Gaby Hinsliff asks if we are sliding back to the days when middle-class children mostly went to university and then into elite careers, while working-class ones mostly did not (It’s not about ‘woke’ or foreign students – the truth is that UK universities are starved of cash, 6 February). We’re not sliding back to those days – we never left them behind.
Working-class students comprise around 20% of undergraduates at the 24 Russell Group universities and an even lower percentage of postgraduates, with those who were entitled to free school meals comprising fewer than 4% of undergraduates at these universities. Even when they do enter such elite institutions, working-class students often report feelings of social isolation and class-based microaggressions by their peers and staff.
Successive reports have revealed that between 20% and 65% of professionals in occupations as diverse as medicine, law, journalism, sports, MPs, the arts and high court judges were educated in fee-paying schools and/or Oxbridge, despite only 7% of the UK population attending such schools and about 1% attending these two universities.
Despite successive waves of higher education expansion in the UK, particularly since the 1960s and again in the 1990s, access to elite universities and the professions has remained the preserve of the middle classes and their children.
Dr Siân Lawrence
Warwick
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