Out of the Russell Group Unis, how inclusive is Cardiff Uni really?

With Cardiff Uni's recent instagram posts boasting about their diverse and inclusive student body, The Cardiff Tab has looked deeper into the inclusivity of Cardiff University. We have compared it to other Russell Group unis to find out just how inclusive Cardiff really is.

Race

According to Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) reports from the academic year 17/18, out of 23,960 students enrolled at Cardiff, 585 were black students. This means that 2.4 per cent of all students were black. While these statistics may seem low, this is actually above the population of black residents in Wales which is 17,000 out of a total 3 million, according to Welsh Government stats.

The university with the most black students is King's College London with 7.98 per cent and the lowest is University of Glasgow with 0.93 per cent.

So, compared to some Russell Group unis, Cardiff isn't too shabby.

Schooling

In a 2015 Department for Education report, it's been revealed that private school students are twice as likely to attend a Russell Group university and five times as likely to attend Oxbridge, who'd have guessed??

The Russell Group unis with the most private school students are Oxford with 42.3 per cent, Cambridge with a very close 42.3 percent, Durham with 37.1 per cent, Imperial with 36.5 per cent and Bristol with 35.5 per cent (just in case those were a shock for you).

In comparison, Cardiff has a relatively low amount of private school students with 14.7 per cent of students being privately educated.

However, some Russell Group unis have less than Cardiff such as Liverpool with 11.6 per cent of privately educated students.

Disabilities

The HESA report for graduates in 17/18 shows that out of 10,385 Cardiff students, 880 were known to have a disability, totally to 8.4 per cent.

Compared with other Russell Group universities, we can be proud of Cardiff on this one. The University of Nottingham has a total of 12.6 per cent of students with known disabilities, whereas Warwick has 5.9 per cent.

According to Cardiff Uni's intranet, the university has "a legal requirement to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ under the Equality Act 2010, in which they must make the effort of ‘providing equipment or materials, the removal of physical barriers, changing a policy or procedure to remove disadvantage or meet the needs of disabled people".

This could be anything from accessible lifts in all buildings, to printing handouts on green paper, to ensure no students are disadvantaged.

So is Cardiff uni inclusive compared to other Russell Group unis?

When asked about the university's attitude towards inclusivity, a Cardiff University spokesperson directed us to their website which states: "We aim to establish an inclusive culture free from discrimination and based upon the values of dignity, courtesy and respect. We recognise the right of every student to be treated in accordance with these values".

From our findings, when the population of Wales is considered, Cardiff uni certainly represents a number of black students, state school students and those with a known disability.