Students priced out of London

Students from poorer backgrounds are finding it financially impossible to study at many London universities, a senior academic has warned today.

Professor Clare Callender says debt and the cost of living in the capital meant would-be students could not afford to leave home, restricting where they could study.

Her warning comes after 10,000 students marched through London demanding the return of grants, claiming they would presently be better off on the dole - a claim dismissed by ministers as "irresponsible and untrue".

In a report on London students for the Greater London Authority to be published next month, Professor Callender, from South Bank University, warns that Tony Blair's eagerness to expand student numbers, at the same time as abolishing grants, is creating a two-tier system of higher education.

She says higher education in London is already becoming "increasingly polarised along class, income and ethnic lines".

"Ethnic minority students and those from low-income families who live at home and attend their local London university will have one experience," said Professor Callender. "White students and those from more well-off families, who can afford to live independently of their parents and pay London rents, and who are not worried about building up large debts, will have another."

She raises fears that UK higher education, particularly in London, could come to resemble higher education in the US, where poorer and ethnic minority students predominate in local universities - equivalent to the former polytechnics that became universities here a decade ago - studying "vocational" degrees less likely to lead to prestige jobs and high earnings.

By contrast, elite universities have more white, middle-class students in courses that are stepping stones to a prosperous future.

Professor Callender said: "There is nothing wrong with different sorts of students at different types of universities, so long as the qualifications they achieve have equal value. But that does matter if different universities have different standings, and poorer and ethnic minority students have less opportunity to graduate from those with the highest reputation."

The only way many students from low-income and ethnic minority families could afford to study in the capital at all, said Professor Callender, was by living at home - hugely restricting their choice of university.

"To maintain a diverse student population, students studying in London need to be drawn from all areas of the country and all ethnic groups," she warned. "This is vital for students, the future of higher education in London and society as a whole.

"If 'new universities' rely increasingly on local intake and students from ethnic minorities while 'old universities' recruit nationally from a predominantly white population, there is a very real danger that universities in London will become segregated on ethnic lines."

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