Oxbridge: Blatant social engineering - not admission according to potential.

[Marchesman]

Despite resistance from some tutors, Cambridge University’s Access and Participation Plan 2020-21 to 2024-25 includes a target to increase the proportion of UK state sector students that is entirely separate and independent of aims for POLAR4 quintiles 1 and 2. Formulating admissions targets for the University of Cambridge’s Access and Participation Plan (2020-21 to 2024-25) | Cambridge Admissions Office

The university's own research in 2011 had "found no statistically significant differences in performance by school type, and there was no evidence of the phenomenon observed at other UK universities of state sector students outperforming their privately educated peers" https://www.cao.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cao.cam.ac.uk/files/ar_gp_school_performance.pdf Subsequent data shows that students from independent schools performed better in examinations than students from state schools by 2015/16, at a level that is highly statistically significant: https://www.informationhub.admin.cam.ac.uk/university-profile/ug-examination-results/archive

Therefore, APP 2020-21 to 2024-25 makes no attempt to justify the state school target on the basis of student performance. In fact the only justification given is: "We recognise that school type is not a characteristic used by the OfS or contained within its Access and Participation dataset; we recognise too that the state versus independent binary masks a range of educational experiences…[however] each of the under-represented groups identified within this Plan appear in far greater numbers in state maintained schools, as do students from low income households who are not identified by any of the measures currently available to us."

The result of this can be seen in https://www.cao.cam.ac.uk/files/attainment_outcomes.pdf

In final degree examinations: "The per cent mark remained lower for the three secondary school types: • Comprehensive (estimate = -0.70, SE = 0.19, t = -3.63, p< 0.001); • State grammar (estimate = -0.98, SE = 0.19, t = -5.22, p< 0.001); • State other (estimate = -0.87, SE = 0.20, t = -4.32, p< 0.001)" To put this into context, these are the figures for students with "cognitive or learning difficulties (estimate = -0.88, SE = 0.33, t = -2.67, p< 0.01)"

Regarding the acquisition of a First: "The probability of the outcome remained lower for the three secondary school types: • Comprehensive (coefficient = -0.20, SE = 0.06, z = -3.13, p< 0.01); • State grammar (coefficient = -0.30, SE = 0.06, z = -4.81, p< 0.001); • State other (coefficient = -0.24, SE = 0.07, z = -3.57, p< 0.001)"

Selection according to potential? Really?

@Walkaround

Would you explain the difference that you perceive between my definition of potential and Cambridge's?

Not a problem for me really. I tend to think “more fool them”.

If top ranking institutions choose to play politics and select on bases other than merit and potential, they will damage themselves. We are lucky in the UK that Oxbridge is not the be all and end all.

There was a slightly huffy poster recently surprised at an LSE academic claiming the LSE was the top economics department in the country. And even more surprised that informed posters , albeit with some qualification, did not disagree with the academic’s assertion. Ditto the DD is reasonably confident that Imperial was the best place to study biomedical engineering.

So some bright students don’t go to Oxbridge but instead get a world class, truely international education in, say, London. Not something to lose sleep over.

@Marchesman - I thought there has been discussion for years about privatising Cambridge and Oxford and removing themselves from being a “public institution” formally. If you are not going to get the funding (what actual low per cent is it these days anyway?), then what is the point with having to deal with the fickle shackles of current day Government policies?

@Needmoresleep

That's interesting. I expect that response from the sort of people who game state education, I would hope for more from institutions.

@JustanothermagicMonday1

I think this is driven more by biased, left-wing academics, who feel underpaid.

@Marchesman - if Cambridge includes a good honours category as demonstrating the potential to succeed and you don’t, you are not viewing potential in the same way at all. For a start, I don’t know why you are suddenly describing a 2:1 as mediocre. There is insufficient difference between a good 2:1 and a 1st from Oxford or Cambridge to conclude that the person with the 2:1 is less original and has less potential, rather than being less polished than the person with the 1st. A good undergraduate degree is just another stepping stone towards being able to succeed and reach your potential - it is evidence of potential or likely future success.

As for “hoarding privilege,” It doesn’t take long for a bright, poor student to work out that if they want to be able to provide for their own children so that they can be viewed in future as having become “better people” and can have their every need met and then some, it is better to waste whatever potential they might have had to, eg, make a scientific breakthrough (which is the potential their degree might have been pointed towards them having), and instead try to get into finance, which their degree does not show evidence of them having any ability or prior success in. Likewise, a lot of wealthy, public school educated students will seek the same, because it is not easy not to be able to offer to your own children what you had afforded to you by your parents (ie a privileged lifestyle). In a grossly unequal society, there are too many perverse incentives not to seek to do good, but to maximise profit even if this is harmful to society - because you either do that, or find yourself in a position where, one day, someone will tell your child that they lack potential because they “only got a 2:1 from Cambridge,” due to their inferior education.

