by Keith Richmond
The National Union of Students says universities are failing to deliver on the Labour Government’s pledge to help more students from poorer families into higher education.
New figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency reveal that the proportion of British university students from lower socio-economic backgrounds actually fell to 29.4 per cent in the academic year 2007-2008.
The figures from HESA also reveal a class divide with independent fee-paying schools continuing to send a disproportionate number of students to elite universities such as Oxford and Cambridge while pupils from poorer backgrounds tend to go to former polytechnics.
NUS president Wes Streeting said: “These figures show that universities are getting even worse at widening participation by students from poorer backgrounds – despite promising to work harder in this area in return for the ability to charge top-up fees.”
He took another swipe at top-up fees in the light of a recent report that a number of leading universities want to see fees raised to £5,000: “Top-up fees are leaving a generation of students in unprecedented levels of debt and, if the cap were to be raised, many more people from poorer backgrounds would be forced to conclude that they simply cannot afford to go to university at all.
