Oxbridge Gets Brickbats for Being Socially Irresponsible. (September 15, 2008)

Barbara Ellen's opinion piece in yesterday's Observer "Hey Oxbridge, where's that welcome mat?" has as of Monday 01:00 GMT elicited 120 comments from the paper's readers.

Ms Ellen early on writes: "...are we actually supposed to tug forelocks and accept Cambridge [vice-chancellor] professor  Alison Richard opining: 'It is not our place to help the poor'?"  But Ms Ellen adds later: "It transpires that what Richard actually said was that education institutions such as Cambridge should not be turned into 'handmaidens of industry, implementers of the skills agenda, or indeed engines for promoting social justice'. Which seems to be a roundabout way of saying that dons are genuinely concerned about the government shoehorning in state students, with a less impressive academic record, at the expense of undermining the world-famous Oxbridge brand. All fair points, until you ask the question - whose universities are they anyway?"

The problem as Ms Ellen assesses it is that despite Oxford and Cambridge claiming that their only criterion for entrance is ability -- "It is only the universities who seem determined to walk around whistling with their hands in their pockets, pretending that nothing remotely unfair is going on, that entrance is an even playing field, success or failure depending entirely on the individual, and ... phooey! Let's be honest, in education, background (and by association, guidance and expectation) is all... 40 per cent of the Oxford and Cambridge intake is from fee paying schools, when the educational private sector represents only 7 per cent of the nation's children?"

But that assessment is shallow. For a start we don't know what the ratio of acceptances to applications are. We also don't know how closely Oxbridge follows the approach of an increasing number of the US' top research universities pubic and private that no one who qualifies for acceptance will lose out through insufficient means.

The case can also be made that university examiners should assess on interviews whether or not an individual will develop despite deficiencies in a secondary school record or an entrance examination score.

Finally what Ms Ellen does not address is the real pressure being put on Oxford and Cambridge by the Brown government to become more immediately relevant where that does indeed mean that institutions such as Cambridge should be turned into 'handmaidens of industry, implementers of the skills agenda'.

The mantra of immediate relevancy also permeates the Australian environment; just what, if any, reference will be made to it by Professor Bradley's Higher Education Review remains to be seen.