Read: Top universities fall short on admitting disadvantaged students
Children from whole sections of society and disadvantaged backgrounds continue to be shut out of parts of our higher education system, our latest social inclusion rankings show.
As we publish our fourth annual social inclusion tables, it is clear that although universities of all kinds have more socially diverse campuses now than when the Good University Guide began analysing their composition in 2018, significant gaps in equality of opportunity remain.
Recruitment levels for white working-class males, one of the groups least represented on campus, show huge variation: they make up 13.4 per cent of the 2019-20 intake at Plymouth Marjon University and 12.4 per cent at Staffordshire, but only 1.7 percent at University College London and 1.1 per cent at Buckingham.
Our table measures performance as well as recruitment, and variations are just as wide here. We were unable to create a reliable measure of the (notoriously large) black achievement gap in ten universities — including St Andrews, at the top of the academic table — because there were simply too few black graduates (91 in total) for effective analysis in the period 2017-19.
Where we could compare the proportions of white and black students gaining first-class or 2:1 degrees, the negative gap in achievement between the two groups was at least 20 percentage points in 60 institutions. The gap was commendably narrow (less than ten percentage points) in 13 institutions. In none of them did black students achieve as well — or better even — than their white counterparts.
The highly selective Russell Group universities dominate the bottom ten in our table, just as they did in 2018, and Wrexham Glyndwr remains at the top. However, there have been subtle changes along the way and just as it is not realistic to expect the two to compete academically, neither is it likely for the Russell Group institutions to ever match their modern university peers in terms of social inclusion.
Progress can be seen in the proportion of students who are the first in their family to go to university. At the bottom of our table for England and Wales, Cambridge has 15.4 per cent of first-generation students among its recruits, up from 14.2 per cent in 2018; Oxford has 14.8 per cent, up from 13.8 per cent; and Bristol has 22.9 per cent, up from 21.9 per cent.
The increase in the proportion of recruits from non-selective state schools is also marked. In our latest data, Cambridge has 47.8 per cent, up from 40.1 per cent in 2018; Oxford has 45.6 per cent, up from 39.4 per cent; and Bristol has 59 per cent, up from 50.5 per cent.
The gulf remains wide, however. At Wrexham Glyndwr, at the top of our social inclusion table, 60.6 per cent of recruits are the first in their family to go to university and 97.9 per cent of the intake is drawn from non-selective state schools.
There is some evidence that a sea change in recruitment policy at some of the UK’s most selective universities has led to privately educated pupils gravitating towards the remaining British institutions considered to remain “friendly”, or heading overseas to study, notably to the US. The proportion of students from independent schools has increased over the past four years at St Andrews, Nottingham and the London School of Economics.
Universities cannot be expected to fix the imbalances in the British education system. It would be unfair to criticise Oxford for drawing just 2.1 per cent of students from northeast England when only 895 pupils in the region achieved grades of AAA or better at A-level in 2019. In London, by contrast, 6,535 children achieved AAA or better and make up 27.2 per cent of Oxford entrants; in the southeast 6,430 achieved AAA or better, making up 21.2 per cent of the intake.
Perhaps the strongest clue to the direction of travel on social inclusion is to be found in our academic ranking. Analysis of the average number of Ucas tariff points held by entrants shows a steady decrease at many universities — at least in part as a result of the growing number of contextual offers being made to applicants, which take account of the educational disadvantage that may affect their predicted A-level results.
Warwick University posted an average tariff point score of 169, compared with 182 in 2018. Bath’s average has fallen from 186 to 167 and Bristol has dropped from 184 to 164.
Movement is slow, but higher education is changing to become more inclusive.