Date published: 2008/09/11
The BBC says:
Universities Secretary John Denham insists the Westminster government is not going to "start meddling" in the way universities choose students.
He said the target to have half of all young people in higher education was right but ministers were not forcing universities to take poor students.
...
Speaking on the Today programme on BBC Radio Four, Mr Denham said fair access to universities was vital."We can't afford to waste the talents of young people in this country and widening participation to higher education in general, and fair access to the most competitive selective universities, is crucial.
"We work with universities in many ways to make the case for widening participation and also to encourage universities to work with schools as they do to get students to apply to universities," he said.
"What we don't do is tell individual universities how to run their admissions policies. Our universities' strength depends on their autonomy and there is a line we don't cross.
"So we will argue passionately that we are not making the best use of too many people who are very able, we want to see change in schools and universities but we are not going to start meddling, interfering in how they run their admissions procedures."
Well, that's clearly nonsense. They constantly meddle in admissions, and in particular set targets for how many State versus non-State school students should be admitted, in particular into Oxbridge. Denham by a clever choice of words might like to claim that this is not procedure, just outcome, but it's a fatuous distinction to make.
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