Leading universities urged to take no more than 10% of students from private schools

Strictly limiting the numbers of private school pupils attending Oxford, Cambridge and other leading universities is a “radical” move needed to boost UK social mobility and improve access to elite professions, according to the authors of a new book.

Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman, professors of sociology at the London School of Economics, argue that pupils from prestigious private schools such as Eton and Winchester have maintained a disproportionate grip on Oxbridge and Russell Group university places, despite recent improvements in admission policies.

The pair say that leading selective universities should have to limit their intake of privately educated UK undergraduates to a more representative 10% each year, compared with the roughly 30% that universities such as Oxford, Durham and Cambridge currently admit.

Friedman said pupils from prestigious private schools who went to leading universities were 52 times more likely to reach elite positions in society than those who attended any other schools. “I think that calls for radical and provocative action,” Friedman said.

Leading universities could also increase their geographic diversity by selecting state-educated students through a lottery open to all those with the required entry qualifications, to overcome the heavy bias in applications and admissions towards those from London and the south-east of England.

“Oxford and Cambridge in particular, but the Russell Group [of universities] more broadly, play a really important role in putting particular people on to this kind of conveyor belt of access into elite positions,” said Reeves, the co-author of Born to Rule , published this week.

“What we found is that in many respects the elite have changed over time but actually much less than we might think, because these universities, in particular Oxbridge, play such a crucial role in propelling their alumni into elite positions.

“If we want to make genuine progress on opening up many of these elite positions to wider segments of society, then actually opening up those universities to those same communities would become a really important move, if indeed we’re serious about trying to generate greater social mobility.”

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Reeves and Friedman studied the lives and careers of more than 125,000 members of the British elite from the 1890s to the present day, and found that those born into the top 1% today are just as likely to get into the elite as they were more than 100 years ago.

Friedman said while attending Oxford or Cambridge boosted the outcomes for all graduates, the institutions retained a unique “propulsive power” that wasn’t well documented or understood.

“When we look at the trajectories of people who have made it into elite positions, there’s a profound overrepresentation of people going to those universities. And what that is indicating is that those universities have a particular ability to equip their alumni.

“It is, I suppose, an open question in terms of exactly what it is, whether it’s particular credentials that themselves are doing the propulsive work, or whether it’s other types of skills or networks that they pick up along the way. But certainly we can see that simply having an Oxbridge education seems to be very closely linked to reaching an elite position.”

Using a lottery to admit students, rather than interviews, would also reduce the “arms race” of tutoring and preparation undertaken by schools and parents for their children, according to Friedman.