Call to give youngsters university advantage

By ALISON KERSHAW
Published on 20/10/2012 00:37

DISADVANTAGED students who fail to secure a place at a top university should be given a second chance to gain entry, according to a leading academic.

Lord Martin Rees said that students should be able to switch to a leading institution after one or two years at a less selective university.

He called for the UK higher education sector to look at the Californian university system, where youngsters are more likely to go to smaller colleges before moving on to leading institutions.

Lord Rees, a former president of the Royal Society and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, said the UK can learn more from California than from Ivy League universities like Harvard and Yale.

“A substantial fraction of those who attend the ‘elite’ universities in the system, such as Berkeley and UCLA have come not directly from high school, but via a ‘lower-tier institution’,” he said.

“For those who initially did not gain entry to a Russell Group university because of disadvantaged schooling, it could become a common practice to transfer after one or two years at a less selective institution.”

Lord Rees made the comments as he launched his new pamphlet on universities, written for the Politeia think-tank.