Alan Milburn, the Chairman of the Social Mobility Commission, has called upon the government to punish universities which fail to address disparities in participation between richer and poorer students.

In a speech on Tuesday, Milburn recommended that universities be denied the right to charge fees of £9000 if they do not adequately seek to increase admissions and reduce drop-out rates amongst students from poorer backgrounds, and to reduce the divide in academic attainment between richer and poorer students.

Currently, Milburn claims, of children in the poorest 40% of families, just one in seven attend university. He warned: “At current rates of progress it would take over 50 years before the gap in access to university is closed between the areas with the lowest and highest participation rates.”

His speech also stressed the necessity of making Higher Education accessible to “cold spot” towns such as Minehead, to avoid such areas becoming “hollowed out” as aspiring professionals move elsewhere to pursue careers.

Under the controversial Higher Education Bill announced by the government in May, universities will be obliged to release information pertaining to the family incomes of their students. Milburn, however, has pushed for more radical measures. Among his proposals is an annual league table to reveal the universities with the poorest records of ensuring professional achievement for students from low income families.

“At current rates of progress it would take over 50 years before the gap in access to university is closed between the areas with the lowest and highest participation rates.”

Some universities have already begun to take action on the problem. On Thursday, the University of Bristol announced that it would make lower admission offers to local pupils from low-income families and from applicants who attend schools with poor A-level results.

Milburn is not alone in criticising the practices of universities recently. Doug Cole, the Head of Academic Practice at the Higher Education Academy, has called for academics to support rather than shy away from the integration of internalisation, employability and inclusion in universities.

Speaking at the Westminster Higher Education Forum on innovation in curriculum design in London on 7 December, Cole advocated a focus on the “overlap” between employability and education arguing that language such as “skills” and “job readiness” “disengages people from the outset. We’re taking the spotlight off the things that really matter.”

Johnny Rich, chief executive of the Push guide to UK universities, has also recommended changes to the ways in which universities portray their courses. He told The Times that academics need to “improve awareness” and “encourage reflection” in the way that they market their courses to prospective and current students, and stressed the need for students to be made aware of the extra “analytical skills” they acquire across the course of their degree.