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Prejudice yes, AT Oxford, no



by Valentine Cunningham, senior English tutor at Corpus Christi College

Ignorant, wrong and stupid. That is ValentineCunningham's view of ministers' attacks on Oxford's alleged 'elitist bias'

Oxford University is being most unfairly vilified for its admissions practices. The attackers, silly and stupid, have selected the wrong tar­get for whatever legitimate social anger they claim as motivation.

Many applicants to Oxford are disappointed – and from every kind of school. Our under­graduate places are hugely over­subscribed, especially in subjects such as English, medicine and law. Every year I could fill my English quota at Corpus Christi College twice over. Every year I get letters and telephone calls from schools – baffled, aston­ished, outraged at somebody's rejection. Some able peopleinevitably lose out. That nobody should expect to get what they want just because they want it is atough lesson that some applicants have lo learn early in their lives.

But these disappointments are not organised or systematic. We do not discriminate by age or gen­der, class, ethnicity, region or type of school, as our detractors pro­fess to think. The stark truth is that for years candidates from the state and private sectors have got into Oxford more or less in pro­portion to their applications. Pri­vate schools have enjoyed a small proportional advantage. That has been obliterated this year, with 53 per cent of offers being made to state school applicants.

Still, there is a huge dispropor­tion of private-sector students at Oxford compared with the national percentage of state-school pupils. No other topic so preoccupies Oxford common rooms. I would guess that Oxford anguishes over this more than many universities where the disproportion is just as stark –Bristol, York, Durham, Exeter and so on.

Much effort has gone into changing these figures. We have abolished our sit-down entrance examination because it was thought to favour public schools, where people could afford a third year in the sixth-form to swot for Oxbridge. We got rid of entrance scholarships, because so many were for people from old public schools, founders' kin and other closed shops. Admissions tutors put in long hours of missionary work at state schools. So does the student union. There are access schemes for various underprivileged groups. State-school chil­dren are brought to Oxford in the summer holidays for topping-up courses. The wooing effort is so intense it is almost embarrassing – tutors and undergraduates singing and dancing at the Man United football ground the other day for a throng of children from the under-represented northwest of England. What next? Sky-div­ing, adverts on trains?

And if you do apply, as urged, from under-represented groups and regions, northern proletarian, black, whatever, you are treated with exemplary kindness and tact. No tests are ever untesting, but our requirements are customer-friendly in the extreme: bits of school-work sent in, small but relevant tests during interviews – linguistic, mathematical, interpretative – and seriously conducted interviews with subject tutors. Discriminations not discrimination are what are in play.

Most interviewers are experienced and adept at handicapping their entrance runners – taking perceived advantages and disadvantages into account. How often at the extended faculty-based meetings at which candidates are discussed docs one hear judgments such as, "Watch out: burnished right up to his capacities at his expensive crammers" or "Grim school, terrible area, are more in her than first meets the eye."

The trouble, I believe, is not with biases at Oxford, but with prejudices out there about Oxford. Too many state-school children and their families erroneously write Oxford off as elitist, poshocratic, Bridesheady or only for geniuses. Not for the likes of you or me.

Why do state schools not send more applicants to Oxford? Much of the numerical remedy is in their own hands. Storm the place, I say. It is absurd that I am inundated with requests to talk to public-school sixth forms and scarcely ever get invited to a state school. Why in the past 28 years have I had only three black applicants from state schools – all were offered places, two were wonderfully able undergraduates? It is not because of lack of talent out there. I am asked, in effect, by ministers to go in for social engineering, to alter white southern bourgeois Oxford by positive discrimination. I cannot do it if whole categories of people sign themselves off. And the more ministers hang on about elitist bias – out of their gross, misleading. ignorant prejudice – the more schools and scholars will taketheir application forms elsewhere.

 

9.b Answer the questions, using the information from the text.

1. What is Oxford university severely criticized for? Is this criticism well-grounded?

2. What arguments does the senior English tutor at Oxford put forward to rebuff the attacks of British ministers? Which of the arguments seem most/least convincing to you?

3. Do you think that there still is a bias in Oxford admission practices? Why do private school-leavers still predominate at Oxford? Is it because they are more intelligent than state school-leavers?

4. What testifies to the fact that now admission policies at Oxford do not depend on prejudice, but are based on merit?

5. What innovations were introduced into Oxford admission system to eliminate the disproportion of private-sector students? Which of them, in your opinion, are most/least efficient and why?

6. What does the author mean when he writes that he is asked by ministers to go in for social engineering and why does it seem impossible for him?

7. Has the author managed to dispel the myth of Oxford elitist bias?

8. The top professions in Great Britain continue to be dominated by Oxbridge graduates despite the fact that they make up only two percent of the total number of British graduates? Do you think that those two centers of academic excellence enjoy a fair advantage?

 

9.c Match the words in the left and right columns to restore the collocations from the text. In what context are they used?

tough forms
discriminate courses
enjoy schemes
disproportion sit-down entrance examinations
abolish of private sector students
access a small proportional advantage
topping-up by age and gender
application lesson

 

9.d Support or challenge the following statements, using the information from the text and your personal sources.

1. There is nothing wrong in having elite places of learning which should not be easily accessible.

2. Oxford cannot be a place for remedial education.

 

9.f Make a list of arguments for and against elite places of learning. Discuss it with your group-mates.

10. Visit ucas.com site, read updated information on university application, learn about choosing Route A and Route B courses, and go through a standard UCAS application form.

11.a Read the following article discussing changes in funding UK higher education and do the tasks that follow.

 




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