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Well that sounds exactly like a form of Afirmative Action to me
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It's a rather twisted version of it. Whether or not someone's parent has a degree is no indicator of socio-economic status (the thing they are supposedly trying to balance out). We have a generation of working class graduates who were able to get a degree because of grants, aid and encouragement.....many of them have not then gone on to join the economic middle class. We still have a problem in the UK with children from low socio economic backgrounds having low expectations and not taking advantage of educational opportunities. The answer to that is to make it more accessible. Instead we have removed many of the forms of assistance that were in place, replaced them with loans and freed the universities up to charge pretty much what they like; consequently, right now a new student can expect to take on approximately £7000 per year in debt. Over the next couple of years that is likely to rise to about £14000 per year. That is likely to put a lot of workingclass kids off attending university and will also put a lot of mature students off as well.
Having made university gradually more difficult to access financially over the last fifteen years, the government's bright idea is to encourage universities not to take as many kids whose parents have a degree and to take on more first generation graduates.....in which case, what the fuck was the point of helping, encouraging and assisting a generation of working class teenagers to attend university twenty years ago....? Many of them were first generation graduates.