Named and shamed: The 17 Russell Group unis failing to recruit enough working class students

17 out of 24 Russell Group universities are failing to recruit enough students from disadvantaged areas, new stats show.

At some top universities, the percentage of students from the poorest areas even managed to fall from 2018-19 to 2019-20.

New stats provided by HESA, the designated data provider for Higher Education, shows the percentage of students from POLAR4 neighbourhoods – the areas least likely to send students to university. They also set out the levels of students from these low-participation neighbourhoods that each uni should aim to recruit.

Queen Mary University of London, King’s and UCL all have the highest shortfall – meaning they missed their benchmark to recruit working class students by the highest amount.

At the other end of the spectrum, Sheffield, York and Manchester all had positive benchmarks – meaning they recruited more working class students than their target.

Check out the table below. Any university with a negative “shortfall to benchmark” value is recruiting fewer working class students than its target.

How many disadvantaged students is your uni recruiting?

Featured image credit: Unsplash

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