A TREND of working-class students not going to university due to the cost-of-living crisis may emerge this year, experts have said.

Tory anti-university rhetoric and a widening post-pandemic attainment gap is also expected to make higher education increasingly “the preserve of privileged elites.”

Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said he was concerned that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds across the country will be disproportionately put off from studying university degrees.