Cambridge university will step up efforts this autumn to increase the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, according to its vice-chancellor, following criticism by politicians and regulators that it is failing to do enough to tackle elitism.
Stephen Toope outlined new ways Cambridge would improve access for students from poorer families, as well as help them in finding employment after they graduate.
He told the Financial Times that Cambridge needed to respond to “the challenges we undoubtedly face in ensuring that people with talent can come here no matter where they are found”.
Cambridge is finalising proposals following a demand from the Office for Students, the university regulator, and after a fall in the past year in the proportion of undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds attending England’s more prestigious higher education institutions.
Cambridge’s figures show its own share of students from state schools and minority backgrounds has been gradually rising in recent years.
But Mr Toope, vice-chancellor since 2017, acknowledged the special responsibility of Cambridge and Oxford to diversify their undergraduate intake, saying the two universities “occupy this mythical space in . . . English culture and therefore we’re on the firing line”.
Cambridge plans this autumn to offer about 200 additional places to students from all backgrounds — including some from poorer families — who did not receive offers at the start of this year but do better in their A levels than their predicted grades.
Mr Toope said a significant number of the 31 colleges at Cambridge are discussing ways to jointly provide “foundation” programmes from 2020 for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, which could involve online courses and short visits to better prepare undergraduate applicants.
Cambridge is also planning to offer extra funding so undergraduates from poorer families have money to fully participate in university life, and to expand the role of its careers service to help students find employment.
“We know that we have to be thinking not only about getting people into Cambridge but ensuring their success through Cambridge,” said Mr Toope.
At a time when many universities are increasing their student intake to both widen access and increase fee income, Mr Toope said any jump in undergraduates at Cambridge “depends on colleges feeling if they can handle it”.
He ruled out creating a new centralised admissions unit at the university. He defended its unusual decentralised structure in which individual colleges control admission, tuition and support to students “as one of the signature experiences of Cambridge”.
But he added “we’re absolutely not closed to the idea of a new college” to increase student numbers.
Amid rising concerns over students’ mental health around the world, Mr Toope admitted Cambridge’s short, intense eight-week academic terms and heavy exam load were “increasingly raised by colleges and students”.
He stressed that the current system had been “perfected over many generations and you don’t just change it”.
But he said there were “very preliminary discussions” with colleges about possible modifications, such as introducing a midterm break or modestly extending the length of the terms, which he added would be “revolutionary”.
Mr Toope, a Canadian who previously held senior university roles in his home country, warned that Cambridge could suffer from a proposed overhaul of the UK’s immigration regime after Brexit.
The government is consulting on plans to restrict visas for high skilled workers to those earning at least £30,000 a year, and Mr Toope flagged how many of Cambridge’s EU technicians with expertise in scientific equipment central to its research would fall foul of the threshold.
He said he was stepping up discussions with European universities, including in Denmark and Ireland, to ensure Cambridge could maintain “the complicated supply chain of ideas” between networks of researchers once UK institutions are no longer eligible to be full participants for EU research funding after Brexit.
Meanwhile Mr Toope said Cambridge and its colleges were “doing everything possible” to ensure their endowments sold investments in the most polluting fossil fuel industries, including coal and tar sands, but stressed that the use of “funds of funds” made total withdrawal difficult.
Cambridge’s main endowment fund suffered a blow last year when senior investment staff resigned amid growing pressure from the university’s academic staff and students for it to dump shareholdings in oil and gas companies.
Mr Toope said cutting all ties with fossil fuel industries — including funding for research — would risk reducing the potential to work with companies seeking to mitigate climate change.
Cambridge this week appointed Emily Shuckburgh of the British Antarctic Survey as director of the university’s carbon neutral futures initiative, which Mr Toope said would focus research on issues including carbon capture, a new generation of batteries and human behavioural change to tackle climate change.
“As our predecessors were at the forefront of changing the world with DNA and the electron microscope, we have the capacity to do the same for this generation on the climate agenda,” he added.
