Leeds Met Article: Oxbridge; how far would you go?

As everything gets harder for all students, I can’t help but think for the early applicants for which the process has been hard from the start. With the rush of the early deadline to interviews and most of all the dreaded UCAS reply. But alas, you have to consider what is really going through the minds of the lecturers and applicant administrators at Oxbridge. Do they really think about the academic skills and aspirations of the wishful students?

For some, as Oxford and Cambridge are some of the greatest universities in the world, would say that of course they do as it would be unprofessional for them not to. However, statistics say otherwise. A BBC article dating 31^st January stated that statistics show that the independent sector of schools take up 7% of the population in England and Wales, whereas they make up around 46% of Oxford's undergraduates.

It astonished me when I was having a discussion with a fellow applicant from Liverpool at an interview for a university recently, which a school and sixth form in Liverpool that has compulsory lessons to decrease their scouse accent so their students have a higher chance to get in to such universities like Oxford and Cambridge. I simply could not believe that students would go that far to reach the goal of having an Oxbridge qualification. Is this a reconstruction from ‘My Fair Lady’ gone too far? After all, isn’t your regional dialect what gives you some form of personal identity? 

Another issue is ethnicity. It was reported in 2009 that over 20 Oxbridge colleges didn’t send offers to black students, one of which hadn’t admitted a black student for at least 5 years! This raises the issue of the concept of an elitist society, which the main people in authority roles being of white, middle class and Oxbridge decent; this is a key issue in the House of Lords. In 2005, the average age in the House of Lords was 50! It’s unreal. According to a Guardian article dating 6^th December 2010 by David Lammy MP showed that figures made under the Freedom of Information Act showed that Oxbridge’s profile shows that 89% of students come from the top 3 socioeconomic groups, whereas according to UCAS the national average is 64.5%. 

However, it isn’t all one sided. It is also the fault of the state educated and the government. On the state educated behalf, it is a problem of not enough state sector children are applying for Oxbridge either due to modesty of thinking they’re not good enough or their teachers just don’t want to put them under the stress so deter them away from applying  - sadly enough it happens. On the governments behalf, not after the rise in the tuition fees however, should create a scheme which defeats this tendency by the state population to have the courage to apply for Oxbridge. This will discourage the idea that the new coalition government is trying to create a society where only the middle and upper class children can make it.