Skip to main contentSkip to navigation
Print subscriptions
Newsletters
Sign in

Access to university

January 2026

  • Trinity Hall, Cambridge

    Trinity Hall admissions policy has not changed

  • Lee Elliot Major

    No, private schools aren’t victims of ‘reverse discrimination’ – and Cambridge should know better

    Lee Elliot Major
  • Jade Franks shot in New Brighton, with Liverpool docks in the background HI RES

    Jade Franks on how cleaning toilets at Cambridge inspired her hit show: ‘I’m not watering down the fury – just sneaking it through the back door’

  • People in boats on the River Cam pass the Jerwood Library at Trinity Hall

    Cambridge college urged to drop ‘immoral’ private school recruitment drive

  • Cambridge college to target elite private schools for student recruitment

  • ‘Oh my gosh, they’re all from London and Cambridge’: York University’s northerners fight back

July 2025

  • Schoolchildren walking

    Majority of inner London pupils on free meals going to university, data shows

    Inner-city FSM pupils in capital also twice as likely to gain places at selective universities as counterparts elsewhere

October 2024

  • A freshers' week at the University of Manchester

    Alarm at first fall in disadvantaged students in England reaching university

    Proportion of students eligible for free school meals at 15 who progress to higher education falls from 29.2% to 29%

September 2024

  • Tourists on a punt trip near Kings College in Cambridge.

    Piling on privilege in higher education

    Letters: Bernie Evans and Prof Colin Richards respond to a proposal for leading universities to limit their intake of pupils from private schools to 10%

April 2024

  • The Imperial College London team on University Challenge

    A challenge to the BBC’s Oxbridge bias

    Letter: This year the BBC allowed nine Oxbridge colleges out of a total of 28 to compete in University Challenge, and still they did not win, writes Frank Coffield

March 2024

  • Helen Mountfield, principal of Mansfield College, Oxford.

    Oxbridge must help pupils from state schools succeed, college head says

    Helen Mountfield, principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, hopes to raise £100m to help improve outcomes

February 2023

  • A university graduate wearing a mortarboard hat looks up at a glass-ceilinged office

    How to dislodge the posh clique that rules Britain

    Letters: Simon Bull asks for discrimination against the state-educated to be outlawed, and other readers write on Oxbridge and Eton domination

January 2023

  • Black, female university graduates throw mortar-board hats in the air

    Elite power in Britain
    Elite universities aren’t hotbeds of ‘wokery’: our research shows they’re rife with racism and classism

    Kalwant Bhopal and Martin Myers
    In both the US and the UK, students described being told that they were beneficiaries of affirmative action, write authors Kalwant Bhopal and Martin Myers

December 2022

  • Children play in the art room at College Green nursery school

    UK scheme supporting Black students to reach Oxbridge expands to nursery schools

  • Beverly Sand

    Other lives
    Beverly Sand obituary

August 2022

  • Simon Jenkins

    Liz Truss’s Oxbridge proposal is the latest vacuous idea from a slapstick Tory race

    Simon Jenkins
    The ill-thought-out ideas issuing from Britain’s prime ministerial candidates are a cause for alarm, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins

June 2022

  • Michael Rosen

    Letter from a curious parent
    Dear Nadhim Zahawi, do you think curbs on university entrance will be levelling up?

    Michael Rosen
    Even the DfE’s own assessment has found restricting access to loans would shut out ethnic minority students

May 2022

  • Kings College, Cambridge, viewed from the backs.

    Nadhim Zahawi’s Oxbridge claim is an insult to state school students

    Letters: Michael Pyke takes issue with Nadhim Zahawi’s argument that it is up to state schools to improve access to elite universities. Plus letters from Richard Duckworth, Gerald Sandison and Nigel Gann
  • Nadhim Zahawi answers questions from year 5 pupils after reading a commemorative platinum jubilee book during a visit to Manor Park primary school in Sutton, south London

    Zahawi rejects idea Oxbridge should ‘tilt system’ to accept more state pupils

    Education secretary says admissions should be based on merit and focus should be on improving schools
  • Teenagers in school uniforms in a drama class

    The threat facing humanities and the arts

    Letters: Drama in schools gives students the opportunity to explore a wide range of issues, says Catherine Griffin, while Sue Jackson points to the favouring of Stem subjects at the expense of humanities in universities
About 1,317 results for Access to university
1234...
Explore more on these topics