British universities are under threat. People working in higher education have known this for a while. But it isn’t funding cuts, or high fees, or casualisation, or Prevent, or even ‘safe spaces’, that threaten universities the most. No – it’s a working class girl with a UCAS form and a library card.
Earlier this month, the Telegraph reported that ‘experts’ think universities are slipping down the international league tables because they are forced to recruit ‘diverse’ or ‘disadvantaged’ students. When I read Chris Patten’s comments, a couple of weeks later, that quotas for students from non-traditional backgrounds would lead to ‘lower standards’, it confirmed what I had always known: there are some people who think that people like me just don’t belong in higher education.
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