'Unwashed' must brush up on their social skills

Universities need to teach working-class students social and "life skills" or many will fail to earn as much as their middle-class peers when they graduate, a report has warned.

Research commissioned by the Council for Industry and Higher Education shows a significant earnings divide between graduates from lower and those from higher social groups, irrespective of which institution they attended.

Oxbridge graduates from working-class backgrounds, for instance, earn on average about 16 per cent less than those from professional families. The earnings bias also applies when factors such as age, gender and family structure are taken into account.

The findings, based on samples of earnings ranging from three to 11 years after graduation from cohorts of students in 1985, 1990, and 1995, show that despite expansion in higher education, "graduates from more favourable backgrounds still achieve higher returns to their education even after accounting for their personal characteristics", the report says.

The CIHE said the conclusions by researchers from the London School of Economics had big implications for policy on widening participation and social inclusion.

Richard Brown, CIHE chief executive, said institutions should be helping students from lower social groups to develop the interpersonal skills that could be key to success in job interviews and careers. The research shows that getting students from poor communities into "top" universities would not ensure that they got the best jobs.

He said: "At the moment, the thinking seems to be that if you can recruit the unwashed, then all will be fine. But social skills still count for an awful lot.

"These skills are often bred into you if you come from a certain social class, but they are not if you were born on the wrong side of the tracks. Institutions need to think about how individuals' life skills can be developed where they are absent as a result of upbringing."

The CIHE said the report contained important messages for employers, who needed to play their part in persuading prospective working-class students that it was worth their while to invest in learning.

"They should consider their recruitment policies; the business benefits of having a diverse labour force that can relate to an equally diverse range of customers; the ethics of discriminating (however unwittingly) against older graduates or those from different social groups," it says.

The research found significant variations in the financial benefits of gaining a degree according to subjects studied.

Between 1993 and 1999, female law graduates were earning nearly 44 per cent more than their peers who had just two or more A levels, but male arts graduates in the same period were on average 4.3 per cent worse off than if they had not gone to university.

Among men, law and health graduates achieved the greatest gain in earnings, with incomes on average .3 per cent higher than their A-level peers. Maths, engineering and economics graduates also scored well. An education degree added just 1.5 per cent to earnings.