To those who went/know of uni pre 1960s/70s - was it more wealth based who went to what uni?

[Nyorkie500]

& what courses people did? Or was it more like the current day where grades is what mattered above things like family wealth eg for doing medicine at Oxford for example?

My father studied a science subject at Cambridge University in the early 1960s. He didn't come from a particularly wealthy family (his parents were primary school teachers). He had a full scholarship at an independent secondary school, which then made it easier for him to access university.

My parents went in the mid/late sixties. My Mums family had very very little money and were living month to month in a council house. She went to a middle of the road university quite a long way away from her home town and literally everything was paid for by the government.
My Dad's family weren't as poor but not wealthy. Again he had some sort of generous grant with accommodation thrown in too.

My father was the first in his family ever to go to university. His parents were shopkeepers and were not wealthy but they did financially support him in some way - I know it was an issue when they withdrew their support when he got married as a student. He came from a non-fee paying grammar school and went to a polytechnic but it was the only place in the country at the time that did a degree in that subject.

@SometimesIFeedTheSparrows

My father was the first in his family ever to go to university. His parents were shopkeepers and were not wealthy but they did financially support him in some way - I know it was an issue when they withdrew their support when he got married as a student. He came from a non-fee paying grammar school and went to a polytechnic but it was the only place in the country at the time that did a degree in that subject.

This was late 1960s btw.

My DH would have gone to a poly in the 70s to study geography but started work instead. He went on to get a first in something I don't understand in his 50s.

I think it was probably less wealth based as there were full grants and children from disadvantaged families could win places at grammar schools which often led them to university.

My mum went to a grammar school and then on to university in the mid 50’s. There was some thing that I don’t totally understand where you had to do an extra term at school if you wanted to go to Oxbridge (to do their entrance exams I guess) and as she was from a working class family she felt she couldn’t really justify asking them to keep her for longer and so didn’t apply. She went to Bristol to do chemistry and got a full grant - which she said was quite generous and covered her costs and a holiday in the summer.
Quite a few girls at her grammar school left at 16 as their parents wanted them to start earning money rather than support them for an extra two years at school so they’d have a chance at university.

DF got a full scholarship to Oxford in the fifties to read classics. Previously he also had a full scholarship at a private school. His parents would never have been able to afford paying for his education as they were both working as servants. So for him it was all about his grades and nothing to do with his background.

He actually came out of uni with money saved up from what he was given.

Uni used to be free and with grants etc available to support children from low income households. My mum came from a working class family in the midlands - her dad was a plumber and her mum did laundry and ironing for wealthier families as well as some factory work. She passed the 11+, went to grammar school and then went to a red brick university to read politics. Didn’t cost her a penny. So no, it wasn’t more wealth based - quite the opposite!

Thanks for all the anecdotes :)
I more meant if you were not academically gifted but had a lot of family wealth, could you potentially buy yourself into Oxford etc back then like Prince Charles did?

@Nyorkie500

& what courses people did? Or was it more like the current day where grades is what mattered above things like family wealth eg for doing medicine at Oxford for example?

It’s hard to seperate the two though isn’t it? See how many replies have already said thier parent managed it because they were lucky enough to access an education beyond what they could afford.

My dad went to a red brick university in mid 60’s. Poor working class background from a rough council estate . Only two kids in his school year went to uni and no one else from his estate. He didn’t do very well which didn’t matter back then because a degree itself was worth a lot. He loved it!

Even though there were full grants, no fees etc family wealth still came into it.

My parents had to start work as soon as possible (aged 16) to bring money into the house.

My Nan wanted to train as a seamstress around the end of WW2 but wasn't allowed to even do that, she had to go into a factory aged 14.

I was the first in my family to go to Uni in 1990. I had no fees to pay and got a full grant. Dh is the son of a postman but went to Cambridge with no consideration of the cost.

Our dd1 will start Uni in just over a year with all the loans that involves.

I think dh and I were the luckiest generation!

I know someone who went to Oxford in the 60s and said his interview consisted of ‘your father went here, you’re in’ . I think he probably got reasonable grades though if not stellar ones.

Generally, I believe social mobility has decreased in the last 30 years, compared to the baby boomer, grammar-school, full-grant era of the 50s-80s.

That is, grammar schools were amazing for those able and allowed to get in. (There was a quota for girls, so less able boys were allowed in, where more able girls were not). For those who attended, there was a brief and wonderful meritocratic blip, in an otherwise wealth and background driven pattern of university attendance and access to top careers.

