... is the question in this somewhat tongue in cheek article by Tom Utley in response to proposed changes to Oxford's admissions system..
So what if I fluked it into Cambridge?
However, beneath the jokey tone he does raise some serious questions, though some of the logic of the article escapes me:
[...] perhaps it is an injustice that the occasional underqualified Utley has managed to slip into Corpus, Cambridge. But that is none of the Government's business. The greatest injustice of all is that two whole generations of state-school pupils have been betrayed by Whitehall.
In the middle of the last century, the proportion of state-school pupils at Oxford and Cambridge was very much higher than it is today. That was before politicians had the stupid idea of closing down the grammar schools. Now, that really is the Government's business.
If making sure kids get a decent education IS the government's business then why should that responsibility not extend to University admissions? After all, what good does it do to bring back grammars (or whatever Utley proposes) if university places are handed out on the basis according to some kind of hereditary principle?
Nonetheless, I thought it was worth a quick post as part of our ongoing education discussion. What (if any) reforms would be happy to see instituted? Fast-tracking state gifted school pupils? "Social engineering" and quotas? [Note: the last couple of links date back over the past few years, but they give a general flavour of the debate.]
I'd be very intersted to hear everyone's views on this. (And to see if views differ depending on whether the person went to a state or private school.) Some members of this board may also be moved to share their own University admissions experiences .
If this topic is of particular interest you can work your way through some earlier posts here, here and here.
4 comments:
Shocking report on the state of politicisation of teaching in some US universities.
Bad News from Slippery Rock
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
April 11, 2006
The Times reports:
"Middle-class pupils face losing out on university places if their parents have degrees and professional jobs, after changes to the admissions system. For the first time, applicants will be asked to reveal whether their parents also went to university, as part of moves to attract more working-class students into higher education.
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said yesterday that it had also decided that information on the occupation and ethnicity of applicants’ parents should also be made available to admissions officers. Previously this had been held back until after places were offered.
Ucas said that the decision was specifically designed to “support the continuing efforts of universities and colleges to widen participation”. Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, confirmed yesterday that the Government was backing the changes.
Critics said that the move smacked of social engineering and that it could be used to discriminate against middle-class students"
Here's Rod Liddle's take on it:
'The latest government attempt to make Britain a fairer place is to reduce the proportion of intelligent people allowed into our universities. In future, potential students will have to prove that their parents were thick as a plate of mince in order to have a better chance of gaining a place at university.
School leavers will be required to tell admissions tutors whether or not their parents attended university. The correct answer is, “No, my father is educationally subnormal and does not have a CSE to his name. He has worked as a rat-catcher’s apprentice for 35 years. My mother works in a lard processing plant and is, if anything, even more stupid.” That should do the trick. If you tell the admissions tutor that your dad read law at Oxford, thanks awfully for asking, you may well be stuffed.
The universities are under pressure from the government to “improve their social mix”. The government is forcing universities to penalise potential students whose parents went to university, thus confirming what we have always suspected — that new Labour equates the working class with stupidity. And Thomas Paine got it wrong: the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children.'
Sirs,
Liddle can turn an amusing phrase and I agree that the latest attempt to 'improve the social mix' is... um... stupid. (There's a big elephant in the room marked 'selective secondary school education' that's being ignored no matter how vigorously it waves its trunk.)
However, this Liddle-ism is typically sloppy:
[...] confirming what we have always suspected — that new Labour equates the working class with stupidity.
No, it doesn't. It confirms that New Labour equates the working class with lack of opportunity (worse schools, less supportive home environment and so on.) The whole point of the policy is that they think working class kids are just as bright, but are being unfairly held back by a system based solely on exam results.
As I hope I've indicated, I think the policy is fatuous, dishonest and damaging, but Liddle's carelessness irritates me.
Theodore Dalrymple on the Government's policy on University admissions:
'The government also announced a new policy on university admissions: henceforth, when selecting students, universities must enquire as to whether applicants’ parents have university degrees themselves, in order to discriminate against them and favor applicants whose parents do not have degrees.
In other words, the British government sees universities more as instruments of egalitarian social engineering than as institutions of teaching, scholarship, and research. And it is far easier, of course, to admit students from poorer and less educated homes to university by administrative fiat than it is to raise standards in the high schools that they attend so that they might actually benefit from a university education.'
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