Press Release: Working class males being left behind
Commenting on statistics on university applications published by UCAS today. Shadow Innovation, Universities and Skills Secretary David Willetts said:
“These figures show a continuing increase in the overall number of university applications. But there is one important group that remain at the bottom of the heap: working-class men.
“We are seeing rapid growth in the number of female students, international students and older students. It is great to see such a diverse mix of people at our universities. But young working-class males are being left behind.”
Notes to Editors
1. New statistics from UCAS (the Universities and Colleges Admission Services) show that the number of people applying for a full-time undergraduate course at UK universities and colleges has risen by 35,182 (8.9%) to 430,489.
2. Of the 430,489 applicants, 244,167 were female and 186,322 were male. Over the past year, the growth in numbers has been concentrated among international students (10.4% ‘non-UK EU’ and 11.0% ‘other overseas’) and older applicants (14.1% among those aged 21 to 24; 15.9% among the over 25s).
3. The figures show a small increase of 3,681 in UK-based applicants from lower socio-economic groups - from 49,760 (28.9%) to 53,441 (29.6%) in groups 4 to 7. But this increase is due to the inclusion in the data for the first time of 8,665 people applying for nursing and midwifery diplomas - according to the UCAS release, most of these people ‘are classified as coming from lower socio-economic groups.’ Without this methodological change, it is likely there would have been no increase at all in the number of applicants from lower socio-economic groups