm fairly certain you wouldn't be allowed to publish anyway./QUOTE]
The point remains that the RAF (and the RN and AAC) do not have a problem recruiting aircrew. The scholarship and bursary schemes are aids to recruiting, and therefore the pressure to reduce or stop the schemes for aircrew remains high. The cash released may go back into schemes to recruit more engineers, logisticians, doctors etc.
The numbers applying to university may increase the applications, but it won't increase the numbers of awards. Recruitment is pretty flat for aircrew.
As for where I am, or who my sources are, well that's not for this forum, but suffice to say I'd be silent if I didn't know what I was talking about.