UK’s top universities are socially exclusive, says report

Research reveals that Britain’s top universities are taking fewer state-educated pupils than a decade ago.

11:18 18 June 2013

Recent research suggests that the UK’s top universities have become less socially representative for the last ten years. The number of students coming from state schools have dropped between 2002 to 2003 and 2011 to 2011.

Because of this, top universities were warned to do something about their “elitist” image and get more students from poor families and state schools. 

Alan Milburn, the government’s social mobility tsar, told The Independent that the main reason for the unacceptable decline is because state-educated pupils, and those who are coming from low-income families, feel that the 24-strong Russel Group are not for them.

The report also revealed that although the number of students entering the UK’s top universities has increased by 2.6per cent in 2003 to 2004 and 2011 to 2012, a huge percentage of new places that the institutions have created went to privately-educated children.

He explained, as reported by The Independent: “The biggest factor is not tuition fees but more a feeling among low income kids that the leading universities are not for them. It is as much about what the universities do to dispel that notion as about the kids and their teachers aspiring to them.”