Universities need ‘drastic’ steps on equality targets

RUSSELL Group universities would need to recruit every disadvantaged student with three A-levels, irrespective of their grades, in order to meet equality targets, a report has found.

It concluded that the 24 leading universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, would be forced to take a series of drastic measures to satisfy the higher education watchdog’s ambition to eliminate the gap in admissions between rich and poor students.

By 2039-40, the gap between undergraduates from the most privileged and the least privileged backgrounds at “high tariff” universities should be reduced to zero, according to the target set by the Office for Students (OFS).

But analysis by the Russell Group argues that, based on current trends, the only way to achieve that would be to admit all students from the most deprived households with three A-levels, regardless of their grades, by 2026.

By 2035, the top universities would need to recruit all students from the most deprived households regardless of whether they have got any academic qualifications at all, it adds.

“To eliminate gaps in access to university, work needs to start much earlier in the education life cycle,” the report says.

“What universities can do is only part of the picture.”

The Government should adopt a national strategy to tackle inequality in education, the report says.

Chris Millward, director for fair access and participation at the OFS, said that the UK’S most selective universities had made good progress in boosting the number of students they admitted from deprived backgrounds.

But he added that there was still “a long way to go” before opportunities were “genuinely available” to everyone in the country.”

Michelle Donelan, the higher education minister, said that universities played “a vital role in levelling up opportunities for everyone”. ♦ Universities should be charged an extra levy and have student numbers capped for low-quality courses that cost the Exchequer millions, a former government adviser has said.

Philip Augar, who was commissioned by Theresa May, the former prime minister, to carry out a review into higher and further education, said that he now believed that simply slashing the tuition fees of certain courses would be too destabilising for the sector.