It strikes me that this article is somewhat biased. Perhaps unintentionally, it has neglected to offer insights on why such as system might be considered good and laudable by some – and when I say some, I mean many. 

Here are a few:> Students who attend schools with great resources  (be that teachers, facilities, textbooks, whatever) essentially have a huge range of metaphorical weapons in their arsenal when they embark on that most stressful of months: exams. However, that student who has had poor teachers, large classes and a disruptive learning environment faces those exams unarmed. Thus, it seems likely that two students of equal natural ability will fair differently – with the well-trained, well-armed gladiator scoring more highly than our unarmed Thrasian slave (Unless that particular slave happens to be Spartacus). This being the case, universities might want to compensate for this by giving extra credence to those achieving grades from worse schools.> Students from a lower socio-economic background tend not to have a comfortable home lifestyle. Children whose parents read to them at night tend to achieve better grades, for example, but if a single parent is working three jobs to provide a bed for her kids she/he won’t have time to read to them. Children who are surrounded by books, have a quiet home environment to work in and are able to discuss their schoolwork with their parents are equally more likely to succeed academically. Take away all these things and it is unsurprising a students grades might suffer somewhat. Again, is it not fair that universities attempt to account for these structural inequalities?> Living in poverty-stricken areas naturally leads students to question the rhetoric of meritocracy. All around them they see either hard-working people who still haven’t broken free of the poverty trap or people who are not hard-working and still manage to live at a similar level of comfort. Often, nobody in their family has attended university and the same applies to many of their friends. Not only is there often a disdain for higher education, students are consistently seeing a lack of opportunity and are thus less inclined to study as hard at school because they do not see a way out of their situation. So for those students who do study hard and do achieve relatively good grades, surely the universities should account for the fact that they’ve struggled through years of structural barriers to achieve these grades.