1) Aspiration

The Sutton Trust has found that the numbers of students saying that they were very likely or fairly likely to go to university is now three in four. While I'm sure this response rate is in part dependent on the questions asked and the circumstances of asking them, this is still a significantly larger number than will actually find their way into higher education http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7370869.stm To be optimistic, for once, this would suggest to me that poverty of aspiration, which in the past was seen as a major obstacle to achieving the governments target of 50% young people going into higher education, is now much reduced and that the opportunity exists to build on this aspiration to meet that 50% target or even to exceed it. The detail of that venture must include addressing the widely different rates of participation by social group, especially for that of the least successful group: white working class boys on free school meals. Only 6% of white working class boys on free school meals go onto university, compared to 66% of girls from an Indian background http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2151025/White-working-class-boys-becoming-an-underclass.html . On the other hand, maybe attempts at widening participation are a waste of time, as Newcastle University’s reader in evolutionary psychiatry believes, because ‘fewer working class students at elite universities was the “natural outcome” of class IQ differences’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/7414311.stm . For myself, I'm sure that the numbers of working class boys going onto university could be greatly improved without resorting to IQ boosting drugs or genetic engineering but I would advise them against attending a university that appoints readers in evolutionary psychiatry.