Elite universities at risk storms Patten

A new row erupted today over the Government's attempts to force universities to take more state school students.

Oxford University Chancellor Chris Patten warned top universities would have to go private if ministers did not back off.

Mr Patten, a former European Commissioner, said that standards would fall if the Government's " spurious" social engineering continued.

It was "outrageous" to tell universities what kind of students they should take as a condition of being allowed to charge higher fees when new powers take effect in 2006, he said.

The threat was as serious to a free society as trying to curb the freedom of the press, he declared.

"Universities are independent institutions. But one of things about independent institutions is they should be able to determine their own admissions and it doesn't help anybody if you lower the standards of admission in order to meet specious targets set by a central government agency," he said.

Mr Patten was referring to the latest state school admissions targets, announced last month, which angered Oxford and Cambridge in particular.

"If you want to raise quality, to give everybody an opportunity to develop as far as they can, you don't do it by lowering standards of universities - we have got probably the second best university system in the world - you do it by improving standards in secondary schools," he told BBC radio.

"What the Government is trying to do is ... oblige universities to take pupils not on the grounds of their ability but through a spurious postcode statistic - where they come from and whether they meet certain social criteria.

"If you care about universities and care about a liberal, pluralistic society, that is outrageous."

Mr Patten said if ministers continued with this policy then "inevitably" universities would be driven in the direction of independence.

He said they could follow the Ivy League universities in the United States such as Harvard and Yale.

They are private institutions that charge tens of thousands of dollars a year in fees.

But Higher Education Minister Kim Howells hit back, rejecting claims that the Government was involved in "social engineering" to lock private school applicants out of top universities.

"It never was on this government's agenda and it is not on mine," he told the Universities UK conference in London.

But, he did warn the new higher education watchdog, the Office for Fair Access, had the power to stop universities from increasing their fees if they did not open their doors to more state-educated applicants.

They would have to agree to tough "milestones" in order to satisfy OFFA, Dr Howells made clear.

In 2006, universities will gain the power to increase their fees to a maximum of ?3,000 a year - but only if given permission to do so by OFFA.

"As long as OFFA is satisfied that the milestones are stretching and ambitious and that the university has done all it can to meet the milestones, they will be allowed to increase fees," said Dr Howells.