A good topic. I'm coming at this as a parent (my eldest starts uni later this year), and from a sometime professional interest.

Reasons?To me, two stand out - grades and guidance. On the point of grades, I don't know how well black students do as a wholeat A-level; getting access tosome subjects (in particular medicine)means having good grades, and the real work for this starts at GCSE time. If someone can correct me please do so, but I would guess that the level of achievement at A-level is relevant to the situation we now see.As far as I know, black students are much more likely to be represented in the so-called 'new' universities (ex-polytechnics).This is partly because they seemto be better at attracting them - the flipsideis thatthere is often a deep bias against degrees gained from these universities, which will again count at employment time.

Even if you have the grades, though, they are only as good as the guidance you get in making choices about which course at which uni, andwhat support you get whilst you are actually studying.If you are a parent who did not attend university in this country, you will do the best you can - and there will be things that you simply do not know to pass on to your son or daughter. Can you rely on schools to support you? Depends on the school, but I know that many are very poor in this area.Compare this with a fair number of those at medical school (again for example), many of whom will have come from families for whom that path is well trodden, and who will have been getting formal and informal guidance for a number of years, and will continue to receive it whilst studying.

I suspect what we have at the moment are literally thousands of talented and able students getting by as best as they know how, with limited information - hence they go for what they determineare the options which will maximise their employment chances in the short term. The kind of choices that you see being made now are the surface evidence of that; I think it masks a deeper issue which isn't simple to diagnose, but has major implications for the future of our community, here and worldwide.