Report: Oxbridge could emulate Ivy League in selection

19 Nov 2009

A new report has found that more could be done to boost the social mix in Britain''s top universities.

Oxford and Cambridge universities should follow the lead of America''s top institutions and actively take in more students based on their social background, rather than just on their academic abilities alone.

That is according to a new report from the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), which highlighted the example of Ivy League colleges across the Atlantic.

These often look beyond a student''s qualifications to see which candidates would add to the student body''s diversity.

While steps have been made to diversify the make-up of Oxbridge students over recent years, the paper has argued that a reluctance to "engage in social engineering" means that both of the UK''s top universities continue to admit a disproportionately high number of candidates from independent schools.

Bahram Bekhradnia, director of Hepi, said: "There seems no reason why Oxford and Cambridge should not take a leaf out of the book of some of the great American universities which are explicit that they have to achieve the best social and ethnic mix they can whilst always insisting on the highest academic standards."

The report also identified the differences in funding streams available to Oxford and Cambridge compared to other universities that allow them to spend more per student and therefore "excel to the extent that they do".