One of England's oldest universities has been accused of discriminating against white students.

Under a controversial new scheme, the University of Durham is lowering entry requirements for British Asians in popular subjects including psychology, law and politics.

It is promising 'a guaranteed, alternative offer (typically two grades lower)' to state school pupils of 'Asian heritage/descent' who take part in a free summer school with accommodation, travel and food provided.

Durham says the Asian Access programme, being run for the first time this year, 'aims to support students who are typically underrepresented in higher education and particularly at Durham'.

But critics point out that Asian teenagers are already far more likely to get into university than those from other ethnic groups, with more than half of sixth-formers accepted.

Official figures show that 51.4 per cent of Asian state school pupils across England got places in higher education in 2024, compared with just 29.8 per cent of white students.

Only Chinese pupils had a higher rate of acceptance (66.1 per cent), with black pupils third (48).

Reform MP and former minister Robert Jenrick told the Daily Mail: 'This is a blatant case of anti-white discrimination.

'It is bizarre that Durham University think it's sensible to lower the grades for British Asian students when they already outperform their white British counterparts.

'University admissions must treat students equally and stop trying to socially engineer outcomes by creating a two-tier system.'

He vowed: 'A Reform Government will end this nonsense and make our universities meritocratic once again.'

A Durham University spokesman said: 'We encourage applications from talented students of all backgrounds. Our admissions decisions are fair, non-discriminatory and based on published entry criteria.

'We agreed with the Office for Students as part of our published access and participation plan that we would increase our numbers of British students of Asian heritage who are currently underrepresented at Durham, along with students from other underrepresented groups.

'Students on this programme are drawn from neighbourhoods with low progression rates to university.

'We make contextual offers to applicants from a range of backgrounds who demonstrate high academic achievement and complete successfully a programme of academic study at Durham.'

Durham is just the latest in a series of top universities to face criticism for making lower offers to non-white students.

Oxford was accused of 'social engineering' after figures showed it had taken 16 per cent of black applicants who had fallen short of their required A-Level grades in the past five years, compared with just 6 per cent of white candidates.

York and Bristol are among other institutions that give 'contextual offers' to students from particular ethnic groups or from deprived backgrounds.

Parents have complained that admissions officers wrongly assume that non-white candidates are disadvantaged.

'A lot of these students passed the 11+ entrance exam and have professional parents on high salaries,' one mother told The Times last year.