Who is missing from higher education?

and professional occupational backgrounds are over-represented amongst Welsh-
domiciled HE students, and a similar suggestion that working-class occupations,
including the long-term unemployed, routine and semi-routine occupations and lower
supervisory and technical occupations are under-represented. The picture for only
those students aged 18-30 is similar (see Taylor and Gorard 2005). However, it must
also be considered, given that a majority of the data is missing for students, that the
difference may lie not only in the student population but also in the kind of
respondents to the question about occupational background. If, for example, higher
managerial and professional occupations were proportionately represented in HE but
more likely to respond to the occupational question, the result would be
indistinguishable from what we see here. As with the problem of historical changes in
the class structure of the relevant population, we simply do not know about the impact
of differential response rates. This means, of course, that we do not really know
whether and to what extent different social classes are under-represented in HE.

The relevance of prior qualifications

The overwhelming majority of applicants to university are accepted on the basis of
their prior qualifications (around 95% according to UCAS 1999), and two-thirds are
accepted on the basis of A/AS levels alone. These prior qualifications are strongly
associated with social class and, to a lesser extent, with ethnicity, disability and sex.
According to the Youth Cohort Study (YCS), 51% of social classes I/II in England
obtained the equivalent of two A-levels at age 18-19 in 1993. According to the
National Audit Office around 56% of the same group obtained NQF level 3 or its
equivalent. On the other hand, the figures are 28% for social classes IIIM/IV/V, 8%
for classes IV/V, and 13% for class V (YCS in 1993). This means that we should
expect HE places, awarded competitively in terms of prior qualification, to be taken
disproportionately by those from the higher social classes. This is what we find.
Given that social class I is only one fifth of the size of social class II, their combined
weighted average age participation index (API) for 1995 is 53% in 2000 (Table 10).
This is almost exactly the same as the proportion of each social class attaining level 3
qualifications for entry to HE (the qualification index). This means that social classes
I/II were represented in HE entirely proportionately to their prior qualifications. The

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