Oxbridge still for the elite

It is interesting. There are so many reasons. There are so many reasons why something can stop anyone from doing anything in their life, money is often up at the top of the list.

Should hair-colouring be stopped, or going to the hairdresser, because it is unfair to poorer women? Should men have to date someone who can't afford to pretty themselves up a little in order to even life out a bit?

This is interesting. Looks at some of the 'whys ' instead of just having a go at the discriminatory admissions policies theconversation.com/bright-poor-students-less-likely-to-get-into-elite-universities-28560

I think it was quite a common fear that parents had, that their children may look down on them later. Let's face it - most children do, as teens anyway, because we become 'old' as soon as their friends say we do!

On the subject of parents holding children back, my SisIL was always of the opinion that children should not be educated above their parents' standard as it would lead to family strife - so much for progress! Her son fulfilled her wishes - very sad.

It always exasperated me and I had to bite my tongue.

More than one reason as I mentioned in a previous post, not universities just choosing 'the elite'.

wales.gov.uk/topics/educationandskills/learningproviders/oxbridge-project/news-and-events/low-self-asteem-a-factor-in-fewer-welsh-applications/?lang=en

Lots more articles on the reasons why out there on the web.

Oh look what turned up unasked on my Twitter feed: a link to a site with a video and other info for parents whose kids want to apply to uni but who don't know how it all works.

It's never been easier.

Just for the record, and to abutt accusations of rose tintedness, I actually chose not to apply to Oxford for an undergraduate course even though I was being encouraged to do so at school. Oxford didn't have what I wanted – fresh air, mountains and sea. Plus I didn't want the extra pressure of the entrance exam hanging over me.

When my husband was offered a job at Oxford Uni, by someone whom he worked with in Edinburgh, whom an Oxford department had head-hunted for a professorship because of outstanding work already done... when the possibility of us moving to Oxford was raised, I still didn't want to go there, but I was not going to stand in the way of a good career opportunity for my husband. My husband and the professor chappy had come from ordinary families and been to ordinary schools in Scotland (comprehensive) and Lancashire (probably grammar) respectively, they had both been the first in their families to go to university. Oxford wanted them. Oxford got them. If that isn't outreach working I don't know what is. This happens a lot. People who don't want to see it won't see it.

I was Oxford-based for twenty years. I applied to study a postgrad course because it was my local uni. They accepted me. My qualifications were nothing special. Oxford is not prejudiced against people who aren't rich and who families don't have a rich background. People who don't see this don't see it because they don't want to see it. If that's not muck-tinted I don't know what is.

I took the first chance I got to return to Scotland. No regrets. And give me rose-tinted any day in preference to sour negativity.

Grammar schools were ordinary though and they helped a lot of people from poor backgrounds to get an education at secondary and tertiary level – those who had brains but no money to pay for a posh school.

That is not an argument in favour of grammar schools now so don't say it is, but they did their bit in the past. Both my parents benefited. My siblings and I went to grammar schools because we passed the eleven plus which was still in force where we lived though comprehensive schools, which my father spent his entire adult life fighting for, were beginning to open around the country. Grammar schools are not really full of exceedingly bright people. The eleven plus was not really a test of intelligence, it was a test of being able to pass eleven plus type tests.

Any comprehensive school worth its salt can educate its bright kids as well as grammar schools worth their salt did. You don't need an Oxford graduate on the staff to be able to read up how to apply to an Oxbridge college, jess. You are just making excuses. Could it be, perhaps, that many teachers who guide sixth formers about university entrance don't think it's worth all the bother of applying to Oxbridge when their pupils can and will do perfectly allright at a different university? Perhaps state schools do need more funds and more commitment from politicians. I expect we agree on that. But that isn't elite universities' fault either.

No, I don't have rose tinted specs about Oxford. I just see it as a good university on its own somewhat querky terms. Why shouldn't an institution as old as Oxford or Cambridge have some querkiness? And I don't resent it being elite. We need elite universities. We need elite schools, preferably state ones.

I think the objectors' arguments on this thread are simply anti-elite because they see any kind of elite as a bad thing by definition. I see a certain amount of elitism as both inevitable and useful in human society.

But my main point is that Oxbridge, while it may have more than the average number of students from rich families, is not prejudiced against clever people from poor families. Any such prejudice that people feel is imagined.

