Despite the focus on Russell Group institutions as drivers of social mobility, it is actually universities outside this group that are contributing most strongly to social mobility

Carl Cullinane discusses how individual universities are contributing to social mobility, and finds that gaps in access are hugely variable depending on university selectivity. The most selective universities admitted comparatively low numbers from less well-off backgrounds but those students had extremely high success rates. Post-1992 institutions, however, took on much larger numbers of those from backgrounds.