CLAIMS that letting more students from deprived backgrounds into university could "set up kids to fail" have been dismissed by Scottish funding chiefs.
Professor Paul Hagan, director of research at the Scottish Funding Council, said the suggestion was completely at odds with current Government policies on widening access.
"I have heard the suggestion we are setting up kids to fail, but that is not where we are at all," Mr Hagan told a conference in Edinburgh.
"It is about getting these students into university then supporting them."
Mr Hagan's comments at the event, organised by Holyrood Magazine, come a few days after St Andrews University said it was being "demonised" for its access policies.
Stephen Magee, vice-principal with responsibility for admissions at the institution, said: "We know that we could play the political game and change these figures overnight by lowering our entry grades, but experience tells us we would simply be admitting these kids to fail, and that would be utterly dishonest."
The university said it was undertaking a range of initiatives to widen access, such as contextualised admissions and bursary and scholarship schemes.
Initiatives announced this week include a new Gateway to Computer Science programme for up to 15 access students with guaranteed entry to the second year of a degree course for those that pass.
The university will also work with the Scottish Wider Access Project and speak to Dundee College, Adam Smith College and Carnegie College to encourage more students to apply straight from college.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article