Jess and an awful lot of research funding comes from overseas, from the private sector and from charities and trusts. Not from the public purse. And while speaking of bees and bonnets, there are many reasons why there are not as many students from poor backgrounds at elite universities as richer students and they can't all be ascribed to universities having discriminatory policies.

Bags you are the one that seems to have a bee - one which is wearing tiny rose tinted spectacles when the word Oxford is mentioned.
Actually my ex H is an Oxford graduate (and was studying there when we met), my best mate did his PhD in Cambridge. Oh and I lived in Cambridge for a few years. So I am not entirely ignorant about the system.
I do also understand how comprehensive schools work.
Grammar schools were not and are not ordinary. In a grammar school there is a concentration of very bright students. In a sub set of grammar schools the staff were and are keen to get people into Oxbridge and encouraged and supported them. Oxbridge entrance in my grammar school meant you had to stay in school an extra term to prepare for the entrance exam. Some years one or two stayed on but not every year.
In a comprehensive school there is normally one member of staff who has responsibility for overseeing university entrance. They are often trying to help the majority of Year 13 to get their act together and send in their applications in the first half of the school year. Many of them will not have parents who can help. So they might have, say, 100 students applying. The teacher will also have a pretty full timetable with maybe a few periods allocated to this work.
There may well be not a single Oxbridge graduate on the staff. They are pretty thin on the ground. I would suggest that under these circumstances it would be rare for them to provide the kind of support that is provided in a Public school.
Lilygran yes of course the postgrads etc teach. But if you track most of the money back that is funding them, most of it will be out of the public purse allocated via NERC etc So we are all funding the teaching in this centre of excellence.

I lived in Kent when my children were younger. 17 years ago when my daughter passed her 11 plus, her friend also passed but her parents wouldn't let her go. They didn't want her thinking she was better than the rest of her family. The teachers were distraught on her behalf, so was she. She wanted to go. There was quite a battle for a while, but in the end she went to the local secondary school. She was fortunate, her school started up a club for its brightest pupils and she lived a grammar existence that was slightly set apart from other pupils, it had to be, because they were bullied. I was driving past one day and saw a crowd of girls grab her bag and throw it into the path of oncoming traffic. I pulled over and helped her gather it all up. She did make it, she went to Oxford despite family and peer pressure. The first from her school, so it is possible. The Head was criticised for calling his scholar's club his 'elite'. He had said it in private, but it got out. Hence the bullying.

It's not the first time I have come across parents not seeming to want their children to do well in this country. Those same parents are often the ones who hate it when more able children or wealthier children are given a safer environment in which to learn, where they don't have to dumb down to fit in. Where they don't have to pretend they don't like the lessons.

Then living in a county that didn't have grammar schools, my son got a scholarship. I always thought that we were saving taxpayers/govt money by educating him privately. I thought they might even be grateful that we were helping finances to stretch a little further. Apparently not. But there are thousands of children whose parents bankrupt themselves, literally, trying to give their children a better chance. Children who would get lost in the system because of learning difficulties, or who cannot cope with being moved around because their parents have to travel to get work. Private schools employ normal state-trained teachers, they stick to the curriculum, more or less, but they are able to be a little more flexible with time because they have a longer day. And because there isn't the fighting against homework that state schools come up against. When you pay for your child's schooling, you want them to work bloody hard. So they do well. That could work in state schools too. But it won't until the parents support the teachers instead of fighting them, taking them out during term time just before exams and writing them excuses when they haven't completed an essay.

We struggle financially to keep my son at university, we thought an end would come to our own constantly being broke when he left school, but now he has entered the world of dinner suits and learning how to behave and converse with adults, just knowing that he will be able to spend a few years amongst other people as intelligent as he is makes it all worthwhile. Because if you are that little bit more intelligent, it can get very lonely at times. My daughter picked up on that very quickly. Her grammar school in Kent took only the top 10% of the pupils in the area, the one we moved to in Lincs took the top 20% as the population is far sparser and the school needed to be filled. She found that out because she asked to see the headmistress after only a week there, she was worried that it wasn't a proper grammar school, just one that had kept its old name!

Jess some people doing research don't teach but most people doing research also teach and people who teach also do research. Being successful at getting research grants attracts people to the university.

Back then.

