Are You the University Type?

A constant running theme in the Labour government's long-running battle over tuition fees was the "historic commitment" to ensure that half of all those under 30 would have experienced higher education by 2010. Its convoluted expression of the target made it look carefully worded and tightly drawn, and ministers insisted it was based on a hard-headed assessment of the UK's economic needs. But quickly it began to unravel. How long did a course have to be before it counted towards the target? Three years? A year? A day? The government wasn't quite sure. It didn't really know how far it had to go to reach it, either. Scotland said it already had; Wales said it wasn't important; England first reckoned participation was at 41.5%, then - helped by the results of the 2001 census - settled on (around) 43%.

Whatever, the search is on for not only more students but the right sort of students. And - not least because government holds the purse-strings - that has become the universities' priority too. The government in England is giving incentives to universities to take on working-class and poorer students. From 2003-04, universities receive 20% extra per student for every one they take on from a "disadvantaged" background, compared with an extra 5% previously. The government has also backed schemes introduced by Bristol, Newcastle, Edinburgh, the London School of Economics and other institutions to make lower offers to some applicants from state school and/or working-class and/or non-traditional backgrounds. They particularly like to reward students who have done relatively well in tough schools.

Research (by the Higher Education Policy Institute no less) suggests state school students perform better at university than those from independent schools with the same A-level grades. The cast-iron admissions tariffs of old have been downgraded considerably; it's now private schools that are shouting about the need for a "level playing field".

Universities that want to charge top-up fees from 2006 will have to show that they have strategies in place to attract more working-class and state school students, although the much-vaunted "access regulator" who will police them will not he in place by the time top-up fees of up to £3,000 are set ready for introduction. There is no official talk of quotas for students from under-represented groups - yet.

So if you don't feel that you're the university type, if you're the first from your family or neighbourhood to go to university, then this could he your time. The trouble with this debate over widening access is that it often implies that all universities are full of Pimms-swilling, over-privileged toffs for whom access is what Daddy's gold credit card used to be called. It ain't necessarily so. All universities are large and complex enough to contain plenty of people who roughly match your background. Don't be put off: there will be others like you there. Though you wouldn't be unique if you were more interested in meeting the people who aren't.