Those who have missed their grades are desperately trying to secure places - and as predicted, many are turning to the Web for help.

The Website of the Universities and Colleges Admission Service (Ucas), which is advertising spare places, had 3,000 hits in the first hour after midnight.

By the end of the working day on Thursday, 140,000 searches for course details had been carried out on the site. Last year, a total of 130,000 searches were carried out during the entire clearing period.

A large number of users had been expected, partly because of the strike action by lecturers at "old" universities, where staff are boycotting admissions until Monday.

'Pulling out all the stops'

Members of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) are taking the action as part of a pay dispute.

The union has rejected a 3.5% pay offer and is claiming 10% to make up for what it says is years of downgrading academics' salaries.

The action has been specifically aimed at disrupting the admissions process.

But the Universities and Colleges Employers' Association said it was pulling out all the stops to minimise the impact of the strike.

It said similar action earlier this month in Scotland, following the release of Highers results, had "very little or no impact", and that in the "very few" cases where staff took action, university deans and other senior staff stepped in to make sure decisions could be taken on admissions inquiries.

'Working overtime'

Ucas said the impact of this week's action was not yet clear, but that it expected the strike to have very little effect.

It said universities had been working overtime to ensure that students who had matched the grades for their offers were not caught up in any disruption.

Chief Executive Dr Tony Higgins said: "Many of the universities are working normally so we are advising students to go ahead and call them if they need to because there will almost certainly be someone there to help."

An AUT spokeswoman said the impact of the strike had been mitigated because there had not been a rush of students for clearing this year.

Extra staff

"There are hundreds of members on strike across the country and some people will face delays," she said.

"But most young people are taking their time applying to clearing and the process is being spread over a number of days. Universities have also put on extra staff to deal with inquiries.

"Students should remember that on the courses there are delays with, they are not missing out because everybody is being delayed."

'More places on offer'

Meanwhile, this year's record results mean more students than ever have satisfied conditional offers of university places.

Ucas reported on Friday that it had already confirmed places for 221,901 students, up from 219,465 at the same stage last year.

There were 92,155 applicants still waiting for confirmation, down from 96,096 last year.

That meant 95,150 students were eligible to enter clearing, looking for spare university places - down from 99,271at the same stage last year.

Dr Higgins said more university places were on offer this year, and many thousands were available in clearing, so there was no need for anyone to panic.

But Ucas is warning that the record results might prompt applications straight into clearing from A level students who had not considered going to university at all.