A recent report by the Office for Students has revealed that black students achieve far worse degree than white at almost half of the university.
The report highlights that there exists a large gap of 20 percentage points between the number of black and white students who receive distinction or an upper merit (2:1) during their graduation at 45% of universities. It emphasised that 11 per cent of the poorest students dropped out of the university after completing their first year in comparison to 6 percent of the rich kids. Additionally, only 75% of the poor students achieved a distinction or an upper merit in comparison to the 84% of the richest.
Experts suggest that black students are deterred by a lack of role model at these universities and could have also performed worse because of the methods of assessment.
The report also suggested that there were “substantial gaps in access for all higher-tariff universities”. Five universities with the biggest gap between the richest and poorest intake were Imperial College, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and University College London.