Rising rampart

In Britain, there are fears that efforts by top universities to take more students from state secondary schools will dumb down the ivory tower. These controversies say something important: for all the pious attacks on injustice that emanate from universities, the class gap is growing from the United States to Britain, parts of Continental Europe and Asia.

The reasons are myriad: state-controlled systems that limit the number of university seats, admissions procedures that favor the privately educated, falling financial aid and failing public secondary schools.

The bottom line is that the worldwide boom in higher education is not broadening its reach among the poorest. The proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds who have university degrees is rising across the 30 member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and exceeds 20 pc in 18. But in nations like Japan and the United States, where education costs are skyrocketing, the typical student comes from a much wealthier background than in the past.

At Tokyo University, which has traditionally educated an economically diverse population, nearly half the parents of undergraduates now have incomes higher than 82,500 national average is about 57,500 for men in their 50s.

In the United States, the percentage of students with families making more than 150,000 a year has been rising steadily for over a decade, to nearly 17 per cent, while the proportion of those with an income of 49,000 or less has been declining. A 2003 study of the 146 US colleges found that only 3 pc of students came from the poorest quartile and 74 pc came from the richest.

By some accounts, the class divide is perhaps most pronounced in Europe. The slotting of children into vocational or university tracks continues to limit the upward mobility of many poor kids at an early age. Meanwhile, the relative lack of funding, compared with the United States, means fewer new university slots to accommodate growth in demand.

Today, only a third of all secondary-school grads in the European Union go on to university, and working-class kids are underrepresented, especially at elite institutions. In the UK, where Tony Blair8217;s New Labour Party has made socioeconomic diversity in top schools a priority, a recent survey found that the share of spots at Oxford that go to state schoolkids has fallen 5 pc since 2001.

But there8217;s a lingering fear that easing the way for poor kids will bring down the quality of education and, thus, competitiveness. 8220;My honest opinion is that it is going to be a disaster,8221; says P. V. Indiresan, former director of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, about the proposed quota system. 8220;It introduces a new social tension. Once you get students of a lower caliber, there will be enormous pressure to reduce standard of instruction.8221;

Business leaders second this sentiment, and not only in India. Almost everywhere outside the United States, where affirmative action has long been the status quo, there is resistance to changing admissions to favor the less advantaged. When Richard Descoings, the head of France8217;s prestigious Sciences Po Paris, began aggressively recruiting kids from lower-class backgrounds in 2001, critics lamented the end of blind egalite and privileged students worried that the degree would be devalued.

8220;There were eternal debates on if this program fit in with the principles of the French Republic,8221; says Descoings, 8220;but nobody asked if it was effective.8221;

In fact, it was; this past summer, the first class of 15 pioneers from poorer suburbs graduated from Sciences Po with respectable results, some near the top of the class. Elsewhere, there8217;s also plenty of evidence that, given a chance, kids from lower-income backgrounds can do just as well or better than others.

In the UK, for example, Sir Peter Lampl, head of the Sutton Trust, an education nonprofit, says that if admissions were based purely on A-level test results, two thirds of students at Oxbridge would come from state rather than private secondary schools. In reality, only about half of them do.

8220;Many poor kids don8217;t have the confidence8221; to apply to top schools, particularly since graduating secondary school students must apply before they see their test results, says Lampl. And while private secondary academies advise students on how to maximise their chances of admission, even how to target specific departments at certain schools, state-school pupils are left to their own devices. The result, says Lampl, is that top universities in Britain are excluding 3,000 qualified state-school students every year.

According to a number of studies, if going to college increases your earning power, then going to a top university increases it exponentially. Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby has shown that graduates of top schools in the United States earn hundreds of thousands of dollars more during their lives than similarly accomplished graduates of state universities.

Finances are a further burden for the nonrich. As numbers of college applicants rise, costly prep classes, which can run 50 or more per hour, are becoming de rigueur. In the United States, while the absolute amount of aid to university students is up, financial aid is being replaced by merit aid, which favours the middle and upper classes. In Europe, where universities are still tax-supported and practically tuition-free for everyone, the poor get no leg up on the rich, who already have every advantage.

Basically, the combination of ageing societies and rising demand for tech-savvy workers mean most rich nations face a shortage of educated labour, one that can8217;t possibly be filled by the wealthy alone.

Europeans need to modernise and, to some extent, privatise their university systems. More flexibility is key; while the United States and Scandinavia offer all kinds of two-year or associate8217;s degree programs, in many parts of Europe and Asia four-year degree courses are the only option. In Norway, a system allows students to balance school with work or family commitments. They can finish courses in their own time, acquiring certificates for specific skills8230;which can be combined into a degree.

Perhaps the best way to equalise university education is to improve secondary schools in poor regions. In India, the rate of absenteeism in state schools is 25 pc 8212; and that8217;s for teachers. 8220;Poor but talented kids tend to go to impoverished high schools, where everybody is just less interested in learning,8221; says Richard Kahlenberg, a fellow at the Washington-based Century Foundation. 8220;What they need is to be around peers who have big dreams 8212; that will allow them to work up to their potential.8221;

In Britain, educators are trying to cultivate those dreams with a new programme in which top universities would help identify talented students as young as 11, and help them stay on track to reach elite colleges. The ethos is reflected in Oxford8217;s new recruiting slogan: 8220;It8217;s not where you8217;re from 8212; it8217;s where you want to go.8221;

As the need for knowledge workers grows, it will be more and more important for poor kids, as well as rich ones, to go all the way to the top.