THE UK's most selective universities – such as Oxford – should not recruit all students based on their academic results, according to new report.

Current attitudes to higher education are based on 'snobbery and discrimination', with bright students steered towards a small group of institutions considered the best, and those with lower results put off, it argues.

Instead, universities should follow the state school system and be more 'comprehensive'.

Such a move would help improve social mobility, ensuring that everyone has equal opportunities to be successful in life, the report's author Professor Tim Blackman, vice-chancellor of Middlesex University, argues.

Universities considered as 'good' are those which are highly selective, such as Oxford and Cambridge, asking would-be students for high entry grades, while the rest are seen as having a lower status, the paper, published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) suggests.

The report which is published today says: "It is regarded as normal and preferable that a young person who does achieve top grades at school should avoid the universities that are less selective.

"Yet there is no reason for doing this based on any systematic differences in teaching quality or the likelihood of completing or obtaining a good degree classification once student background is taken into account.

"We instead appear to be in a world based on snobbery and discrimination."