If you're from a family that isn't mortgaged ... the idea of �100 debt is beyond the pale let alone �12,000

Report author Alasdair Forsyth

The cost of housing and travel and above all the fear of building up large debts are the biggest deterrents, a survey by the University of Glasgow has found.

Instead students tend to opt for shorter, vocational qualifications, perhaps at local further education colleges, rather than degree courses at prestigious universities.

The researchers say help with living costs would be a better way of giving the poorest students a leg up than quotas on university courses.

School performance

Alasdair Forsyth and Andy Furlong of the University of Glasgow studied 516 final year secondary school pupils across Scotland, following them up with a survey nine months later.

They then did detailed interviews with 44 particularly disadvantaged but qualified young people.

The study looked at a cross-secion of students

They were chosen to include those who had gone on to degree courses to those who were not students at all.

In a report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the researchers said the main reason that the most disadvantaged young people did not go into higher education was that they had done less well at school, rather than any bias in admissions policies.

Dr Forsyth said the poorest working class children who did get qualifications ran into a range of financial barriers which limited their chances in higher education.

The research was undertaken before the Cubie report on tuition fees in Scotland, which led to the Scottish Executive's scrapping of up-front fees in favour of a system in which graduates pay �2,000 towards a hardship fund once their income is over �10,000.

Fees 'not main problem'

And outside Scotland, where students have to pay tuition fees of up to �1,050, they pay nothing if the family income is less than �17,805.

But Dr Forsyth said fees were not the issue.

He said: "For instance, we took people from rural areas where they simply couldn't afford to move to the city or commute to the city so their choice consisted of local further education colleges."

Bus companies in rural areas might not offer student discounts.

Even if a poor student did move to a university town they were more likely to live in a cheap bedsit with people who were not students, which made it harder to study.

Another option - working to pay their way through university - also hit studying.

Debt

"The more obvious problem is the prospect of going into debt, especially if you're from a family that isn't mortgaged where the idea of �100 debt is beyond the pale let alone �12,000."

Choosing a shorter course, say a two-year diploma rather than a three or four-year degree, meant less debt would build up - and the student could begin paying it off sooner.

Quotas, by which universities would arrange to take a certain proportion of students from socially disadvantaged postcode areas, missed the point.

Dr Forsyth said they had visited schools in some of the poorest parts of Glasgow.

Of 200 pupils starting in the first year, only perhaps 15 would be from middle class backgrounds.

Solutions

By the time those pupils had gone through the school, only about 20 would remain in the sixth form - but half of them would be middle class children.

"So picking people in a quota system would probably just help those who were more advantaged and likely to go to university anyway," he said.

The best answers to the long-running problem are to improve school performance so that more children qualify for higher education in the first place, the report says.

Then financial assistance with housing and transport costs would probably best help those qualified but poor students who are being deterred from getting degrees.