Cambridge college for mature female students opens doors to young men

A Cambridge college established for female mature students is taking in men because women are no longer marginalised, its president says.

Lucy Cavendish College is targeting teenagers from poorer backgrounds and this academic year 92 per cent of its students are from state schools, the highest proportion of any Cambridge college. It refuses to drop entry grades for deprived teenagers and instead mentors them from GCSE onwards to help them achieve high A-level grades. The average achievement for science students this year was three A*s and for arts it was 2A*s and an A.

Only two Cambridge colleges remain exclusively female: Newnham and Murray Edwards. Girton, the university’s first female-only college, went coeducational in the 1970s.

Lucy Cavendish was founded in the 1960s to encourage older women into higher education. Dame Madeleine Atkins, its president, said that taking in younger students and men accorded with the college’s founding principles of widening access to Cambridge.

Young white men from poor backgrounds were the least represented group in higher education, she said. “We were never a sanctuary with high walls to keep men out. We have always, as a college, been about students going out into the world into leadership positions.

Source: Cambridge college for mature female students opens doors to young men | News | The Times