This is not an aspiration gap. It is a trust gap.
Living a happy life, having a stable job and having a roof over your head.”
That was how one year seven pupil described success to the independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes, for which I was a board member.
There is nothing small about that ambition. It is the kind of life many families want for their children: security, good work, independence and happiness.
A better education
Our Inquiry found that white working class parents are more likely than others to say they want their children to have a better education than they had themselves: 94 per cent say this, compared with 91 per cent of all parents. They are also more likely to say it is important that their child does as well as or better than them in life: 75 per cent, compared with 70 per cent of all parents.
But many white working class young people do not see university as the safest or clearest route to getting there. Only 22 per cent of white working class young people in our poll felt university was important for getting a good job, compared to 33 per cent of their white middle class peers and 37 per cent of their ethnic minority working class peers.
For some pupils, the biggest barrier was the financial risk.
Uni would be my first choice, but I’m quite scared of student loans.”
Again and again, families talked about cousins, friends and neighbours who had gone away to university, taken on debt, and come back to low-skilled or insecure employment.
One access charity worker in Grimsby told us “Look at the debt that people come out with now… How can you justify that level of debt at the end of it, if a job in your industry or sector or area of expertise doesn’t exist where you come from.” While one mother remarked that “Even young people leaving university are often now working on minimum wage in Aldi.”
Visible detriments
Debt is visible. Rent is visible. Travel is visible. The loss of earnings from three years out of work is visible. But the graduate job at the end is not always visible, especially in places where secure graduate employment feels scarce or remote.
These are not anti-education arguments. They are families doing the maths and reckoning with options. And when families have less financial room for error, uncertainty is not a minor concern, it is the whole decision.
In higher education, we can be too quick to hear “I want to stay close to home” as a lack of ambition, when often it is an expression of love, pride and belonging. I’ll never forget the teacher who encouraged me to go to university by reassuring my Mam that she wouldn’t lose me.
If the child’s clever, they can go on to university and get a really good job. I think the majority of children who do go into higher education probably get jobs outside of Hartlepool. I don’t think there’s anything for them in Hartlepool.”
That is not an uncomplicated success story. For some young people, leaving for university is liberating. For others, it looks like a one-way ticket out of the community that raised them. And for parents who want their children close, safe, happy and secure, that can feel less like opportunity and more like loss.
Aspiration and security
Family and place are not barriers to aspiration. They are sources of security; the people who pick them up, lend them money, notice when something is wrong, and make adult life feel possible. And when higher education appears to threaten those ties, while offering only a vague promise of future reward, it can look like a bad bet.
If we misdiagnose low trust as low aspiration, we design the wrong solutions. We’ve known for years that it isn’t aspiration blocking the path to higher education but ‘raising aspirations’ continues to be bandied around. Inspiration alone is not enough – it must be accompanied by practical support, meaningful relational engagement with families and more secure finances.
Trust will only be rebuilt when universities can show, clearly and locally, how higher education leads to good work, stable lives and real choices.
That starts long before UCAS. It starts in the parents’ evening where a mum asks whether debt will follow her child forever, in the college classroom where a young person wants to know whether a degree will lead to a job nearby, in the partnership with the FE college, the local employer, the bus route, the maintenance package and the course designed around real lives.
The young person who wants “a stable job and a roof over your head” is not aiming low. They are asking for something profoundly reasonable: security, dignity, belonging and a future that feels real in an environment when none of these things are a given.
Higher education does not need to persuade white working class families to want more for their children. They already do. The task now is harder, and more important: to prove that higher education can help them build the secure, dignified and meaningful futures they already want.
Universities could start by stopping to discriminate against white people. See the following article which describes some of these discriminatory practices: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/30/white-working-class-students-excluded-oxbridge-diversity-uk/
It focuses (as the media tends to do) on Oxbridge, but my university does the same. This affects not only (aspiring) students, but also staff.
