The Vocational Challenge

John O’Leary reports from the Sutton Trust access summit

Tens of thousands of teenagers are denying themselves the opportunity of studying at the top universities by taking vocational courses in the sixth-form or at college, Mary Curnock-Cook, the chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, told the Sutton Trust summit.

Ms Curnock-Cook said the number of students admitted to higher education with vocational qualifications had increased fivefold in a decade, but few were accepted by the most selective universities. Because BTEC and other vocational qualifications were concentrated in comprehensives and further education colleges, this was adding to the barriers facing young people from poor families.

Only 1 per cent of independent schools – which were the most tightly focused on admission to the top universities – were offering BTEC courses, compared with 82 per cent of non-selective state schools and colleges. Ms Curnock-Cook said she expected the take-up of vocational courses to rise if A-level reform made the academic route tougher, making the extension of access to leading universities an “uphill struggle”.

Ms Curnock-Cook also highlighted the widening gender gap in higher education, with more women entering university than there were men applying. She said if nothing was done to redress the balance, a similar conference in ten years’ time would be dominated by gender issues.

However, senior admissions officials from both Harvard and Oxford universities said that men still outnumbered women at their institutions. Dr Marlyn McGrath, Harvard’s Director of Admissions, said she shared a “sense of inadequacy” on the question of widening access, but the university was spending $162m a year on scholarships and now took a third of its students from schools with a high proportion of low and middle-income families’ children.

Mike Nicholson, Oxford’s Director of Undergraduate Admissions and Outreach, said UK universities faced additional problems in widening access because they were recruiting to specialist subject degrees, rather than the more generalist US courses. In medicine, for example, 75 per cent of the applicants were state-educated, whereas for other degrees, such as classics, the proportion was much lower because relatively few state schools taught the subjects.

David Willetts, the Minister for Universities and Science, mounted a passionate defence of £9,000 undergraduate fees, describing critics of the system as “plain wrong”. He said the system of income-contingent loans was much fairer to poor students than the American equivalent, in spite of the range of scholarships and bursaries available there.

Mr Willetts said the extent of the salary premium enjoyed by graduates from the leading universities over those from other institutions was open to question because so many benefited from other advantages through their background. However, he backed the Sutton Trust’s efforts to broaden access to these universities in the UK and the US. Referring to reports of growing numbers leaving the UK for American universities, he said: “I see such student exchange as entirely positive. It is not something we should be ashamed of or embarrassed by.”