The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) last week encouraged top-level universities, including Oxford, to take positive action to increase their intake of black students.
Only 0.9 per cent of students at Oxford are of Afro-Caribbean origin, and as the CRE launched an investigation into racial segregation in British universities a spokesperson suggested in The Sunday Times that positive discrimination should be encouraged. "If you have a black student and a white student with equal qualifications at the front of the admissions queue, we would want the university to take positive action to choose the black student first."
However, this week, the CRE was keen to distance itself from positive discrimination and instead emphasised the need for further research. Their spokesperson told The Oxford Student: "We are categorically not endorsing any kind of discrimination; it is impossible for us to give advice to any universities until we have conducted further research into what their policies are doing for diversity."
A spokesperson for Oxford University said: "We believe that increasing numbers of black and ethnic minority students at the university should be achieved through raising aspirations and encouraging applications, not through positive discrimination." Chairman of Oxford University Admissions Policy Committee, Sir Tim Lankester, agreed: "We seek, through fair and transparent procedures, to admit those who, irrespective of educational, social, economic or ethnic background, have the greatest potential to perform at the highest level academically."
An investigation is being launched into the apparent segregation within universities, with nine of the Russell Group Universities having less than 30 black students. David Johnston of the Oxford Access Scheme, which aims to encourage more applications from inner city schools, said that whilst encouraging applications from minority backgrounds is still a priority, the issue of acceptance figures is more relevant. "The sad reality is that ethnic minority pupils overwhelmingly apply for the two most competitive courses - Medicine and Law. This already diminishes their chances of being offered a place," he said. A spokesman for the university maintained: "Our policy of selection is based solely on academic merit and potential."