Morning:
10°c
Universities give priority to poor students
Kiran Randhawa11 Dec 2008
MORE than half of leading universities favour students from deprived backgrounds, a report revealed today.
The report showed that top institutions, including Oxford and Cambridge, give priority to those from poor-performing schools.
It said 53 per cent of universities in the elite Russell Group take students' "family problems" into account while one in five discriminates in favour of those whose parents did not go into higher education.
Nottingham University, one of 20 institutions in the group, said students' A-level grades "may be valued more highly" if they were refugees or came from the traveller community, poor homes or a family without a history of going to university.
The study, conducted by researchers at Sheffield Hallam University, revealed that four out of 10 vice-chancellors and principals said students should be chosen "partly in order to achieve a social mix".
Critics said "social engineering" in this way punishes those who attended a good school.
Reader views (8)
@ Peter Seekings-Foster
We probably have different conceptions of what a toff is.
- James, Johannesburg, South Africa, 12/12/2008 08:08
Report abuse
Why do not universities use intelligence tests, as opposed to pitifully unreliable criteria like interviews and references (and, nowadays, exam. results), for selection of students? For that matter, why do not boards in industry and elsewhere use this obvious and efficient form of selection? Intelligence tests, which are now culturally fair and can be acquired cheaply off the shelf from eg the Civil Service Commission, should be a principal tool in sorting out the intellectual sheep from the goats. Not the be-all-and-end-all, but a highly important means of determining who has the intellectual clout and who does not. And, although parents can pay to coach little Rupert or Jemima in the art of taking these tests, at best they can improve their score by about 5%, far less than that which can be achieved by coaching them in the techniques of interviews, passing A-levels, sitting essay-exams and the other means whereby kids are selected for universities.
- Richard, London, London. UK, 12/12/2008 00:45
Report abuse
I was unaware there were any toffs left in Cambridge.
- Peter Seekings-Foster, Mildenhall, Suffolk., 11/12/2008 17:48
Report abuse
Excuse me Georgie - I got a first at London Uni despite my impoverished background, so where does dumbing down come into it?
- Keith Price, Luton, England, 11/12/2008 17:04
Report abuse
Universities always have done this! (up to a point.) If you had to chose between two candidates with B grades, one from an inner-city "sink" school and the other from an expensive private school, which would you choose? And if the expensive private school person had slightly better grades, would that automatically mean he's then the better candidate?
What is wrong is when the government starts pushing for automatic reverse discrimination as a policy, rather than encouraging universities to admit the best candidates based on individual judgement at interview. That they need to, is a consequence of wrecking the state school system, and of imposing strict rules-based admissions policies on universities that used to use discretion.
So why are universities dominated by the middle classes? Simply because middle-class parents more often raise their children to value education and to study hard. Children who've been brought up thinking academic work and education are a waste of time, will either not get the grades, or will not want to study past school-leaving age even if they do (on paper) qualify.
- Nigel, London, 11/12/2008 14:26
Report abuse
You could have fooled me. I studied at Cambridge last year and it was wall-to-wall toffs. And anyone who wasn't a toff was desperately pretending to be one.
- James, Johannesburg, South Africa, 11/12/2008 14:25
Report abuse
So much for a good quality university education in Britain... I thought we only were dumbing down at the primary and secondary school level but this is plain stupid.
- Georgie, Islington, London, 11/12/2008 13:06
Report abuse
Labour = social engineering.
Bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Russia is a third world country because of their history of communism and social engineering.
The irony is that those who are being discriminated against are funding those who aren't. We already waste millions through social welfare on the likes of the traveller community who contribute nothing to society.
- Frank, Home Counties, England, 11/12/2008 10:23
Report abuse
