Wicked problem. Good solution?

A comprehensive university would be difficult to realise. But what about a collaborative one?

The challenge of access to higher education in our deeply unequal society is a classic wicked problem; however you try to solve it, you come across competing ideas of fairness and incentives that drive in different directions.

How do you judge between the bright, hard-working child who achieved excellent A-level results with the support of the best schooling money can buy and the bright, hard-working child who might have done just as well—or even better—if they had had the same opportunity, but actually did worse? Equally, how do you design incentives to reward quality without encouraging universities to raise their entry tariffs as high as possible?