‘Huge class imbalance’ in access to creative degrees in UK

The importance of degrees to creative occupations has been underlined by a report showing that two-thirds of the UK’s leading actors attended university, but the research has also revealed stark class inequalities.

With more privileged people dominating the creative industries, it is their stories and ideas that are relayed through TV shows, films, plays, music and dance, the Sutton Trust warns in a report published on 13 November.

People who are degree-educated and from a privileged background are almost six times more likely to work in the creative industries than those from lower socio-economic backgrounds with GCSE-level qualifications or below.

The Sutton Trust report says 69 per cent of people in key creative occupations, such as actors, dancers, artists and writers, have a degree – compared with 26 per cent of the entire workforce.

Studying creative degrees was particularly popular among this group, but analysis found that more students from upper middle-class backgrounds pursued these courses than their working-class peers.

This gap was particularly pronounced at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and those in the Russell Group, where, the Sutton Trust warns, there is a “huge imbalance” in creative subjects.

At four institutions – the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, King’s College London and the University of Bath – more than half of creative students come from upper middle-class backgrounds.

In contrast, post-92 institutions had much higher proportions of working-class students taking creative degrees, including the University of the Highlands and Islands (46 per cent), Teesside University (43 per cent) and the University of Wolverhampton (39 per cent).

“Key parts of the sector seem only to welcome those from the most privileged backgrounds, providing a narrow pipeline accessible to an already advantaged few,” the report says.

“Creative HE is a major reason why the creative sector has such catastrophically low levels of social mobility.”

Those studying music were found to be much less likely to come from disadvantaged backgrounds, with 11 per cent of them having been educated at private schools. Privately educated students made up more than half of those taking music courses at the most prestigious conservatoires.

Classical music was singled out as a particularly elitist profession, while pop stars were found to be more representative of the UK population.

A fifth of UK artists who had an album on the UK Official Charts Company top 40 albums of the year between 2019 and 2023 attended university, and 6 per cent went to Oxford or Cambridge.

The Sutton Trust’s research found that 64 per cent of actors from the UK who were nominated for Baftas between 2019 and 2024 had been to university – a much larger percentage than the national average.

Of them, 29 per cent attended specialist arts institutions, 9 per cent went to Oxbridge and a further 6 per cent other Russell Group institutions.

The rates were even higher for Bafta-nominated directors, with 92 per of them attending university.

Nick Harrison, chief executive of the Sutton Trust, said: “It’s a tragedy that young people from working-class backgrounds are the least likely to study creative arts degrees or break into the creative professions.

“These sectors bear the hallmarks of being elitist – those from upper middle-class backgrounds and the privately educated – are significantly over-represented.”

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com