News & Views item - March 2011

 

  Oxford Congregation Rails Over Government's Admonishment to "Dramatically Increase" Intake of Pupils from State Sector. (March 22, 2011)

In return for charging the maximum allowed tuition of £9,000, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is insisting that universities planning to charge the top fees would have to "prove" their ability to broaden their intake:  "They [Oxford University] can't charge £9,000 unless given permission. They're only going to be given permission if they prove they can dramatically increase the numbers from poorer and disadvantaged backgrounds."

 

According to The Observer's Daniel Boffey: "A transcript of a meeting by the university's sovereign body, the Oxford congregation, obtained by The Observer, revealed that the university's head of admissions told colleagues the institution would not be a victim of "political expediency".

 

Tim Gardam, the principal of St Anne's College, said: "Oxford should resist any idea that there should be some trade-off between the setting of an undergraduate tuition fee and our agreement to conditions aimed at socially defined outcomes that are not rooted in independent academic judgment. Oxford, in contrast to practically all other universities, weighs each potential undergraduate as an individual. The offer of a place reflects a personal contract which will be later made real in the tutorial relationship between student and tutor. Whereas some universities have adopted selection policies that do make differentiated offers according to social background, we have not, and I don't think we should."

 

And in the opinion of Robin Briggs, a fellow of All Souls College: "We need to hammer away at the obvious truth that neither universities nor schools can create equity in a country where government policy is increasing social inequality. We need to take the fight into the public domain."

 

On the other hand Dr Rowan Tomlinson, of New College, told Mr Boffey: "The state school percentage, of which some of us seem bafflingly proud, is deceptive*. We need to stop hoodwinking ourselves and others, and admit that many of those who make up the intake from state schools are actually from selective schools, which operate not through some kind of pure academic meritocracy but through social and cultural exclusion and elitism."

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* Last week Oxford published figures showing that just 41.5% of offers were made to private school candidates, while state school pupils received 58.5%.