This nostalgic vision of a world that denied university places to the poor

Charles Clarke's higher education funding reforms will be judged, 50 years from now, to have been a key moment in crowbarring open our universities for working-class and poor students. Yet there is a serious risk that misguided complaints about top-up fees will detract attention from the genuinely effective measures to improve access introduced yesterday – so let's tackle these concerns head-on.

When tuition fees were introduced in 1998, there were understandable worries that poor students would be put off university. In fact, the 40 per cent of students who were from the lowest-income families were never asked to pay anything, and working-class access to universities continued to rise. The Labour government is no more going to hammer poor students now than it did then. The truth of the new policy is simple: top-up fees cannot dissuade poor students because they won't be asked to pay them until they are earning a bit and, therefore, no longer poor. There is no catch here.

So any careers officer who is approached by a worried poor student can tell him or her with complete confidence: top-up fees will only apply to you if, after you graduate, you begin to earn more than £15,000; then, you will be asked to start paying back some of the money at a very low and affordable rate. There is nothing to worry about in these plans: they guarantee that the poor do not have to pay up. The only danger from top-up fees is that poor students will be misled about their nature by well-meaning people who talk them up as some mythical danger, and therefore never find out this basic truth.

While top-up fees have a neutral effect on access, the ambitious access initiatives announced yesterday have the potential to propel working-class students into our universities at a speed which is unprecedented. But, just in case you need convincing that this is necessary, let's look at the figures. For 2000/2001 (the latest available figures), the Higher Education Funding Council found only 25 per cent of all full-time students come from the poorest social groups, despite the fact they make up more than 40 per cent of the overall population. Only 7 per cent of children go to private schools, but they make up nearly 20 per cent of the university population and a whopping 50 per cent of Oxbridge students.

Our most prestigious universities are indeed the worst offenders. If you went to a private school and you applied to Christ's College, Cambridge, in 2000, you were 108 per cent more likely to succeed than a state-school applicant; for the university as a whole, you are a third more likely to get in. White children who applied to Cambridge were eight times more likely to succeed than black/Afro-Caribbean applicants. Does anyone seriously think that private school children are 108 per cent more intelligent, or that black children are eight times more stupid?

In most other universities, progress is being made, albeit too slowly. As Cambridge University Student Union's president, Paul Lewis, points out, "The only two universities which are now resisting the moves to take into account how difficult it was for somebody to achieve their grades are Oxford and Cambridge. The rung of universities just below Oxbridge, like Bristol, are getting their act together and improving their working-class student numbers – and they're the ones constantly getting criticised by the private school heads."

The Government's new measures will have an amphetamine-like effect on these access initiatives. All universities that want to benefit from top-up fees will have to agree to parallel access agreements which will tie the money to participation by lower-income students. An access regulator (an unfairly panned idea) will see that these agreements are kept to. I would like to see this figure also awarded a broad remit to tackle any disincentives or inequalities confronted by poor students throughout their time at university – working-class drop-out rates are, we must remember, considerably higher than middle-class ones. Access initiatives must not peter out once a student is admitted.

There are two other government moves that will have a revolutionary impact on access. Grants have, at last, been restored, so that the poorest students will now be given £1,000 a year to help them cope. The abolition of grants, by the government's most regressive figure, David Blunkett, was the biggest step backwards of Labour's first term; that has now been put right.

The Government's greatest and most radical moves to improve access can be found in its massive expansion of higher education. Blair has committed his government to getting 50 per cent of 18- to 30-year-olds through universities by the end of the decade; he has already achieved 43 per cent in England.

When I try to imagine the lives this effort will transform, I think of my parents, who are both from poor backgrounds: they left school at 15 and 16 and didn't even contemplate staying on. University simply wasn't for "people like them", and it would have seemed as sensible to suggest that they become astronauts. Yet they are good people who love learning and should have been able to go to university; they have never achieved their potential because they were denied that chance. The Government's new policies will, finally, open doors that were closed to them.

Yet the world that figures like Tony Benn are nostalgic for is precisely the world that denied university places to my mum and dad. Benn boasts that "when I was sent to university, the country was bankrupt after a world war, but they still paid all of my fees and gave me a big grant to live on". Yes, Tony, but you were one of a tiny 5 per cent who went to university, and, like you, the others were almost all the children of the rich. It is simply absurd to suggest that we could achieve 50 per cent of 18- to 30-year-olds in higher education while retaining funding structures designed for a tiny clique. If the choice is between a tiny élite given generous bonuses and a great mass who have to pay a little back once they're earning, then for me the choice is obvious.

The old system of funding – the one which the Government is dismantling, to the howls of conservatives of the left and the right – was based on a disgraceful redistribution whereby working- and lower- middle-class people paid through their taxes for upper-middle class people to reinforce their already-privileged place in our society. It is the desire to pick this apart that is driving government policy today, and anybody who doubts this should dig up the book A Class Act by a radical centre-left journalist called Andrew Adonis. It is a rant against precisely these appalling class inequalities – and its author is now the main Downing Street education advisor. As Andrew Grice revealed in The Independent yesterday, it is Adonis who has persuaded Blair and Clarke to adopt the new policies.

You can march against this package of reforms if you really want to, but don't kid yourself that you are acting in the interests of poor students.

johannhari@johannhari.com