education-policy

Oxbridge’s lack of black students a ‘staggering’ failure, says universities minister

The universities minister has attacked Oxbridge for its “staggering” failure 
to attract more black students, saying 
that colleges must look beyond exam results to improve diversity.

Sam Gyimah, who was elected as the first black British president of the Oxford Union debating society in 1997, claimed that diversity at Britain’s two oldest universities had scarcely changed from his own student days, as he warned it was time they “stood up to the mark”.

Speaking openly about the issue for the first time, Mr Gyimah said he struggled to understand how Oxford and Cambridge could regularly produce Nobel prize winners but could not “crack the issue of admissions”.