White British students have become a minority at 27 universities in the United Kingdom, according to an analysis. This demographic shift has been driven in part by scholarship programs that exclusively target black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds while offering fewer opportunities to white applicants.
The exclusion of white students from certain scholarships has led to calls for the abolition of what critics describe as “racially discriminatory” initiatives. White working-class students are now among the most underrepresented groups in higher education.
Prominent institutions such as Imperial College London and University College London offer scholarship programs that exclude white students. For example, Imperial provides full tuition coverage for black students in STEM and business courses despite white students accounting for 42 percent of their student body. Critics argue these policies are divisive and fail to address the socio-economic challenges faced by white working-class students.
The trend is exacerbated by the fact that white students are underrepresented at over half of UK universities.
“There is no reason to maintain BAME scholarships, which represent racial discrimination, pure and simple,” said Eric Kaufmann of the University of Buckingham.
Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, director of the Don’t Divide Us campaign, added: “It is divisive and encourages a culture of grievance and victimhood, which ultimately benefits no one other than the leaders, managers, and trainers who monitor, enforce, and promote this degrading ideology.”
On June 24, Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage warned that “White kids are being lectured… they’re made to feel frankly like lesser beings” in schools and universities, and vowed to end state-sponsored discrimination against them.
The number of universities where white students form a minority has more than doubled since 2014-15, when they were the minority at just 13 institutions.