We've gone backwards since, in the sense that the most economically disadvantaged now have less chance of making it to the top than they did then.

No question about that. I think I might be at the tail end of the baby boom (born in very early 60s). Free secondary education, unlike those born in the 1930s; NHS; state pensions; final salary occupational pension schemes; no university tuition fees; generous maintenance grants and no loans for the minority who did get into higher education; affordable house prices; until the late 80s most people had wages/salaries that paid enough to support a family with no benefits or tax credits needed. I feel we are a very lucky generation indeed.

I wasn’t there but I wrote (slaved over) a dissertation on this.

Higher education in the 60s & 70s, even after the “plate glass revolution” would look to us overwhelmingly white, drawn from ABC1 class categories (middle and upper) and still overwhelmingly male, although they thought they were making progress. Even as the HE sector grew, middle and upper class young women took up most of the additional places. What social mobility there was mainly fed up through grammar schools.

Its more a case of who stayed on at school and did A levels. After all, only about 10% of pupils did A levels in the 70s. I had a 100% scholarship to an Independent school, several of my year left at the end of 5th form (Yr 11) to go to teacher training college. Of those that stayed to the end of 6th form, some did nursing, physio or radiography, and a few of us went on to Uni. Most of us with scholarships went to Uni, so I don't think access to money was the deciding factor, quite the reverse in fact.
I went to Uni with no fees and a full grant, with top ups from my parents.
DH went to a grammar school, but otherwise pretty similar. Interestingly, there was no suggestion that SIL would go to Uni.

@lottiegarbanzo

Generally, I believe social mobility has decreased in the last 30 years, compared to the baby boomer, grammar-school, full-grant era of the 50s-80s.

Yes, many more degrees, but an ever widening wealth chasm, fuelled by property prices.

@78percentLindt

Its more a case of who stayed on at school and did A levels. After all, only about 10% of pupils did A levels in the 70s. I had a 100% scholarship to an Independent school, several of my year left at the end of 5th form (Yr 11) to go to teacher training college. Of those that stayed to the end of 6th form, some did nursing, physio or radiography, and a few of us went on to Uni. Most of us with scholarships went to Uni, so I don't think access to money was the deciding factor, quite the reverse in fact. I went to Uni with no fees and a full grant, with top ups from my parents. DH went to a grammar school, but otherwise pretty similar. Interestingly, there was no suggestion that SIL would go to Uni.

Are you sure they went to teacher training college? My mum went to teacher training college in the early 1950s in Scotland with Scottish Highers under her belt. All the girls who left my school at 16 and didn't go to FE/sixth form college or another sixth form went to secretarial college. I'm sure I recall from careers literature that you needed at least one A level to go into teacher training.

more meant if you were not academically gifted but had a lot of family wealth, could you potentially buy yourself into Oxford etc back then like Prince Charles did?

Plenty of people from rich families failed to get into Oxford and Cambridge - though you probably don't want to believe that.

It’s amazing how things have changed. My parents both had poor, barely went to school immigrant fathers. Very working class backgrounds. Both made it to grammar school and then Manchester/Durham Universities in the 50’s (no Oxbridge for my mum as she was ‘getting above her station’) and then onto professional careers. No doubt in my mind at all that social mobility has dropped.

Around then, it was those who went to grammar schools (or the comprehensives that had recently been grammars) who went to university, plus those from the more academic private schools (which had a huge advantage for Oxbridge entry as there were additional exams which most state schools did not prep well for - some privates offered an extra term post A level for Oxbridge exam prep)

I don't think the Royal Family bought Prince Charles a place. No idea if any money changed hands, but it was surely more a case of waving him in because of who he was. Who'd want to turn down the chance of having a big name alumnus with fantastic connections?

I read an interesting investigation of social mobility in the 50s,60s,70s (sorry, can't remember where). The main takeaway was that it was labour shortages that led to social mobility rather than educational opportunities. Firms needed to keep good workers so on the job training and regular promotion was offered, even to school leaves, wages also increased. People could move from job to job easily chasing better opportunities or conditions, just go down the labour exchange. Holds true in my family: DDad and FIL both from similar working class backgrounds, FIL left school at 15 no qualifications, DDad went to uni, both moved up in the world and ended up comfortably off. Education played only a small part, the numbers going to gramnar school & uni were too small to explain social mobility.
Incidentally, my Dads full grant was so generous he used to send money home to help out his parents!