Reposted by Lynton Lees
'while more than £800 million is spent on attracting non-traditional students into undergraduate study, “efforts to widen participation in higher education meet a cliff-edge” at postgraduate level, where “access to postgraduate study has historically received far less attention”.'
timeshighereducation.com
STEM PhDs ‘inaccessible’ to disadvantaged students
UK ‘missing out’ on talent as fewer disadvantaged students complete STEM doctorates, major study finds
![Excerpt from interview with David Willetts, former universities minister and current chair of the Resolution Foundation, in Research Professional 13/02/26. Text reads:
"I said to [former prime minister] David Cameron once [in a cabinet discussion] that there is just an assumption in the British government that whenever there's an international crisis, or a British hostage is taken or there's a civil war and the Brits need to be evacuated, there's always someone in Britain who knows the history of the place, who speaks the relevant language, who can suddenly advise you on what this group is that's suddenly taken three British hostages and is holding them in the jungle somewhere," he explains.
"We assume that we know that kind of stuff, and that is only because of the breadth of the humanities, the study of foreign languages, the study of history in the UK."
To ensure regions aren't deprived of those subjects, Willetts calls for Strategically Important and Vulnerable Subjects funding (which does what it says on the tin) to be enhanced.
"As an absolute minimum, government needs: a) the capacity to scan and get [information about local provision]; and b) a discretionary pot of money that it can deploy if there's something so serious it thinks it needs to be protected," he](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ec4gl6exrfl4t42jwy6hphab/bafkreicltwwjait3pgnn3q6t3wt3hqjiww32zcodkqeji3sf7vgicnk3we)
