The government's planned new higher education access regulator will concentrate on increasing the number of applications from state schools rather than setting admissions targets, it has emerged.

The shift in policy comes as a study for the NUS found that 85 per cent of GCSE students who wanted to go to university would change their minds if they accumulated a debt of £20,000 on graduation.

Damian Green, the shadow education secretary, called on ministers to scrap the idea of a regulator altogether.