At last, an Oxbridge for those who can’t get into Oxbridge
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A few years ago, I met a man who was almost in tears of rage at the injustice that had been done to his son. I was trying to sneak out of some drinks party when he started telling me about this prodigy. His A-level scorecard was perfect; he held colours for rugby; he had been captain of the school debating team, keeper of the philately club, editor of the magazine – and yet he had been turned down by the dons of virtually every top university in the country.
What was going on, wailed my friend. This kind of thing never happened in his day, he said; and he went on to speculate that there was some kind of secret Pol Pot-style persecution of the children of the bourgeoisie. Since then I have heard many similar complaints about university admissions procedures (and I bet you have, too), and after one particularly harrowing conversation with a disappointed mum I had an idea for a brilliant business venture – a new institution that would be both socially responsible and immensely financially lucrative. I would found Reject’s College, Oxbridge. That is to say, I would find investors for a new elite academic institution, aimed squarely at the wrathful parents – many of them Oxbridge graduates – who simply could not understand how their own offspring could rack up three A-stars and grade 8 bassoon, and yet find themselves turned down.
In my mind’s eye I could see exactly how it would work: we’d get some dusty old goods yard at the back of Oxford or Cambridge. We’d turn it into a gorgeous neo-classical quadrangle, designed by Robert Adam or someone like that. We would have a prospectus full of the Reject’s College arms (Floreant Rejecti) and the lawns with snaggle-toothed lecturers leering at their pupils over a bottle of chilled white wine.
We would vindicate the principles of academic freedom, as famously outlined by Justice Felix Frankfurter, of the US Supreme Court, in 1957. That is to say, we – and I saw myself as provost or master – would decide what should be taught, how it should be taught, and whom to admit for study, and we would decide all these things on academic grounds and academic grounds alone.
Apart from that, I am afraid I was a bit vague about how exactly Reject’s College would work. So you can imagine my joy yesterday when I saw that someone had not only had my idea, but had gone one better: he had found the cash and the backing to make it happen. “Top dons to create new Oxbridge” was a headline to gladden the heart of many a grieving parent and frustrated academic. In fact, the whole thing is such unambiguously good news that I scarcely know where to begin. It is the brainchild of Prof A C Grayling, who certainly looks and writes like a philosopher (I seem to remember some good stuff on Russell and Wittgenstein), but who turns out to have a Bransonesque practical flair. Together with Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson, Sir Christopher Ricks and various other academic superstars, he is setting up a New College of the Humanities, based in Bloomsbury. They have found the premises, they will start taking applications from next month, and the first one-on-one Oxbridge-style tutorials will take place in autumn 2012. They will ultimately have 1,000 undergraduates, all of whom will be expected to achieve a minimum three As at A level to get in; and since this will mean a whole new higher education institution for London, so lengthening our lead as the university capital of the world, I thought it would not be too pompous if I rang up Prof Grayling to congratulate him.
He explained that the idea had first occurred to him years ago, when he was tutor for admissions at an Oxbridge college. “For every person we admitted, we turned away 12, each of whom could have done outstandingly well at the university,” he said. The trouble with Britain today, he said, was that we simply didn’t have enough elite university provision – and especially not in the humanities subjects, where teaching budgets are under such pressure.
It was absurd, he argued, that so many of our young people are going off to America to do their degrees, and he is surely right. The shortage of places in top universities is now so acute that we have 10,000 UK school leavers a year who are spending $60,000 a year on Animal House-style frat parties on the Podunk Liberal Arts Campus or other American colleges. That cash could be going into the hard-pressed British system.
Which brings us to the key question. Prof Grayling’s New College for the Humanities is going to charge a staggering £18,000 for tuition alone, and that is before we have come to the accommodation costs. How on earth are people going to afford it? He has a ready answer, in that he and his colleagues want to see 30 per cent of undergraduates receive some help with their fees, and a large proportion will have full scholarships, funded either charitably or from the fees of those who can afford to pay. It is this strong commitment to attracting students from disadvantaged families that has earned the project the support of such famous lefties as Prof Linda Colley and Sir David Cannadine.
This is not an attempt to replace the existing taxpayer-funded system or to “privatise” the universities. It is about getting more cash into the teaching of the humanities, and about additional elite provision. It is about creating a new and different model for university education, side by side with the existing system. If well handled, it could be just as successful in widening “access” as any of the current outreach programmes being pursued by other universities. It is the boldest experiment in higher education since the University of Buckingham was founded in 1983, and it fully deserves to succeed and to be imitated.
If academics are fed up with the tyranny of the Research Assessment Exercise; if they are demoralised by endless government attacks on their admissions procedures; if they feel they are being scapegoated for the weaknesses of the schools, then the New College for the Humanities shows the way. Three cheers for A C Grayling.
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At last, an Oxbridge for those who can’t get into Oxbridge - Telegraph
Of course, Bojo's being terribly sarky and mean here, as well he may, seeing that he got in himself.
I've tried to hate this initiative but I just can't. No doubt there'll be dozens of Oxbridge grads muttering "quis paget entrat" and so forth (like they're not all public schoolboys), but come on, they're using the rich guys fees to let poor people in, that's got to be good right? Sure you can't take away from the fact that there's a huge amount of randomness in Oxbridge selection and loads of people who deserve to get in don't, but attempting to close the gap between Oxbridge and other universities seems like a good start.
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