Ministers are considering a further increase in the premium paid to universities for each student they recruit from a poor neighbourhood.
The cash would be in addition to the £6 million a year for leading universities to recruit from state schools, announced last week, and would benefit the post-1992 universities, which have good records of widening participation.
Pressure to increase the widening participation premium follows a recommendation in the Commons' education select committee report, published last week. The committee recommended an immediate increase in the premium from 5 per cent to 20 per cent and, thereafter, that consideration is given to a 50 per cent premium.
Many new universities were disappointed at prime minister Tony Blair's announcement that institutions with the fewest state-school pupils will receive Pounds 6 million a year over three years in ring-fenced funding to help them improve access.
Geoffrey Copland, vice-chancellor of Westminster University and chairman of the Coalition of Modern Universities, said: "Widening participation is about raising aspirations and many universities, particularly the post-92 institutions, have done a lot of work in this area and have been very successful. Funding should support all activities in this area and not be restricted to the few."
Labour peer Baroness Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, said:
"While we welcome the prime minister's remarks, Universities UK will be seeking further commitments for more resources to encourage all universities to press on with their widening participation strategies."
Bahram Bekhradnia, head of policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England, said: "Although this may not be the most important dimension to widening participation, it is still important that able students are encouraged to apply to the institutions from which they would derive the maximum benefit."
Elite universities had previously complained that they had no economic incentive to widen participation.
According to performance indicators, the following institutions recruited fewer than 80 per cent of their young full-time undergraduates from state schools: the universities of Oxford (50 per cent), Cambridge (53) and Bristol (57); University College London (59) and Imperial College, London (62); University of Durham (63); King's College London (63); School of Oriental and African Studies (63); the universities of Newcastle (66) and Exeter (70); Royal Holloway, University of London (70); the universities of Nottingham (72) and Birmingham (73); University of Leeds (74); Oxford Brookes University (74); University of Manchester (75); University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (77); Queen Mary Westfield College, London (77); University of Warwick (77); City University (78); and the universities of Reading (79), Southampton (79) and York (79).
Institutions with fewer than 1,000 young full-time UK undergraduates were excluded from the list.