Racial harassment is “a common occurrence” for many students in England, Scotland and Wales, Britain’s equalities watchdog says.

The EHRC carried out in-depth interviews with students and staff, commissioned a survey of a representative sample of more than 1,000 students and sent a questionnaire to universities.

Black students reported the highest rate of racial harassment (29%), followed by Asian students (27%) and mixed/other students (22%).

Victims’ grades and mental health too often suffer and some quit altogether, according to an Equality and Human Rights Commission report.

But too many universities fear facing up to the issue will harm their reputation, the authors say.

In response, Universities UK pledged “urgent steps” on racial harassment.

Muslim students spoke of feeling the need to play down their religious identity because of security checks at university events.

International students said they often felt unwelcome, isolated and vulnerable, treated like commodities only wanted by universities for their fees.

And many students reported “microaggressions” from staff or fellow students who, for example, expressed surprise they were on a particular course or mixed them up with the only other person of their ethnicity on the course.

Students who complained about racial “banter” said they were often accused of being “oversensitive” and felt they received little empathy or understanding.

Students are often reluctant to complain at all and many informal complaints are unrecorded, so some universities do not have a true sense of the scale of racial harassment on their campuses, the report says.

About one in five universities said they had received no complaints of racial harassment at all in more than three years.

The report suggests some are reluctant to admit the true scale of the problem for fear of putting off potential students and losing their fees.

The body says it will now call on universities to commit publicly to making it easier for people to report incidents and to putting better processes in place to respond more effectively.