British universities are under the fire for their failure to address thousands of racist incidents every year. An inquiry by Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHCR) England found that about a quarter of minority ethnic students, including non-British white students, said they had experienced racial harassment since the start of their academic course. This equates to 13% of all students. The government’s equality watchdog has said that black students reported the highest rate of racial harassment (29%), followed by Asian students (27%) and mixed/other students (22%). Meanwhile, 9% of white British students said they experienced racial harassment, including anti-English, anti-Welsh and anti-Scottish sentiments. The report, Tackling Racial Harassment by EHRC, also found 8% of all students surveyed suffered racial harassment in the first six months of the last academic year, which amounted to about 180,000 students across the UK. 20% of students had been physically attacked, 56 percent student who had been racially harassed had experienced racist name calling, insults and jokes, the finding reveals and confirms that in most cases the harasser is another fellow student but a large number of students said that it was their tutor or another academic. A third of those said they reported racist incidents to their university, the equivalent of 60,000 students nationwide. Yet a separate survey of 141 universities by the body found only 920 formal complaints of racism by students and staff recorded between September 2015 and February 2019. Of these, 560 were made by students, equivalent to only about 80 complaints every six months. The report was based on the findings from the commission’s public call for evidence, roundtable discussions and interviews with universities, students and staff. The Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) students across the England have lauded the higher education and Department of Education bosses for accepting the existence of large scale problem and taking steps to understand and tackle the issue once and for all. Rebecca Hilsenrath, chief executive at the EHRC told British newspaper Guardian that the findings showed universities were “not only out of touch with the extent that racism is occurring on their campuses, some are also completely oblivious to the issue”. Professor Julia Buckingham, president of Universities UK, which represents 136 universities, described the findings as “sad and shocking”, and called on vice-chancellors to publicly commit to making tackling racial harassment a top priority. But prominent academics of ethnic minorities have condemned the commission for also including harassment against white students in the figures, which they said showed a worrying lack of understanding of racism.