Lee Elliot Major writes in The Guardian on cuts to the Aim Higher programme.

Aimhigher, the widening participation programme, was always in the firing line of Whitehall’s assassins. And so it proved last week when the universities minister, David Willetts, confirmed the demise of the national scheme aimed at raising university aspirations among less privileged school children.

From July 2011 on, the £78m a year for university residential summer schools, student mentoring schemes and other access projects will be gone. What will be the impact on the university prospects of pupils from disadvantaged homes?

The outreach job will rest in future on the shoulders of universities alone. They will be urged to pitch proposals for the government’s new £150m national scholarship programme and will have to show they are serious about access work as part of the deal for charging fees above £6,000 a year, with sanctions if targets for recruiting poorer students are missed.

In truth Aimhigher has been vulnerable for a while. Alan Milburn’s fair access report for Labour, last year, questioned how much impact the scheme had had, given the millions spent. The government’s social mobility czar wasn’t convinced. Progress in getting more disadvantaged children on to degree courses had been disappointing.

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