Top universities reject PM’s racial diversity criticism

The United Kingdom’s top universities have rejected criticism they are not doing enough to promote racial diversity after Prime Minister David Cameron said discrimination against minorities in the upper echelons of British life “should shame our country”, writes Andrew Ward for Financial Times.

Oxford, Cambridge and other elite UK universities insisted they were working hard to improve access to non-white students and argued it was unfair to blame them when the causes of inequality were deep rooted. They were reacting to plans announced by the prime minister last Sunday to force universities to disclose what proportion of ethnic minority applicants get places. This would be part of a wider push to tackle discrimination in UK institutions, from the justice system to business.

Cameron said it was unacceptable that young black men were more likely to be in prison than studying at a top university, that there were no black generals in the armed forces, and that only 4% of FTSE chief executives were from ethnic minorities.
Full report on the Financial Times site