Despite having required academic qualifications, students from working class families are three times less likely to opt for top universities than their wealthy counterparts, according to a research commissioned by Sutton Trust charity.
The study found that only one in eight undergraduates at leading universities such as Oxford and Cambridge come from poor homes when compared to more than half of the student population at some of the recently-opened institutions such as Bolton and Greenwich.
Most often bright teenagers from deprived backgrounds opt for lower ranking universities because they fail to get support from their teachers and parents to join good universities and do not have proper financial resources to pay higher tuition fee at the elite universities.
The findings support the claims from the Government's Office for Fair Access that leading universities are making no efforts in recruiting more students from 'lower' occupational backgrounds. The number of undergraduates from deprived backgrounds has remained stagnant in recent years.
"Although academic achievement is an important factor, a substantial proportion of the elite university access gap in each country remains unexplained, Dr John Jerrim, from the Institute of Education at the University of London, who led the Sutton Trust research, said. "This suggests that there are working class children who, even though they have the grades to attend, choose to enter a non-selective institution instead," Telegraph reports.
"This new research confirms that there many able children either not applying or not being admitted to the best universities, and this is true internationally," Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the charity, said.