You mention “Again and again, families talked about cousins, friends and neighbours who had gone away to university, taken on debt, and come back to low-skilled or insecure employment” and “Even young people leaving university are often now working on minimum wage in Aldi”, but then don’t further engage with this. I would want to add to this that if a White working class man does manage to get a graduate job, then he typically gets stuck at the bottom rung whilst middle class men, women and non-Whites get promoted.
White working class people are being systematically discriminated against in education and employment. It is not some individual bad apples who do this (as happened in the distant past to black and brown people), but policy (it is actually written down in documents that this discrimination in mandatory, at least with respect to the “White” aspect of their identity).
I’m not clear that this is a specifically “white” issue as much as about the failure of the British economy to give graduates a fair opportunity to find a reasonably paying job combined with a funding regime that requires students to pay for almost the entirety of their own education, and in the case of working class students, by taking on significant levels of debt that they may never pay off.
Participation rates in Higher Education are much lower for Whites than for others:
Chinese 661.%
Asian 51.4%
Black 48%
White 298.%
source: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/higher-education/entry-rates-into-higher-education/latest/
In spite of this under representation of White people, higher education discriminates against them (see the Telegraph piece I linked to in my above comment).
When you separate out by Free School Means (the best proxy for “working class” that seems to be available), the differences in participation are even more stark. So it IS a White issue.
1. Can an ethnic minority candidate expect to get ahead in professional roles without a degree (where a degree is strictly not required? Perhaps participation in higher education is perceived as a requirement against well documented historic and current disadvantage that especially Black ethnic minorities face (regardless of class). Those without that history are perhaps less likely to see the HE route as a must in order to get ahead.
2. Universities are (by definition) elite institutions: the real challenge for the white working class is not because they are white; the real challenge is the power of social capital held and reinforced by guess which upper and middle class group? Is a white middle class-oriented higher education system likely to be less appealing and more alienating to white working class students compared to, for example, black African or Bangladeshi working class students? The idea that targeted interventions to encourage working class ethnic minorities amount to discrimination against the white working class ignores well established widening participation programmes for white working class students that do not carry the word “white” in the label.
Offer rates by ethnicity for UK domiciled applicants from UCAS end of cycle data 2025 ( https://www.ucas.com/data-and-analysis/undergraduate-statistics-and-reports/ucas-undergraduate-end-of-cycle-data-resources-2025 )
Asian 68.8%
Black 65.1%
White 77.5%
Not much evidence there that universities are biased against white applicants. In fact it looks superficially the other way around, and people have worried about this for a long time, but that is also probably not true. Not least because offer and acceptance of students is nowadays semi-automated in most universities and rarely are people giving much thought to non-educational factors.
It is easy to jump to conclusions from headline numbers, but harder to understand why those numbers are what they are. When people have looked into the detail in the past (e.g. https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/56795/), they have found that there is virtually no difference in offer rates once university and subject choice (some places and courses are more or less selective) and actual academic performance of applicant are taken into account.
The main reason for lower white participation in university is that they are much less likely to apply.
Why do ethnic minorities apply in a greater proportion? It seems mainly to be due to geography and social environment. Ethnic minorities are concentrated in major cities (e.g. black student proportion of London ~ 20%, of Cornwall ~1%). Most jobs in major cities require degrees (e.g., ~60% of the working age population of London have a degree!). Consequently, a much higher proportion of students who live in major cities regardless of their ethnicity stay in school/FE for A-level and BTEC and subsequently apply to university. They see that they need further and higher education for a job (and because most of their mates are doing the same thing). Thus, very high proportions of ethnic minority students apply because they live in cities, while white students who mainly live in smaller towns and the countryside and don’t see the same labour market or experience the same peer influences and thus don’t apply (or don’t even reach the educational level needed to make an application).
It is not about bias, but about the different choices people make in different environments.
The link you give for evidence that “that there is virtually no difference in offer rates once university and subject choice and actual academic performance of applicant are taken into account” considers data from 2008. Admission rates for 2008 versus 2024 are:
Chinese 52% and 66.1% (difference 14.1%)
Asian 35.7% and 51.4% (difference 15.7%)
Black 25.7% and 48% (difference 22.3%)
White 24.1% and 29.8% (difference 5.7%)
once again source: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/higher-education/entry-rates-into-higher-education/latest/
If in 2008 the admission rates were “correct”, then either in 2024 they are “incorrect” or massive changes happened between 2008 and 2024.
