You think the British class system is a bit of a thing from the past, then you start looking into university’s and realise oh here it is, it’s still alive and kicking

[Ohhereiswhereitis]

like it’s just become a bit more hidden

I had a French friend who told her dad (an architect = elite) that she wanted to study to be a physio rather than go to engineering school. His response? Oh , you’re choosing to fail then?

Well you can add my dcs into your data to skew it! Oxbridge admit thousands of students per year. Some people have watched Saltburn and thought it was a documentary.

Also - surely Oxbridge should be the pinnacle of academic achievement? Why not focus on universities which are far “posher” in composition, eg St Andrew’s which is ferociously expensive to attend accommodation-wise?

However posters will be pleased to know that many employers are falling over themselves to avoid Oxbridge students. One of my dcs faced an application that was university-blind and class-of-degree blind. I said they may just as well pick names out of a hat. Ds was told to his face at an interview by an HR person that the last people they wanted were white Oxbridge males. Ds was quite upset and felt he’d been invited just so someone could humiliate him.

Given that more and more state-school pupils are going to Oxbridge, it seems wild that HE departments are applying rules which would have been more appropriate for 30 years ago and are slapping down kids who slogged their guts out to get there.

Regarding trades, rather than university. The trades can provide a good income, but unless you set up your own business and retire from the hands on stuff from about mid 40s, it's very difficult to work in the trades all your life. The trade person is often carrying income limiting injuries for a large part of their later working life - at exactly the time that the white collar counterpart is becoming senior at work and earning the most.

It is also still quite difficult for women to enter some of the trades - the big firms will take women as apprentices these days, but a lot of apprenticeships are from small businesses and it's still quite difficult to get one of these as a girl - they want a gofer to lift heavy stuff and most tradesmen are reluctant to give that sort of job to a girl, nor could some more petite girls do it.

I was turned down for a uni agricultural placement when they saw I was female and short so I can imagine it’s the same in trades.

I did a masters at Oxford as a single mum having spent years waitressing and on universal credit after getting my degree from open university

My dd got a full
loan but the majority of that went on accommodation.

So my point is it’s not all rich and posh people going to Oxford and Cambridge! I actually dropped out of school after GCSEs as a young parent as well, but I worked extremely hard throughout my degree and scored consistently 90-95 so that’s what got me there. As a student at Oxford I only felt the class thing when I mixed with the wider student population as most students on my course were international. At first I couldn’t work out why other students would ask me what school I went to when I was at formals and I’d say.. um a state school in the midlands I doubt you’d know it? Eventually I worked out they were assessing whether I was privately educated!

Ah another thread bashing middle/upper class kids...FYI OP, the class system is not going anywhere, no matter how bitter that makes some people.

Apparently it doesn’t exist anymore. Someone said on about page 3. Repeatedly.

I think what most people struggle with is that those people in a position of privilege, are largely denying it.

That was me and yes I said that wealth inequality is the main issue nowadays, over class. Sutton Trust clearly states it, and that the old ladders of social mobility ie education aren't as influential any more. Instead, it's access to local services and the strength of local economy.

I am always shocked by how many journalists, news reporters are still mostly from private school, Oxbridge or TV personalities who just have famous parents.

How can you challenge the Establishment if you are the Establishment, this is why we get such right wing leaning press, it's self serving.

As is the Left wing press. Just chock full of nepo babies. Stop making this a right/left thing. Both are equally culpable.

To be fair, yes probably.

In terms of nepotism.

In terms of being self-serving establishment rife with nepotism yes

These two quotes are (hollow) laughable. Really examine what you have posted. People just aren’t working/researching hard enough? Come on!

They do say clogs to clogs in 3 generations. There is some scope to change class in the UK. I would say my mother did - became a teacher whereas her grandmother was a miner's wife who had 11 children (10 survived - 2 up 2 down cottage and on the 1917 photo of them all once she had been widowed a 2nd time with a baby the 3 oldest girls including my granny were already away from home in service - one living ina priest house - housekeeper job, another with a local family and my granny was very adventurous and took herself off in 1921 to work as a nanny (having masses of younger siblings means you can be quite good with children) in India for a year.

One of my sons works in a warehouse (happily so, never used his degree )

I am more interested in new graduates first jobs as my twins are in their 20s and at that stage, than university at this point and what happens to people say 10 years after university not just one year and why we all end up as we do.

It is a very interesting topic. The UK has never been as popular nor had as many people coming to it so we must be doing a vast number of things right to be one of the top places where people want to be I suppose.

In my profession, law, a lot of effort is made to help increase numbers of women partners, help the 12% of the UK which is not white to get jobs etc - obviously without breaching the Equality Act 2010. I do remember my white blonde son looking at some photos from law firm websites and firm after firm on recruitment sites we saw had not one single white man - loads of black people, women in head scarves, white women but for some reason white men not featured (that is not true for all firms of course) and he said - looks like they don't want me.

Yes it's about who you know, not what you know. I managed by myself to get a decent job after university but I am not sure I would now.

The really well off are fine.

And those from poor backgrounds are fine as there is so much help these days with targeted internships, Sutton Trust etc*

If you are in the middle, I am not sure what you end up doing these days unless you are VERY driven and have a fair amount of luck.

*but then, even though you were the first in your family to go to university/lived in a poor area etc, you will then be considered to have made it and your kids will be excluded from internships etc. The system seems to be aimed at making people downwardly mobile.

I come from an ordinary working class family background but went to St Andrews. Half of my university friends were privately educated, the other half, like me, were grammar school educated. I had higher grades than any of my privately educated friends. I don't think that's because I'm intrinsically more intelligent but because at grammar school we had it drummed into us that in order to compete to get to our chosen university we had to be as good as, or ideally better than, students from private education. As a consequence we worked extremely hard, achieved good results and in my case it gave me the confidence to know I'd earned my place there, regardless of the fact that my background was strikingly different to the background of a lot of my peers.

What I found at St Andrews was that students who came from what I'd call "old money" - whose family home was a castle or a sprawling estate - were very easy to talk to and get along with. The pretentious ones, with their fake "ok, yah" accents and their tendency to look down at any one from a working class background, came from families where wealth was a recently acquired thing. Once I worked that out, I found St Andrews easy to navigate.

Also people are always banging on about trades but it's not that easy - you need the manual dexterity to be able to do a trade, you can't just be taught it - there has to be a latent ability there. It's a good job I have a knowledge job because I would have been useless at anything else!

And then you need to be a tremendous problem solver because you never know what you will encounter on a job. Every job will be different.

What I found at St Andrews was that students who came from what I'd call "old money" - whose family home was a castle or a sprawling estate - were very easy to talk to and get along with.

People who have had generations of wealth and statues are secure in themselves and not threatened by others. That's quite normal tbh.

Interesting. I didn't know that. But then do they have more private funding than most universities from donations perhaps? Coukd this be part of it?

Exactly, they had nothing to prove. However, bearing in mind I came from a council estate, and was only aged 18, wealth on this scale was something I'd never encountered before.

Of course the British Class system is still in full swing, when my daughter started school it was a 2 form entry and there was a very clear line in the children’s names between the two classes, one was full of Charlottes, Elizabeths and James’ and the other was Jayden’s, Freddie’s and Ellie-Maes, and the parents of one class were mostly middle class professionals and the other class were mostly working class. One of the teachers had been at the school for decades and we suspect chose the children she wanted in her class.

Not sure why they should deny it.

There will always be a class system, no matter what. And nobody should be made to feel ashamed of being from any class.
I despise the sneeriness on MN, smacks of jealousy.