Black students applying to university are more likely to have bids flagged for false or misleading information
Black students only accounted for 9% of applications between 2013 to 2017 but made up 52% of those that were flagged
BLACK students applying to university are 21 times more likely than any ethnic group to have their applications probed for false or missing information, shock figures showed yesterday.
Last night university admission service Ucas launched an urgent investigation saying they had no idea why this was the case.
Ucas said it was “extremely concerned” by the Freedom of Information figures while Labour said they showed how widepsread institutional racism is across the higher education sector.
The figures showed more than half of the applications flagged by Ucas’s verification service between 2013 and 2017 were from students from black backgrounds.
Black applicants made up around 9 per cent of all university applicants over the five years between the period, but they made up 52 per cent of all of those who had applications flagged in this period.
But despite white students making up almost three quarters of applicants in this period they only accounted for 19 per cent of applications flagged.
And Asian students made up 11 per cent of applicants and 16 per cent of those flagged.
In addition, a higher proportion of black students had their applications cancelled once they had been highlighted - more than any other ethnic group.
Ucas says its verification service aims to help prevent potential students getting a higher education place through deception.
It comes amid a growing debate about the numbers of black and minority ethnic students going into higher education.
Clare Marchant, Ucas’s chief executive, said: “Ucas uses industry standard software to screen applications for fraud on behalf of universities and genuine applicants.
“This analysis gives us confidence we are only cancelling applications where there’s clear evidence of fraud or missing information.
“However, there is more work for us to do to ensure that flagging is as robust as it can be across all areas of the verification service.”
It came as UK universities slipped down international rankings, according to this year’s Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings.
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Only nine UK institutions made the top 100 this year, down from 10 last year.
Oxbridge continues to dominate, with Cambridge the top ranked UK university in fourth place, with Oxford one spot behind in fifth.
University College London makes joint 18th and Imperial College London came 20th while the London School of Economics and Political Science was 25th and Edinburgh University ranked 35th.
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