Measures to tackle race discrimination in graduate recruitment and to encourage more ethnic minority students into universities were announced this week.

Higher education minister Baroness Blackstone, speaking at a Universities UK conference to launch a higher education equality unit, said that graduate unemployment rates were lower for white graduates than minority graduates, in all classes of degree.

Lady Blackstone announced that the Department for Education and Employment would fund projects to help black and 51¹ú²úÊÓƵn graduates "make a successful transition to the labour market".

The government will give ?367,000 to the Association of Graduate Recruiters to help with pre-recruitment training, structured work experience and mentoring for ethnic minority graduates.

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A scheme with private company Global Graduates Training to help ethnic minority law graduates, who are "heavily under-represented in the legal profession", was also announced.

The minister said it was "time to stop treating all minority groups as if they were the same" within the undergraduate population.

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Black and South 51¹ú²úÊÓƵn students are concentrated in new universities, she said, and some minority groups such as Afro-Carribean men and Bangladeshi women are under represented.

The launch of the equality unit coincided with the release of data by the Association of 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ Teachers that showed the average pay for full-time female academic staff in United Kingdom universities is still 17 per cent lower than that for their male colleagues.