UK’s best universities still for the elite

Britain’s most prestigious universities are still a lot less accessible for students from poor backgrounds.  Even though there’s an increase of those students opting for university, they don’t enroll in the so-called Russell Group universities. The Russell Group is an association that holds 24 leading British universities, including the university of Cambridge, the university of Oxford and King’s college in London.

Bahram Bekhradnia, the outgoing head of an important British think-tank, said in a farewell lecture that the universities has made little or no progress in this over the past years. He illustrates this with the example of a rugby match between Manchester University, a ‘posh’ university, and Manchester Metropolitan University, a less prestigious one. The supporters from Manchester University shouted: “your dad works for my dad”.