Last week universities minister David Willetts said that universities and the Office for Fair Access should focus on the inclusion of white working-class boys as a target group for recruitment in university access agreements, which universities have to sign to gain permission to charge higher fees. In other words, as a result of the government’s deeply unfair decisions on tuition fees, the socially immobile pool has grown deeper than anticipated in just two years.
This is in response to UCAS figures from last autumn’s intake. These show a 54,000 fall in men applying to university, which is 13 per cent down on 2011 and four times higher than the reduction from women. Just 30 per cent of male school-leavers applied to university in 2012, compared to 40 per cent of female school-leavers .
This statement reveals two key points. First, that the government does not take responsibility for its actions.
Opening the floodgates to market-based tuition fees was inevitably going to have this effect. Universities are now faced with deciding which disadvantaged group is most desperately in need of assistance. But the money for bursaries and choice universities gained from increased fees do not plug the gap of a 13 per cent reduction in male applications to universities. Willetts pushes the obligation onto universities and Offa, tasking them to stretch resources set aside for access to be applied to an even wider pool of those unable to access higher education. It is wrong to suggest we should restrict such a pool to only those who are non-white. Wendy Piatt, director-general of the Russell Group, which represents 24 top universities, has echoed concerns that such a move would not begin to solve the root problem, which is the failings of school education and preparation for university. Such a failure is amplified for society’s most disadvantaged.
Second, social mobility is being stunted: those in society who are aspirational, who attempt to work their way out of being disadvantaged, cannot rely on this government to help them achieve.
The government would rather focus on providing piecemeal responses rather than tackling underlying problems such as funding in schools, sustained economic support and access for the socially disadvantaged. The minister advocates summer school programmes to somehow turn around the 54,000 fewer men applying to university. He acknowledges the need to assist those most socially disadvantaged into university, while in the same breath states his preference for solely merit-based selection. This lacklustre, conflicting, response reveals how this government cares little for such young people.
There is much evidence to suggest that the socially disadvantaged include people from all races, but that those from ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in that group. But what is even clearer is that any sticking plaster solution to declining university applications will never be a sustainable solution to social mobility. If we continue on this track, the lack of access to higher education will continue to be an endemic problem for society’s aspirational class, regardless of race or creed or even political affiliation.
Alan Milburn in his role as independent social mobility tsar has done a tremendous amount of work (including in his piece in The Purple Book) on the root causes and fundamental solutions to social immobility. He and other progressives focus on better state education to close the access gap, and sustained development on infrastructure and support from the wider community and universities. But none of these things can happen in an environment of ill-thought-out and unfair cuts.
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Bilal Mahmood is an international commercial lawyer who currently practices in the City of London. He is treasurer of Walthamstow CLP
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