Nadim wading into Oxbrdige entrance debate

[mids2019]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10793175/Thinktank-Oxbridge-discriminating-against-grammar-schools-unfairly-impact-black-pupils.html

DM article here so maybe a bit of bias and the article is a little confused.

I get the impression that our new education Secretary (who is a big fan of grammar schools) has started to notice the diversity policies explicitly stated by Oxbridge in its attempts to take in students from comprehensives/deprived backgrounds.

I noted his dislike of discrimination of any form and I am taking this as a warning to top universities not to engage in activity which may be perceived as positive discrimination.

I understand that if grammar schools seem to be a link to allowing ethnic minorities to gain Oxbrdige places this is a good thing however it would seem not many from grammar schools are truly deprived socially so the situation is complex.

Do you think the government should be involving itself with this vexed issue of leaving to HE leaders.

(I think Nadim's inbox maybe overflowing with a mail's from concerned grammar/independent school parents whose children may not have got their university of choice)

Oxford and Cambridge certainly don’t have anywhere near the highest proportion of overseas students out of all the UK universities - I don’t think they are even in the top 15: www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/student-advice/where-to-study/international-students-at-uk-universities

I doubt you need an FOI, there's data in fine detail on Cambridge admissions easily available from the links on here. I'm no idea why you're surprised at the number of overseas students at oxbridge. Or why you seem to think it's a bad thing. As to 'skew' ..obviously some subjects will be more valued than others in various parts of the world and international fees are likely to affect what people are willing to pay for. You'll almost certainly find similar (if not higher) numbers of overseas students on those courses elsewhere.

www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/apply/statistics

There are some stats on numbers of overseas students generally here

www.studying-in-uk.org/international-student-statistics-in-uk/

Way lower than LSE, UCL, Imperial. And for the latter, most courses will have limitations on numbers of places due to lab space, it's not really accommodation which is the limiting factor.

I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, however if a college takes for example only 3 for economics and 1 of those is overseas then it is reducing the pool of places for U.K. students. Just saying I am not sure that many applicants realise this. The speaker was very clear that this does reduce the number of places for U.K. applicants, he was asked a direct question in the question session.

i think it is different from say overseas numbers at Leeds, Bristol, York etc because at Cambridge the fact that you are in direct competition for a place is very obvious and it’s not needs blind. So it’s not the best three applicants regardless of home or overseas , it’s two places max for home and one overseas. He was clear that this was for funding reasons.

this Discussion is about Oxbridge so that I what I was addressing but I also think that all recruiter universities need to be less opaque about this, some like Imperial and St Andrews are very upfront. I do have some professional contact with the finance side of this and I sympathise with the universities but there is a lot of smoke and mirrors. It is simply not true that they take the best regardless of fee status, many places are reliant on a level of overseas income to maintain courses and facilities.

All I am saying is that if we are going to use our top universities as vehicles of social engineering ( which I think is a heavy burden to place on them) and judge them accordingly then we have to look at all the factors and variables that they are facing. Not just the narrow state v private debate.

I haven't been aware of a shred of opacity about the numbers of overseas students anywhere. Why would there be - there're more something to be proud than ashamed of. If applicants aren't aware that good courses attract foreign students, and that unis welcome them for financial (and other) reasons then frankly they're a bit stupid.

The competition for places within specific colleges at oxbridge is largely offset by the pooling system.

There must be a better way of working out contextual offers than simply independent and state

Oxbridge don't offer low contextual offers, you still have to achieve your A*'s regardless of where you come from. Look at the table above. A higher proportion of state school applicants "miss" their offers and therefore do not start their courses.

It still remains that the main key to getting more state school pupils at Oxbridge is for them to apply in the first place.

I’m sorry I don’t want an argument , I have been clear that I think overseas students are a good thing from an academic point of view.

But as someone who has seen the nuts and bolts of the mess that HE funding in this country is at first hand you are naive if you don’t realise that it is opaque at the financial level. It is unfair to expect universities to act as social engineers if they continue to be reliant on overseas funding to the extent that some are. We need to fund our higher education sector appropriately so that they can take the best regardless of background or fee status.

