Numbers cap at universities would increase social mobility gap

Vice-chancellor warns social mobility would suffer without controls on who attends university under hypothetical cap

Capping the number of students who go to university would lead to an “increasing gap” in attainment and social mobility, especially if there were no accompanying restrictions on how many students from advantaged areas could attend, a vice-chancellor has suggested.

During a 26 April webinar on social mobility, hosted by the Higher Education Policy Institute and London South Bank University (LSBU), the vice-chancellor of LSBU, David Phoenix, said that under a numbers cap policy, more students from areas with low progression to higher education would need to go to university to protect social mobility.