Journalism is among the British university undergraduate subjects with the highest increase of acceptances in 2009, UCAS reported today.

The UK higher education service today released its provisional final figures for this year’s student entry, following ‘a record-breaking processing year for applications’ it said.

Overall, UCAS has seen an increase in acceptances by 5.6 per cent from the same point last year, and journalism (undergraduate) has shown a 15.7 per cent rise to 2,675 places – faring better than courses ‘linked with linguistic skills’.

Science, technology, engineering, business and maths related subjects have shown improvements too, UCAS reported, with nursing acceptances up by 20 per cent.

The Guardian reports that universities ‘could face multimillion pound fines after breaking a government-imposed cap on student numbers’.

Update: This article was update to reflect UCAS confirmation that all the courses included in this figure are undergraduate courses.