Higher education funding should reward colleges and universities that promote access and support for students from non-traditional backgrounds, a Council of Europe report has proposed.
It calls for a redistribution of cash towards students from poorer backgrounds and those with family responsibilities. Only students from higher-income groups should pay fees, it argues.
The four-year project on access to higher education in Europe presented its recommendations to 130 policymakers and academics at Parma University, Italy, this week.
Maggie Woodrow, executive director of the European Access Network and another author of the report, said: "Funding for access is not so much about increasing the total investment in higher education but about its distribution."
The report argues that equality is an integral part of institutional quality and that budgets should be weighted in favour of universities and colleges that promote this.
The main beneficiaries of higher education funding were people from medium to high-income groups, those whose parents have gone through higher education, those from dominant ethnic groups and without disabilities, and those, largely in eastern Europe, who receive an additional merit award for good entrance qualifications.
The project wants to reverse this and get students from the favoured groups to pay a higher proportion of the costs themselves.
Ms Woodrow said that graduates from the second group were a better investment because their earning power without a degree would be much less than that of non-graduates from the first group. They would be more likely to attend less prestigious and therefore less wellfunded institutions and their education would consequently cost less.
The report calls for new admissions policies that no longer take the examination grades of 18-year-olds as their main criterion and accredits vocational education and practical experience.