Ministers are to review the “benchmarks” in the wake of hostility from elite universities to the sharp increase in their targets for recruitment of state students.

Cambridge and Oxford have said that their benchmarks are no longer attainable after being told to increase their state intakes to 77 per cent from 68 and 69 per cent respectively. The Russell Group of 19 leading universities is meeting this month to determine its response.

The move comes as Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, names the £100,000-a-year director of the new Office for Fair Access (Offa) today. The director, dubbed “OffToff” by critics, will approve tuition fee increases for universities that sign agreements to boost applications by students from state schools and working-class backgrounds.

This move is likely to cause uproar among backbench Labour MPs who oppose the increase in fees to £3,000 a year from 2006. They see the benchmarks as a means of putting pressure on top universities to accept more state students at the expense of candidates from fee-paying schools.

Ministers have been stung by the ferocity of the response from universities to the performance indicators published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) last month.

The backlash has caused the Department for Education and Skills to question the value of the benchmarks, particularly now that universities will have to set their own access “milestones” in individual negotiations with Offa. The statistics agency has adopted the points system used by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas). This dramatically expanded the pool of students that Hesa considered eligible to apply to the best universities, even though most did not meet the necessary academic standards. An analysis at Cambridge showed that 55,104 students had amassed 360 Ucas points, the equivalent of three A-level A grades. But only 16,984 had achieved the standard expected at Cambridge.

The review was welcomed by Professor Michael Sterling, chairman of the Russell Group and Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham University. He said: “That is encouraging. The use of Ucas points moved the goalposts enormously. That was a mistake.” Baroness Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, representing the higher education sector, said: “I think it’s sensible to look at it again.”

Kim Howells told vice-chancellors yesterday, in his first speech as Higher Education Minister: “I am looking at the moment at the way in which these results are gathered and published . . . I’m prepared to look at this question.”

In what he called a “myth-busting” response to the row over the targets, Dr Howells said: “Universities must be the masters of their own admissions policies.”

He noted that universities had been keen to use the benchmarks before they became so controversial. He insisted that there was “no admissions conspiracy” by the Government. “This Government does not have a back door admissions agenda,” he said.

Dr Howells said ministers regarded the gap in university entry by higher and lower social classes as unacceptably wide. The solution was a “triple A approach” to raise attainment in schools, tackle low aspirations in students, and boost applications from families without a history of higher education. But interference in admissions was “strictly off the menu”.

However, Professor Sterling said he was concerned by Dr Howells’s remark that universities would have to satisfy Offa that their targets were “stretching and ambitious” before being allowed to raise fees. He would be seeking assurances about the yardsticks that Offa would use in discussions with universities to determine whether they were being sufficiently ambitious in seeking more state school and working-class applicants.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Madonna and her Guy decide it’s over
• Internet phone calls are jeopardising terror fight
• Red squirrels develop immunity to grey plague