Diversity focus ‘leaves white, privately educated boys out in cold’

WHITE boys from private schools are the new disadvantaged group, a leading Cambridge professor has suggested as British universities suffer a “brain drain” of bright students.

Prof David Abulafia, a fellow of Gonville and Caius College, warned there was “a simple fact of discrimination” in admissions policies tilting towards state schools.

Traits such as “white, male and privileged” are becoming frowned upon as diversity training increasingly focuses on the controversial ideology of “white privilege”, he said.

He raised concerns about remarks made by Prof Stephen Toope, Cambridge University’s vice-chancellor, who said he was “very, very clear we are intending to reduce, over time, the number of people who are coming from independent school backgrounds into places like Oxford or Cambridge”.

Prof Abulafia said: “I’m trying to be fair and balanced about this but I do think that Toope’s comments were unfortunate – it was that ‘very, very’ – and also the fact admissions are conducted by the colleges, not the university, he seems to have missed that point. The best thing is just to leave out the name of the school [in Oxbridge admissions]. But of course, then admissions tutors will spend all their time trying to guess people’s background on the basis of how they speak and all sorts of other factors which could be more deleterious.”

He also said that private school heads had spoken to him about a “brain drain”, with pupils opting to apply for scholarships at US universities such as Yale and Harvard because they have a better chance of getting in than at Oxbridge.

Prof Abulafia said that the ideology of white privilege, a regular feature in diversity training, “doesn’t just ignore these people, it actually targets them in a rather hostile way, and I think that’s a problem”.

But he said he was “very supportive” of measures to drive up disadvantaged students at Cambridge.

“It’s just a question of pursuing excellence and wanting the best – how far does social engineering at that level [need to go] if we’re going to level up?” he added. “At the moment the really disadvantaged candidates are arguably the white males from outstanding independent schools. If they are rejected by their first-choice college and placed in the ‘pool’ so other colleges can look at their application, they nearly all sink without trace.”

While only 12 per cent of children go to private schools, they still account for more than a quarter of the Oxbridge intake.

State school pupils make up 72 per cent of Cambridge’s undergraduate admissions. Just under a third were educated at grammar schools.