Universities not to blame for inequality
David Cameron’s onslaught on universities for taking too few black students revisits a perennial problem but hits the wrong target. As the Prime Minister must know, higher education institutions have been anxious to offer places to black applicants from poorer homes for some time, not least because of political pressure.
The difficulty, however, is that would-be students from these backgrounds tend not to obtain the necessary grades. The damage, in other words, has been done long before they sit their A-levels, or even GCSEs. The real issue, therefore, is about schooling and culture, not racism in universities, and it seems a distraction to infer as much unless there is a governmental policy proposal to accompany Mr Cameron’s strictures.
Yet in his newspaper article at the weekend, the Prime Minister said he was against “politically correct” quotas or affirmative action to lower the grades black students need for university. In that case, what is it Mr Cameron thinks universities can do about it? This has echoes of Gordon Brown’s ill-judged attack on Oxbridge in 2000 for allegedly discriminating against pupils from state schools.
The Prime Minister points out that young black people are excluded from senior Establishment positions, such as in the Army (or the Cabinet for that matter). He is urging universities, including Oxford, his own alma mater, to “go the extra mile” to tackle discrimination. But they can only work with what the schools system has produced, and it is on the education system that most attention needs to be focused.
Moreover, it is debatable whether this has anything to do with racism, institutional or otherwise. White working-class children are even less likely than their black counterparts to get to university. If this were a function of ethnicity or race, why do Indian and Chinese children do disproportionately well in getting to university? This as much about aspiration and application as it is about skin colour or discrimination. Bright children from poorer homes need the encouragement of teachers and schools to get on. It is here that social inequality starts.
Mr Cameron is right to lament the fact that there are more black men in jail than at university or that, last year, Oxford admitted just 27 black people out of an intake of more than 2,500. But the reasons for this state of affairs are complex and do not readily respond to sweeping statements, gimmicky policies or easy scapegoating.