Disadvantaged students make the grade but remain underrepresented at nearly one in three English universities

The Social Mobility Commission’s analysis of 94 institutions found 27 had more advantaged intakes than their academically eligible pool

The Social Mobility Commission benchmark compares university enrollment with the socioeconomic profile of young people meeting inferred entry requirements.

A new Social Mobility Commission benchmark has identified a university recruitment gap that academic thresholds alone do not explain. Of the 94 English institutions examined, 27 enrolled a more advantaged mix of students than the pool modeled as meeting their entry requirements.

University benchmarks for better social mobility compares the socioeconomic profile of each institution’s intake with young people whose A level or Level 3 BTEC results met its inferred academic threshold.

A negative social mobility coefficient indicates that an institution enrolled a more advantaged cohort than its qualified pool. A positive score indicates that its intake was more disadvantaged.

The analysis found that 29% of universities recorded a negative score, suggesting scope to enroll more disadvantaged students without reducing academic standards. The remaining 71%, equivalent to 67 institutions, had a positive or zero coefficient.

Russell Group universities accounted for a substantial share of the negative scores. Thirteen of the 20 Russell Group institutions included in the comparison fell below zero.

At the University of Exeter, 25% of students meeting the modeled entry requirements came from the less advantaged half of the population, but this group represented 16% of its intake. The remaining 84% of enrolled students came from the more advantaged half, producing a social mobility coefficient of -79.

The data cannot establish whether qualified disadvantaged students did not apply or applied but did not enroll.

Alun Francis, Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, says: “This research focuses on a simple question: from the pool of students who meet their entry requirements, do universities recruit equally across all socio-economic backgrounds? The evidence suggests that many do, but not all.”

Middlesex and Bradford lead different versions of ranking

Middlesex University recorded the highest non-location-adjusted coefficient at 257, followed by the University of East London at 253 and the University of Bradford at 233.

Oxford Brookes University sat at the bottom of that ranking with -132, despite having lower entry requirements than the other institutions near the bottom. The University of Exeter scored -79 and the University of Oxford -69.

Geography changes the order. The Commission produced a second ranking that gives greater weight to qualified prospective students living nearer each institution.

On this location-adjusted measure, the University of Bradford ranked first with 189, followed by Brunel University London with 187, Middlesex University with 184 and Roehampton University with 175.

The University of Birmingham recorded the lowest adjusted score at -103. Oxford Brookes remained close to the bottom at -93, followed by the University of Liverpool at -92 and the University of Leeds at -89.

Six of the adjusted top 10 were London universities. The Commission attributes part of the capital’s performance to its concentration of higher-attaining disadvantaged students and the ability of some students to remain near home. However, lower-tariff London universities continued to rank strongly after location was considered.

Professor Shân Wareing, Vice-Chancellor of Middlesex University, says: “This recognition reflects years of working alongside schools, colleges and communities across North London to ensure that talent and ambition, not background or circumstance, determine who can benefit from higher education.”

Study cannot identify where students leave the pipeline

The benchmark was developed by Dr Paul Martin and Professor Claire Crawford of the UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities.

It covers more than 182,000 students and follows young people who took their GCSEs in 2015/16 into university at age 18 in 2018/19 or age 19 in 2019/20. The Commission selected a pre-pandemic cohort because later grading systems were disrupted, but acknowledges that applications and admissions practices may have changed since then.

Thirty-three of 127 institutions were excluded because at least one socioeconomic group contained fewer than 25 students. These exclusions represented 8.7% of enrollments in the study.

The modeled entry requirements are also estimates. Rather than using advertised requirements for individual courses, researchers inferred each university’s threshold from the qualifications held by students who enrolled, removing the bottom 10% to account for contextual offers or extenuating circumstances.

The study is restricted to 18 and 19-year-old full-time undergraduates entering with A levels or Level 3 BTECs. Mature students, part-time learners and alternative entry routes were not included.

Its socioeconomic measure combines school type, Free School Meal eligibility and neighborhood disadvantage. Independent school pupils were placed in the most advantaged group, meaning the model does not identify those attending with bursary support.

The location-adjusted ranking also assumes students are more likely to attend a nearby institution. The report cautions that this is less applicable to national recruiters such as the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Comparing intakes with the qualified pool does not remove the wider access divide. Against the general population, 60% of universities enrolled a disproportionately advantaged cohort, while only 40% of all enrolling students came from the less advantaged half of the socioeconomic distribution.

Martin says: “However, the majority of English universities still cater to a disproportionately advantaged group of young people. At around half of these universities, access gaps cannot simply be explained by a shortage of disadvantaged students who meet the entry requirements.”

The Commission is asking universities to examine outreach, applications, admissions and affordability, while calling for access targets tailored to individual institutions. It also wants future versions of the benchmark to use data from 2023 onwards and incorporate application and offer information to show where qualified disadvantaged students leave the admissions pipeline.