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December 15, 2005
Oxbridge Entrance.
How wonderful, simply quite lovely. NuLab has forced a change upon Oxbridge over the entrance requirements:
Oxford colleges are to lose their 800-year-old right to select
undergraduates in response to Government pressure to admit more
students from state schools and lower social classes.
Instead, admissions will be centralised to encourage applications from comprehensive pupils, who find the present arrangements "confusing and opaque", the university said yesterday.
Pupils will apply to the university, not a specific college, and will be interviewed and selected by the appropriate department, not by their potential tutors.
The university admitted that as a result, colleges will lose autonomy and individuality.
Isn’t that simply gorgeous boys and girls? In the name of social engineering our Lords and Masters are going to gut two of our three (for the LSE is also such, must be, it having aided in my education) world class universities of the system that arguably makes them so. One effect already noted :
Among them were that tutors wanted to make their own judgments on students they were going to teach, and that they may feel less responsible for ensuring academic success if they had not taken the decision to admit them.
However, the dominant argument in the months ahead - the university aims to get the changes approved by June for implementation from 2008 - will centre on the destruction of the centuries-old and fiercely upheld tradition of college autonomy.
Time for them to go private I think. Tell the government to bugger off....as the LSE tried to and, given its selection policy of overseas (and full fee paying) students arguably has.
December 15, 2005 in Academia | Permalink
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Comments
Absolutely - if they, like me, think the current system is special and the best way to go surely it's in the Government's interests to let them sink or swim. Or did I forget the nanny tendency?
Sorry in advance for this, but I couldn't avoid it! It could only happen at a lesser institution like Oxford though...
Posted by: Edward | Dec 15, 2005 9:45:44 AM
"Cambridge is expected to follow Oxford's lead."
That'll teach me to read the article first!
Posted by: Edward | Dec 15, 2005 9:46:57 AM
Tim - you should no better than to believe the Torygraph! They're simply mischief-making. There is no question of Oxford University using anything other than strict academic criteria for admitting candidates.
But it cannot be right for a world-class university to have to turn down a strong candidate because they applied to a
vastly over-subscribed college, while a weaker candidate is accepted because they were interviewed by a college with fewer applicants.
That's what Oxford is trying to stop happen.
Posted by: Stephen Tall | Dec 15, 2005 1:09:01 PM
That was a bit cheeky - not sure even in our crazy little world that the argument 'some people are too stupid to understand how to apply to the top unis in the world, so we're making it easier' holds any weight anywhere.
As one who got his place at Cambridge thanks to the state school quota, I'm at a loss to see what the problem is with the whole 'Oxbridge elitist' nonsense. They take a disproportionate number of people from state schools (applicant-ability wise) - it's just that state school kids don't think of applying, finding it much easier to think 'well I would've got in, but it's full of ponces, like, so I didn't even bother applying.'
The other rather shameful trait (and obv I only speak from my own experience) is that the state school kids that do get in are the real losers in the place, because they tend to be the ones that work all the sodding time, the clueless sods.
Posted by: Paul Davies | Dec 15, 2005 2:17:23 PM
My own experience of applying to Cambridge (and getting in), coming from the comprehensive system, is that is very daunting. Many pupils from independent schools get help with their application forms and have a system generally set up to help them on their way to Oxbridge, which just didn't exist where I was. It wasn't a matter of brains, it was just a matter of knowing the system. For example, my application nearly went in late because I hadn't been told that Oxbridge applications have to go in much earlier than the UCAS forms.
I tend to agree with the point that Stephen Tall makes - it is well known that some colleges get vastly more applications that others, and some colleges get more applications for certain subjects and so on. The days of full college independence are long long gone and although supervision is on a college basis (mostly - many of mine were in other colleges), lectures and exams are all central. It makes sense to centralise to some extent so that the talent is spread around a bit better.
PS I don't know where Paul Davies got his figures from, but in my day it was acknowledged fact that the proportion of state school kids compared to independent schools who were at Cambridge was smaller than the proportion who got top grades. This was mostly to do with applications, so people like me were encouraged to go back to our schools to advise kids on applying.