I always thought the broad 2:1 approach is flawed anyway. Other countries are more likely to differentiate between students’ achievements in much more detail than that https://www.findamasters.com/guides/grade-point-average-a-guide-for-indian-students

With the uni blind recruitment going on in the private sector, it might be a better and fairer approach for English universities too to differentiate into more detail than just majority of students getting a 2:1.

I don't agree that bankers etc don't do good. For a start there would be no NHS without the high taxes a lot of the higher paid pay. Secondly it is just as important a lawyer advises on empkloyment contracts i the NHS or the patent protection for the drugs which save lives in the NHS as that the hospitals are kept clean and staffed. Obviously view differ - eg contemplative nuns who never leave the convent and pray all day probably think they are doing more than anyone to help others, others will think washing the feet of the poor is the best way to do it. Others again that by working in roles that are key to our country's success like finance and banking are doing God's work as much as anyone else.

On the Oxbridge point is has always for the very bright been pot luck who gets the place rather than some carefully honed method to pluck the very top from each generation. So slightly skewing it to help those on free school meals who have the grades is probably not going to have a h uge impact - in that it will remain to an extent the luck of a drawer, who interviews you on the day etc to the extent I think it is still relatively fair but we should certainly keep an eye to ensure it does not move to a system that is very unfair and does not work.

It is certainly interesting to see university blind recruitment given student A may have bust a gut from a single parent free school meals situation in Newcastle to get to Oxbridge only to find that counts for nothing when the person applies for jobs.

Who are all these terrible smug state school parents who are slagging you off for going private yet playing the system themselves so upsetting you? Sounds like you just need better friends.

My friends use aa mix of state and private and some flit between the two no one gives a stuff or judges anyone. Often the school moves are prompted by SN or mental health issues not playing the system for which everyone feels very sympathetic. We are all just trying to survive the teen years frankly.

@Xenia, I didn’t say all bankers do no good. Responsible banking can be extremely helpful to society. It is fantastic for society to nurture a variety of different talents. Where we over-reward some characteristics compared to others, however, we create perverse incentives to do harm and turn inwards, focusing too narcissistically on the self. It’s a difficult balance, but I think we have taken away so many checks and balances that one side of the scales has crashed to the floor.

@Walkaround
If Cambridge includes a good honours category as demonstrating the potential to succeed...

It doesn't. It uses a good honours degree as a demonstration of having succeeded.

But most Cambridge undergraduates from all types of school achieve that. It is therefore a blunt instrument, only remaining significant for students from grammar schools - who do worse. It was a useful metric when the 1993 cohort was investigated and most students did not get a "good degree" (in the current sense). The most meaningful metric for comparison purposes is marks, although the metric that defines success most accurately in absolute terms is firsts.

(You might argue that a low SES entrant with sub AAA at A level who achieves an upper second is more successful than a higher performing entrant who achieves a first but that is not how Cambridge has measured success, nor would it be possible to do so because those with firsts could all be Nobel prize winning geniuses.)

“My friends use aa mix of state and private and some flit between the two no one gives a stuff or judges anyone. Often the school moves are prompted by SN or mental health issues not playing the system for which everyone feels very sympathetic. We are all just trying to survive the teen years frankly.”

I am in this category too. With one child I ended up googling state boarding options, half seriously. Even that is very expensive these days.

Amongst the most privileged friends I have there is, in any event, a bit of an inverse snobbery towards Oxford and Cambridge, along the lines of “Far too academic darling…” - there is a fierce protection of quality time and a snobbery towards too much “aspiration” anyway. Same category of friends all moved out of West London when it came to the 11 plus private school process and not because their DC are not intelligent. It is because there is such privilege and security in who they are and what they have that they refuse to engage in the level of competition required. So I doubt that lot will bother applying or even caring about what Oxford or Cambridge does, even if the student in question has the required potential.

@Marchesman - Yes, but we both know that is not how Cambridge really sees it, anyway, so it is disingenuous to continue to argue along those lines yourself, as the logical conclusion of that line of argument is not to let in or help poor people who have suffered any kind of educational disadvantage, because it’s apparently too late to help them, they are already failures. And there is no point pretending that the quality of education of those “gaming” the state sector is equal to the excesses from which the public school educated child benefits, which go far beyond what is necessary to make a “better person.”

By increasing the number of state school places, Cambridge may hypocritically be taking in some less deserving candidates (including from public schools), but they are also forcing themselves to take in more of the genuinely disadvantaged. Which is why we need to improve education and living standards for all, because it has been agreed that this is only fair (but also harmful to us if we leave it too late to help them properly, so have to start fiddling with the results to make them look better than they actually are).

@JustanothermagicMonday1
It is because there is such privilege and security in who they are and what they have that they refuse to engage in the level of competition required. So I doubt that lot will bother applying or even caring about what Oxford or Cambridge does, even if the student in question has the required potential.

