The plan by UCAS, the university admissions service, to require applicants to record whether their parents went to university is deeply worrying to today's students. I probably wouldn't even be here under the proposed new admissions procedure," says Sara Carr, 21, an undergraduate at Cambridge University. "I went to a private school, both my parents went to university - and I'm middle class. I think it's terrible that, if I had applied via the new UCAS form, universities might allow my background to overshadow the A-levels I worked so hard for."

From 2008, universities are not only to be told whether the applicant's parents went to university, but also to be given information on parents' jobs and the would-be student's ethnic background, plus whether applicants have been in care. In the past, universities were provided with this information after the admissions process was completed.

Full article.

NUS welcomed steps by UCAS to monitor students’ experience of care and their parents’ experience of higher education as part of the higher education admissions process.

In a press release on Thursday 16 March, National Union of Students Vice President (Education) Wes Streeting criticised widespread reports that the move may lead universities to positively discriminate, arguing that students should be assessed on their potential to achieve as well as their attainment.

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