Prof Schwartz says universities should stay independent

However, Professor Steven Schwartz added that institutions should not be "automatically biased" against any group, such as the privately educated.

Indeed Prof Schwartz, vice-chancellor of Brunel University, said "positive discrimination" could be illegal.

He called for greater "transparency" over admissions policies.

'Not social engineering'

Prof Schwartz found eight out of 10 respondents agreed a student's "life experiences" should be taken into account by universities.

He is due to address the annual OCR lecture at the Royal Society of Arts in London on Wednesday.

Prof Schwartz's comments come ahead of his team's report, now expected to be published next month.

Not every state school student is disadvantaged and not every independent school student is advantaged Prof Schwartz

He said: "It is possible that a candidate who struggled through a poor school and achieved a B at A-level may have just as much potential for higher education as an A-scoring candidate who was better supported at a middle-class school.

"Uncovering such hidden talent is not social engineering, as some have alleged, it is simply an attempt to find the best students.

"However, a significant number of respondents believe that universities go too far when they automatically give students from state schools an advantage in the admissions process."

He had no evidence that any university in the UK was using positive discrimination, but the US Supreme Court had ruled last year that automatically favouring members of a particular group was illegal.

"I am not a lawyer, but I suspect that it may also be illegal here.

"Moreover, it does seem unfair. After all, not every state school student is disadvantaged and not every independent school student is advantaged."

'Self-serving'

As increasing numbers of school-leavers were gaining three grade As at A-level, the university admissions system has become much less "predictable", according to Prof Schwartz.

Universities should continue to handle their own admissions, he said, but they should be as open as possible about the criteria used to select people.

Because of increasing levels of fees, students deserved more information, such as the drop-out rate from their course and graduates' job prospects.

If universities complained about the difficulty of making this information available, or claimed it was too complicated, "both reactions are probably self-serving and should be ignored", he said.

Admissions tutors were often busy academics, given "minimal training" in selection techniques.

Row

He said the reliability of interviews could be improved if questions or tasks were standardised.

Those conducted by a panel, rather than a single admissions tutor, were also likely to be more reliable.

A Department for Education and Skills spokesman said: "Professor Schwartz makes clear that these are his personal views."

He added: "The government completely agrees that admissions are a matter for universities."

Prof Schwartz's taskforce was established after the publication of the government's White Paper on higher education in January 2003, which recommended the introduction of annual tuition fees of up to �3,000.

It began working just as a row was starting over alleged bias in favour of state school applicants by Bristol University.