University chief hits out at Cameron's remarks
A boss at the University of Wolverhampton has criticised the Prime Minister over his claim that people from minority backgrounds are under-represented in higher education in the UK.
David Cameron said he wanted to nudge universities into "making the right choices" when it comes to the recruitment of staff and students in a bid to increase black and minority ethnic (BME) representation.
He said the government intends to bring in legislation to place a new transparency duty on universities to publish data about applicants, the subject they want to study, and who gets offered a place.
But Professor Geoff Layer, vice-chancellor of the University of Wolverhampton, said that BME students were already "well represented" in higher education.
And he defended the record of the university, which has a large campus in Telford as well as a presence at the town's Southwater development.
"It is unclear whether the Prime Minister is focusing on certain universities or all universities in his proposed actions to increase BME representation," he said.
"According to 2014/15 data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, 25 per cent of students in English HE were from a BME background whereas they made up under 20 per cent of the English population as a whole. So while there are different levels of participation amongst ethnic groups and by gender, there is not under-representation as a whole.
"The truth is that white males from lower socio-economic groups are now becoming the under-represented group in HE, and also have declining performance in schools, a point missed entirely in the government's recent green paper on higher education."