Are overseas students less qualified though? Are they not deserving of their places? Do they get an easier path? Is there a quota for overseas students or do numbers fluctuate? If they need X % of overseas students for the fee income, and deliberately close off those places to others, then that’s wrong. Is that information ever shared? Is it true that this happens?

We need to fund our higher education sector appropriately so that they can take the best regardless of background or fee status.

They do take most of 'the best', fortunately we have lots of excellent universities. It is neither necessary nor desirable for the exact cut of 'the best' to go to oxbridge.

There will be some who miss out on going to uni because of finances but that's not really what this discussion is about, since the costs are similar for all unis. There will be some who miss out because they're discouraged from applying or from 'aiming high'. Those are reasons why top unis need to be vocal about encouraging youngsters from all backgrounds to apply.

Are overseas students less qualified though?

Quite often they're more qualified, it's not uncommon for them to have already done some tertiary education before starting their U.K. undergrad degrees.

I’d rather assumed that too. But do we know if there are quotas? My DD did a very different course at university and they were given maximum international student places. Implying the rest were for uk based students. So quotas were theoretically in place. The international number was exceeded by a lot! That might reflect quality of uk students or lack of applications. Difficult to know! Lack of applicants is hardly a concern of Oxbridge though.

It does bring to mind the Gadaffi son's PhD ( LSE) scandal en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSE%E2%80%93Gaddafi_affair

I think on my children's undergraduate courses most people were UK undergraduates but that might just been their particular courses and is only ancedotal. I did once wonder that if you were fairly well off in the UK and had a second and other homes abroad you might find it easier to get a place payihg higher overseas fees particularly if you live in a few countries every year so have a choice under the rules (the opposite of worried UK mumsnetters who have been living abroad for a few years and their child does not then get an English student loan)

The statistics from last year prove that private/independent schools gained in the %ages of A grades etc. They all moved up a %age so your argument about schools competing with each other fails. They knew exactly what they were doing.

But one day hopefully those kids with over inflated grades will fail. It’s not fair.

Teacher assessed grades are awful and I was against it from 2020 on - I would rather we had more risk of covid and forced people into exam halls and said so at the time. Anyway it was a mistake and at least those who did GCSEs in covid now in 2022 can do realtively real exams even if much easier this year as syllabus limited and hopefully 2023 weill go back to normal and the normal level of A/ A* which I think is more like 19% not 50% overall.

At the end of the day if people are not really up to it they will do worse at university and then when they start working so it will hopefully all come out in the wash at the end of the day.

I did once wonder that if you were fairly well off in the UK and had a second and other homes abroad you might find it easier to get a place payihg higher overseas fees

A cursory glance at the most recent Cambridge admissions statistics refutes that idea. The overall 'success rate' for home students was 23.3%, whereas for non U.K. students it was 12.4%.

I remember a memorable thread on StudentRoom last year, when a student from, I think, Singapore, was incensed that she had not even got to interview, with her top grades, international medals, best in the world at xyz.

Also the spreadsheets they run showing offers v. applicants, and by home/international, huge numbers of international students are rejected pretty early on.

www.theguardian.com/education/2022/may/14/zahawi-rejects-idea-oxbridge-tilt-system-accept-more-state-pupils

As predicted really

@Xenia as a teacher I hated doing TAG/CAGs. But please please don't wish 'we had more cases of Covid'. My 42 year old colleague, mum of 2, used to run marathons, died of covid. Many teachers did. Wishing more covid on us is quite upsetting.

Nadims words , or at least the article , aren't about grammar schools. Eton is specifically mentioned. He also seems to think it is some giant tragedy for privileged boys to end up at - quelle horreur- Durham.

Good letter in Times today about this. 48 Eton boys gained entry to Oxbridge. This is higher than the total number of FSM students.

How many FSM students get top grade A levels I wonder? They get PP funding as stats show they need to catch up. They don’t, I think, show FSM students are getting thd top grades or why would they need PP funding?

Is there not also the issue that very many bright parents who can afford Eton and similar schools also have very bright children? Some families on FSM have struggled educationally and financially for generations. Others haven’t of course but FSM is a very rough tool to use for deserved entry to Oxbridge.

This says it all really.

It's about proportions is all. The point is that that remains a disproportionate entry for Eton.