An “awarding gap” was identified in my department and upon investigation it turned out that non-whites were admitted into the department with significantly lower prior attainment on average. This however was not accepted as a valid reason for an awarding gap. It has made clear however that my university nowadays does admit differentially based on ethnicity. I don’t think this was the case back in 2008. The mechanism used for this differential admission is outreach programmes specific to non-whites. Participants in such outreach programmes get a reduced offer. There is also an outreach programme which does not take ethnicity into account (and those participants also get a reduced offer), but overall these outreach programmes are disproportionately non-white (and therefore the reduced offers are also disproportionately non-white)
Regarding offer rates the following.
American universities tend to publicise their rejection rates as a measure of how selective they are. This is not the way selective English universities work. I remember our then deputy vice-chancellor once saying: “ideally we would have an offer rate of 100%. A low offer rate means we haven’t communicated our expectations well enough”. Offer rates say more about inappropriate applications than anything else.
Regarding “very high proportions of ethnic minority students apply because they live in cities, while white students who mainly live in smaller towns and the countryside and don’t see the same labour market or experience the same peer influences and thus don’t apply”.
Data by the Sutton Trust refutes that it is simply a place-based issue. They write:
“City areas tend to have a lower opportunity ranking for white working class pupils, most notably Newcastle, Brighton, Leeds, and Leicester among others”
and
“White working class pupils aren’t benefiting from the ‘London effect’ of strong academic performance among disadvantaged students. In fact they perform slightly worse than their counterparts in the North East.”
Source: https://www.suttontrust.com/news-opinion/all-news-opinion/sutton-trust-response-to-white-working-class-inquiry-report/
It is not simply a place-based effect. It is racial.
I’m assuming you are the Simon Deville who is the deputy head of student wellbeing at Birbeck. If not then the examples I will give are less relevant, but still illustrative.
Birbeck has the Cowrie foundation-scholarship for which only blacks are eligible:
https://www.bbk.ac.uk/student-services/financial-support/cowrie-foundation-scholarship
Birbeck also has the Goldman Sachs and Birkbeck diversity scholarship, for which also only blacks are eligible:
https://www.bbk.ac.uk/student-services/financial-support/goldman-sachs-and-birkbeck-diversity-scholarship
I cannot find any scholarships at Birbeck where only Whites are eligible. This is despite (as per my previous comment) Whites are underrepresented in Higher Education and blacks are not. The Equality Act does allow positive action, but since the under representation goes the other way, in likelihood, Birbeck is breaking the law. Of course, in the current two-tier climate Birbeck will not be pulled up on this.
It would be helpful if you bothered to read the article rather than invent your own narrative about why working class whites are less inclined to HE.
I did read the article. The article is gaslighting. It describes the lived experience of working class white people that university for people like them does not “help them build the secure, dignified and meaningful futures they already want” and then ends with “The task now is […] to prove that higher education can help them build the secure, dignified and meaningful futures they already want.” It simply dismisses their experiences.
The experience of White working class people is that they are discriminated against in education and employment. That they are is easily evidenced: I gave evidence that your university is engaging in this (which of course, I’m not blaming you personally for). Discrimination in employment is also easily evidenced:for example there are many internships which are not open to white people. These easily evidenced facts are only the tip of the iceberg.
Why do you keep capitalising white and not black? Call me a dog but I hear a whistle mate…
This is because the Associated Press Style Guide does the opposite. It rankles doesn’t it? Now imagine that it is not some random commenter on the internet doing it, but that it is institutional.