Posted by: Katherine | Dec 15, 2005 3:28:00 PM
Always think one step ahead! Once admissions are centralized in the University, THEN comes the quotas requiring that admissions from state schools match state school enrollment as a percentage of total nationwide enrollment.
The University is so overdue to go fully private. And every day they wait only makes it harder.
Posted by: Dan | Dec 15, 2005 6:28:09 PM
"I tend to agree with the point that Stephen Tall makes - it is well known that some colleges get vastly more applications that others, and some colleges get more applications for certain subjects and so on."
The same happens with universities across Britain though and we don't have such a cack-handed approach there.
Can't you look at this from a market point of view? If it is the uni itself which matters and the colleges are much less important than they used to be - and you can therefore justify central admissions - shouldn't we see more people wanting to apply to those colleges that are less competitive to get the uni name?
A lot of discussion on this issue forgets the pooling system as well, which certainly at Cambridge means many colleges will leave spaces open for the pool if the applicants they receive are not, in their opinion, of sufficient calibre. I don't think you can say that, on the whole, people "sneak in".
Posted by: Edward | Dec 15, 2005 7:10:52 PM
Paul - "They take a disproportionate number of people from state schools (applicant-ability wise)"
Simply not true. Oxford takes slightly fewer 3 As-or-equivalent state school candidates than would be proportionate. The reasons are more nuanced than the trite old-school-tie-dons or inverted-snobbery-kids cliche. Eg, Oxford doesn't teach some more vocational subjects which attract top-grade candidates (architecture, chartered accountancy, veterinary science); it does teach Classics which is skewed towards independent schools.
Dan - "The University is so overdue to go fully private."
There is no top teaching and research university in the world that is fully private. Harvard, Stanford, Yale etc are all reliant on state/federal funding for their research activities. And, while it may be tempting for Oxford to tell the government to piss off just for a laugh, no-one has yet offered the University the £4bn+ it would need to make it a reality.
Edward - "shouldn't we see more people wanting to apply to those colleges that are less competitive to get the uni name?"
You do. But - and this is where the market concept breaks down - there is not perfect knowledge: those 'in the know' know which colleges/course are easiest to get into; those who aren't don't. And it would be a brave college which tried to gain competitive advantage by cornering the 'we're-crap-so-easy-to-get-into' market niche.
Posted by: Stephen Tall | Dec 15, 2005 10:00:22 PM
Several points:
1) The acceptance rates of state school pupils are pretty much in line with their application rates. I'm fairly certain if there is a problem with state/private places then it's because people don't apply. (Stephen raises an excellent point about vocational subjects, which now dilute A-Level statistics in an Oxbridge context)
2) There may well be a pooling system at Cambridge, and there are other mechanisms in place at Oxford too, to try and match people of ability up. I'd stay it's still pretty ad hoc though, and not as effective as something as systematic as the proposals.
3) My major worry is that academics assessment becomes subordinated to "objective" administrative criteria. Thus grades and school background becomes more important than the jdugement of the interviewer. That would be dreadful. But is it any less skewed than a system where at one Oxford college I know, a homosexual tutor had a habit of taking in significantly more men than women in his subject, only for the balance to become equal in years when he was on leave?
Posted by: Ken | Dec 16, 2005 1:45:35 AM
Ken,"is it any less skewed than a system where at one Oxford college I know, a homosexual tutor had a habit of taking in significantly more men than women in his subject, only for the balance to become equal in years when he was on leave?" The proposed system will make it easier for him to apply this policy across the whole Uni, rather than confining it to his own College.
Posted by: dearieme | Dec 16, 2005 3:21:53 AM
I asssume that the people posting these comments are currently enrolled Oxford or Cambridge students or graduates of these schools. If my assumption is correct, the quality of these writing samples tells me that Cambridge and Oxford are already in decline. And this apparently has nothing to do with efforts to increase state school enrollment. I am afraid that top universities all over the world are dumbing down their academic programs to accomodate capitalistic needs for obedient workers who are smart enough to get a job done, but not smart enough to think truly critically and emancipate themselves and others from slavery.
Posted by: Joseph | Jan 14, 2006 5:23:19 AM
For those of us not in-the-know, please tell us what are the easiest colleges/courses to get into?
Posted by: Kerry | Feb 14, 2006 7:48:55 AM
