Ethnic minorities 'under-represented at elite universities' in Britain - study

Students from ethnic minorities are still under-represented at the UK's elite universities, research suggested yesterday.

Both Oxford and Cambridge are still recruiting fewer black, Asian or minority ethnic students than the average in other universities, according to a study by the Race for Opportunity campaign.

Just over one in 10 students at each of the two institutions (11.1 per cent at Oxford and 10.5 per cent at Cambridge) are from a BAME background, it says.

Across the country, almost one in six UK university students (16 per cent) were BAME in 2007/08.

In order for Oxford to reach this average, it would have to recruit 44 per cent more students from BAME backgrounds, the study concludes.

Students of Chinese or mixed ethnicity were well represented at both universities, the findings show, but fewer students were of Indian, African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage.

There are seven times fewer Black or Black British Caribbeans at Oxford than there are on average at other universities, the report shows.

The research is based on an analysis of the Higher Education Statistics Agency's (HESA) Student Record for 1995/96 and 2007/08 and the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey for the same years.

The report reveals that across the UK, the number of BAME university students has risen from 8.3 per cent in 1995/96 to 16 per cent in 2007/08. These figures are broadly in line with growth in the 18- to 24-year-old BAME population, it says.

But while British ethnic minorities are now better represented in general, at the 20 leading research-intensive Russell Group institutions this representation is "unbalanced", it concludes.

London-based Russell Group universities including the London School of Economics (LSE), Kings College London, Imperial and University College London are still the best performing institutions for numbers of BAME students, the same as they were 12 years ago.