Clegg to launch attack on 'segregating' universities

London: Nick Clegg is to make an explosive attack on British universities as "instruments of social segregation" as he orders them to stop taking so many middle class students.

The Deputy Prime Minister will this week insist that top institutions must "throw open their doors" to the less well-off.

Universities that want to charge tuition fees of £6,000 (Dh35,521) or more will be forced to sign up to "access agreements", ensuring they admit more students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The move will prompt fears that bright pupils from good schools or middle-class homes could lose out on sought-after places.

Clegg will tomorrow write to the Office of Fair Access setting out the new system. Institutions are expected to be allowed to draw up their own methods of broadening their intake.

But critics fear teenagers from comprehensives will increasingly be given easier A-level offers than candidates from fee-paying schools.

Comparisons

Clegg's intervention is certain to draw comparisons with Gordon Brown's outspoken attack on Oxford University after it rejected straight-A comprehensive school pupil Laura Spence ten years ago.

That attack unravelled when it emerged that the admissions department had a strong record of admitting disadvantaged pupils. The Deputy Prime Minister's move will also be seen as a bid to claw back support for the Lib Dems, who have seen their support crash after they backed moves to treble tuition fees despite pledging to oppose them.

Clegg, who was educated at the exclusive fee-paying Westminster public school and Cambridge University, insists there is clear evidence of unfair bias towards better-off students.

He will say that although people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to go to university now than they used to be, 57 per cent of young people from advantaged areas go on to higher education compared to just 19 per cent from poorer areas.