Oh and just by the way, the ordinary grammar schools in Lancashire were never graced with outreach events.

I went to an ordinary grammar school in Lancashire. It had Oxford alumni. So did the boys' grammar school.

In fact one of the nuns was one of the very first women to gain a degree at Oxford, though she wasn't 'given' the degree status until many years later.

I expect this was and is similar all over the country. If ordinary schools in Lancashire could make the links and get people into elite universities back in the fifties and sixties what is stopping ordinary schools now? It aint the elite universities (and I'm not just talking about Oxbridge).

I suggest you get that anti-Oxbridge bee out of your resentful bonnet, jess.
Besides, anyone would think a degree from Univesity of Wales at Bangor (for instance) wasn't as good as as one from elsewhere, the way you're going on.

If the outreach events aren't working, whose fault is that, jess? They clearly work in some places. However, perhaps they are not the best way forward. I'm not saying they are, only objecting to your always laying the blame, resentfully, on rich folk. You can't buy your way into Oxford. You have to be impressive enough academically. This is why it is an elite university. It's not elite because of rich folk. It's elite because it wants, and gets, some of the cleverest people as its students and staff.

And as for all the supposed "super-rich" that you say the Oxford undergrad admissions system is biased in favour of, well, I never met any and neither did MrB. I think we have a darn sight more knowledge of Oxford and things Oxford and people Oxford than you do.

I actually knew more of the posh types you appear to imagine populate Oxford when I was a student at Dundee! Well, I say 'knew'... I knew of them; they weren't in my circle.

Oxford is full of ordinary people.

It's also full of extraordinary people.

But, then, where isn't?

Thanks lilygran - of course the research grants etc etc gets spent on research, not teaching undergrads. Hence the high number of postgrads and that is before you start on postdocs etc.
Outreach events obviously not working are they bags
Yes determination and support necessary to get through and where is the concentration of expertise in how to negotiate the Oxbridge entrance maze? Public schools of course. If you are a very bright 6th former in a school that has never previously had an Oxbridge applicant you are at a huge disadvantage.

My oldest daughter went to Oxford and loved it. We were not poor but we did without a lot of things to send her to private school as the comprehensive at the time was dreadful (much improved now) and she was extremely bright. Her sister went to the same private school and went to Imperial College in London. Both universities are consistently in the top 3 places in the country. We certainly don't qualify as "elite" and I am extremely proud of both of their achievements as they went on to get top jobs through sheer hard work and talent.

I think there are good and bad state schools in all areas of the country. Ours at the time was bad and we chose to spend our money in a way that I believe benefited our daughters immensely. Some friends said we were "lucky" to be able to send them to private school but they spent their money instead on expensive holidays and doing up their houses and we did not.

jess and others, this is quoted from the site that lily linked to:

"in 2012-13 the collegiate University delivered 2,956 individual outreach events with 72% of all UK schools with a sixth form."

72% of all UK schools with a sixth form doesn't look too criticism-worthy to me. Of course that percentage could go up and it probably will, but so could efforts to change attitudes in schools.

On the basis of that, I really don't think your complaints are justified.

Good morning, bags. Here's a link to information about Oxford finances for anyone who's interested www.ox.ac.uk/about/organisation/finance-and-funding

Good morning, lily

BTW, those arguing in favour of changes to the Oxbridge undergraduate selection procedures (which I don't actually oppose – just don't see how they could be implemented – even though it may seem that way), need to indicate to those not in the know that they are talking about undergraduate selection only. Postgrads make up about 45% of students at Oxford and that selection is done on academic merit, via departments not colleges. You don't even have to apply to a college; you can opt to be placed any old where.
It's the department (bio-chemistry, english, geography, etc) that's important for postgrad courses.

Some colleges have never dropped entrance exams, some admit on A levels and interview and some have reintroduced a form of entrance exam. In some subjects, there's no entrance exam as such but applicants are expected to take extra papers at A level. All candidates are interviewed which most universities don't bother with. So all the stuff in the media about candidates with five A* not getting a place is largely nonsense. They've all done well. And the application has to be in early. Some determination and support is needed! These complications, I imagine, do put school staff and pupils off when the alternative is to fill in the UCAS form and wait to hear. And bags is right again, some colleges are very rich indeed. And others aren't.

tertiary

i.e. the common entrance exam is no longer used.