White British students now a minority at 27 UK universities, data shows
By isabelle // 2026-07-03
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  • White British students are now a minority at 27 UK universities, more than double the number a decade ago.
  • At least ten universities with white minority enrollment still offer race-based scholarships worth up to £23,000 a year.
  • Critics call these BAME scholarships racial discrimination and demand their immediate abolition.
  • White working-class students remain among the least likely to attend university, with under 3 percent at Oxford and Cambridge.
  • Critics argue students should be judged on talent, not skin color.
White British students have become a minority at 27 of the United Kingdom's 147 universities during the 2024-25 academic year, according to a Telegraph analysis of official higher education figures. That figure has more than doubled from just 13 institutions a decade earlier, representing a dramatic demographic shift across British higher education that raises serious questions about fairness, representation, and the future of race-based policies on campus. At some institutions, the decline is especially sharp. Aston University posted the lowest share of white British students, at 23 percent, with the University of Bradford at 26 percent and Brunel University London and SOAS University of London tied at 27 percent. The analysis also found white students underrepresented relative to their share of the national population at 80 British universities, including 15 of the 24 elite Russell Group institutions.

Race-based scholarships persist despite demographic shifts

Even so, at least ten of the universities where white students now sit in the minority still run scholarships, bursaries and other financial aid open only to applicants from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds. Some of these awards are worth up to £18,000 a year, and a handful climb as high as £23,000. University College London, where white students account for 48 percent of enrollment, promotes a £23,000-a-year award for black or mixed-black students in its computer science department, alongside the £1,000 Amos Bursary for male undergraduates with African or Caribbean heritage. Imperial College London, where white students make up 42 percent of the body, covers full tuition for black-heritage undergraduates in fields such as engineering, medicine and natural sciences — funding white applicants cannot touch. Queen Mary University of London goes further, waiving fees entirely and adding an £18,062 living stipend for black and global-majority students on certain master's programs, even though white students account for just 30 percent of its intake. Similar schemes run at the universities of West London, Greenwich, Westminster and Leicester, as well as Goldsmiths, City St George's and SOAS.

Critics demand an end to "racially discriminatory" programs

Eric Kaufmann, a politics professor at the University of Buckingham and a longtime critic of campus diversity policy, was straightforward with The Telegraph. "There is no reason to maintain BAME scholarships, which represent racial discrimination, pure and simple," he said. "The declining share of white students throws this into even sharper relief, and all racially discriminatory scholarships need to be abolished." Suella Braverman, Reform UK's education spokeswoman, likewise urged universities to "end these racially discriminatory programmes immediately and judge people on their talents, not their skin colour." Much of the fight centers on the Equality Act 2010, whose "positive action" provisions let institutions favor groups they deem disadvantaged or underrepresented. Detractors say universities have stretched that language to bankroll schemes that shut out white applicants; defenders insist the programs widen access for communities long kept on the margins.

White working-class students left out of the conversation

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, director of the campaign group Don't Divide Us, argued that no university should hand out aid treating an "arbitrary protected characteristic" as grounds for special treatment, calling such programs divisive drivers of "a culture of grievance and victimhood." The findings feed a broader battle over race-conscious policy in Britain. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has accused the government of pushing "deep anti-white racism" and vowed to repeal the Equality Act, which he says has built a "two-tier state against white people." At Oxford and Cambridge, white working-class students reportedly made up under 3 percent of admissions in 2019, while more than 30 percent of students came from BAME backgrounds. Universities built these race-restricted funds to correct underrepresentation, yet many now bankroll them on campuses where white British students are themselves the minority — and where poor white kids remain among the least likely to ever walk through the door. A system that keeps sorting students by skin color while the most overlooked group of all goes unhelped isn't undoing injustice; it's manufacturing a new one. Fund students by need and merit, and let the race-based ledgers go. Sources for this article include: RT.com Telegraph.co.uk GBNews.com
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