CONSERVATIVES might force universities to disclose how many black students they’ve accepted, but lecturers argued yesterday that the measure would be a “pointless exercise” without effective measures to combat institutional racism. 

A new anti-discrimination law proposed by Downing Street this weekend would push institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge to act on accessibility issues. 

But University and College Union (UCU) representatives told the Star that the law would only aggregate data and do little to make institutions more welcoming to black and ethnic-minority students.

UCU national executive committee member Vicky Knight said: “We would welcome any measure to improve diversity in our higher education institutions, particularly those that don’t have a particularly good track record of diverse student demographics. 

“But the one thing that the UCU are really conscious of is the teaching excellence framework. “We need to ensure that there’s a framework of effective measures for all manner of things in place to to attract diverse students. 

“It’s great to have the data, but unless you handle a clear strategy to address the problems that I am sure the data is going to headline for us, it’s a pointless exercise.”

In an article for the Sunday Times, David Cameron said current levels of discrimination in British institutions “should shame our country and jolt us to action.”

Yet the Prime Minister rejected university acceptance quotas which he labelled “politically correct, contrived and unfair solutions.”

Of Oxford’s 2,500 student intake in 2014 only 27 were black men and women.