Image: Admissions ceremony at Selwyn College, Cambridge, 2016/Flickr.
Social mobility and universities have rarely been out of the news in recent months. Today it was reported that wealthy students are tightening their grip on university places. Back in October, Labour MP David Lammy published data on the rising proportion of Oxbridge offers made to those in the top two classes of society. A couple of weeks ago the government came under fire for its failure to act on social mobility. And the outrage has been steadily growing about the gulf between university vice-chancellors’ pay and that of rank-and-file university staff.
We’re left with an image of an elite higher education system which can easily be portrayed as “bastions of privilege” - and with a government powerless or unwilling to tackle entrenched inequality and worsening social mobility. The stories of elite academic pay and top universities inaccessible to ordinary people have never quite overlapped, but they are manifestations of the same problem – systemic segregation of class, wealth and privilege in our society. This week, Justine Greening announced an upcoming social mobility action-plan. If the government is serious, getting more disadvantaged students into Oxbridge and the Russell Group universities must be part of the effort to break down the cycle of social segregation.