Looking at the situation as a whole, many ethnic minorities, and black people in particular, are under-represented in many professional roles and are less successful in obtaining supposedly open scholarships/internships etc. Senior professional roles in particular have very low numbers of some ethnic groups. Consequently, a number of professional bodies, organisations and charities have seen fit to create schemes for specific groups ethnic minority applicants, simply to correct the apparent general bias against them. There is no statistical evidence of bias against white applicants in general, hence no one sees a need for your suggested ‘white-only’ schemes.
The situation for people from a working-class or socio-economically disadvantaged background is, however, also dire and indeed socio-economic disadvantage is also a major contributor to some of the ethnic differences observed in the professions.
There are a variety schemes for such socio-economically disadvantaged applicants at different HE stages that recognise the difficulties in access and sustaining an education trajectory e.g.
https://in2scienceuk.org/our-programmes/in2stem/eligibility/
https://www.bbk.ac.uk/student-services/financial-support/birkbeck-postgraduate-bursary
https://martingale.foundation/scholarships/
But you are correct that they are less numerous than those based on ethnicity at present. There is a strong case for increasing such opportunities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds as that would simultaneously target both working class and non-white under-representation.
“Trust will only be rebuilt when universities can show, clearly and locally, how higher education leads to good work, stable lives and real choices.” If that is the point of universities for working class people of whatever race, then that route will remain a failed mission. Equally problematic is the convenient focus on whiteness whenever class enters the room. Ethnic minorities are hardly ever stratified by class – the assumption is that all ethnic minority groups are by definition comparable to a white working class group. By the way, eligibility for free school meals tell us nothing about middle class values among those who otherwise meet that criterion based on material circumstances; yet so much is banked on this deeply unscientific measurement of class. In any event, if the circumstance of white working class students is primarily a geographic divide, the market forces (on which universities also rely) will continue to dictate outcomes for everyone, with no sympathy for areas far removed from lucrative economic activity and potential. In this undeniable reality, at best, the value of a university is in enabling access and educating good citizens. If that is too expensive, then that is the responsibility of
government.
This is primarily a working class issue. Many working class and ethnic minority families are close knit, attached to their locality, reluctant to get into debt and so reluctant to travel far from home to go to university. Many have cultural interests and academic ambitions. When managerial elites in places like Cardiff or Nottingham engage in their wholesale evisceration of the Humanities (Classics and Modern Languages in particular) the message is clear. These subjects are not for the likes of you. That this evisceration is presented as ‘anti elitist’ you know that there has been a complete surrender to anti-intellectualism instrumentalism.
Independent, maybe. Peer reviewed, no.
Doesn’t this analysis take us back to us needing a 2 tier University system, with the aspirational specialist universities in the top tier, and more “State Universities” serving the needs of the country as a whole. We have a problem with some areas being potentially overserved with Universities, and others having no local provision. Unfortunately we seem to be moving in the wrong direction, with Wales 3rd largest City (Newport) effectively having its University Provision removed. Maybe if the Universities served the communities described where the people are there would be better take up.
It’s the Labour Party rather than Universities that has lost the trust of white working class families. Their new leader, Burnham, has said he thinks that bashing higher education provides a means to regain some of the lost support. If a government behaves like this, what are Universities supposed to do?
where/when has Burnham said that?
Times Higher Ed, Jim.
If there was a leadership contest it would be far easier to work out what a Burnham PM ship means for Higher Ed. His statements portray universities as both part of the problem and part of the solution.
Unless you have some sort of special personalised version of THE, “has said he thinks that bashing higher education provides a means to regain some of the lost support” appears to be untrue
Yes, that’s a fair challenge. It is true that Labour have lost support among this group and it is also true that the very low likelihood that there will be a leadership challenge makes it vefry difficult to work out Burnham’s position on higher education. He has made statements that indicate higher education is too large but other statements indicate universities will play a role in regional devolution. But he has not explicitly said that he is using higher education policy to boost Labour’s support among white working class voters.
The report was commissioned by Star Academies. According to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Academies) 21 of the 36 schools under Star Academy have Muslim religious character, It was originally called the Tauheedul Education Trust and was until recently exclusively Islamic. Strange for this to be the commissioner of a report on educational outcomes of the White working class.