This is also true in my proxy experience of one of the big old public schools. The Oxbridge entrants are nearly all children of professional parents, with a few children on means tested awards. Oxbridge is a complete irrelevance to nearly everyone else, although it surprised me that even seriously rich parents, UK and foreign, were still keen on their children going to some sort of British university, but usually they go to the likes of Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, or a London university.

This is also true in my proxy experience of one of the big old public schools

Any yet so untrue of mine.

And how weird that the statistics quoted upthread show that a very sizeable majority of the Eton 2021 cohort applied to either Oxford or Cambridge. That doesn't suggest that they're an irrelevance, quite the reverse (until kid is rejected).

@Walkaround
We both know that is not how Cambridge really sees it, anyway, so it is disingenuous to continue to argue along those lines yourself, as the logical conclusion of that line of argument is not to let in or help poor people who have suffered any kind of educational disadvantage.

One of us believes that Cambridge defines potential in a different way to that which I gave above, but has thus far failed to provide evidence of the alternative - despite also having access to the APP where success and potential are mentioned a total of seventy times.

@Walkaround
By increasing the number of state school places, Cambridge may hypocritically be taking in some less deserving candidates (including from public schools), but they are also forcing themselves to take in more of the genuinely disadvantaged.

Some? They are predominantly taking in additional less deserving candidates, by a huge margin, as I have already said. Between 2017 and 2021, Cambridge increased its annual admission of 'genuinely disadvantaged' by 19 and its total from comprehensive schools by 281. So, only 6% of the increased intake are disadvantaged (vs 48% that were high SES). This is approximately equal to the proportion of disadvantaged pupils in highly selective comprehensive schools (and grammar schools). In other words despite outreach activities the extra intake from comprehensives is no less socially selective than that of the most selective state schools and not much better than that of private schools.

@Marchesman - except you have said that a state comprehensive education is a disadvantage 🤣🤣. And you have either not read what I have written about the meaning of potential, or a choosing to ignore it - ie are being disingenuous. As for the rest, it is all your subjective interpretation, not indisputable fact.

It is certainly your subjective opinion, for example, that a Cambridge 2:1 is mediocre.

Thanks for the link @JustanothermagicMonday1 , very interesting. DD2 did a Masters at a different university from where she did her undergrad. When she applied they quizzed her in detail about the specific modules she had taken, and why. They also really dug down into her dissertation in minute detail – I guess they were looking for evidence of an interest in a specific area.

Her Masters took a GPA approach to marking – this was for a lab-based, research-intensive STEM subject at a university which is renown by anyone in that field. I tend to think of GPA as American in style, but maybe it's becoming more popular in the UK now?

@Walkaround
It is certainly your subjective opinion, for example, that a Cambridge 2:1 is mediocre.

You continue to fail to comprehend what I have written, then you put your incorrect interpretation onto it and fire it back at me. For example, what I said was:
'The only caveat being that I have ignored the good honours category as too broad to be useful, except as a measure of the potential to not do very well.'
It is so broad that it is useless in the context of this sort of statistical analysis, it is not one thing it is two, with different values which together are achieved by 90% of students, the only useful information to be gleaned from it is the number of people who get Desmonds or thirds, that is, those who do not do very well.

@Walkaround
@Marchesman - except you have said that a state comprehensive education is a disadvantage

Nowhere have I said that. Comprehensive education is too hetergeneous to be able to say this. Mostly of my references to comprehensive schools relate to those that do the exact opposite - provide an advantage.

@Walkaround
I know what you have written about your understanding of the meaning of potential. What you have not done, is demonstrate that Cambridge's use of the word is different from mine.

@goodbyestranger

It suggests they are not an irrelevance at Eton. It suggests nothing about their relevance elsewhere.

heterogeneous

@Marchesman - I distinctly remember you referring to a 2:1 as mediocre. Also, as someone who has opted out of the state comprehensive system, I think you don’t actually know what you are talking about. And now you are admitting that this statistical analysis does not give enough information to be telling you what you are saying - you are being subjective. So I have comprehended you perfectly well.

As someone whose children go to a “bog standard comprehensive” that hardly ever sends children to Oxford or Cambridge, but has had more modest success in the last few years, my personal experience disagrees with yours. And I find it distasteful to be told I should be getting worked up about two groups of society who, imvho, are like two fat kids in the playground arguing over who is the fattest. Those wealthy enough to afford public schools to make their children “better people,” and those wealthy enough to use state and private schools in ways that advantage them, have both proven, through centuries of lived human experience, that they only have their own interests at heart, and neither group thinks much of the poor and educationally disadvantaged.

As for those in the middle who don’t want to get involved in the argument - they are just getting on as best they can, and this is not so well these days, due to the behaviour of people who were mostly educated in the private sector. Political interference and manoeuvring has done none of us any favours. So to that extent, I agree with you. State education is harmed by politicians. Our universities are being harmed by politicians. I do not think people who went to public schools have become better people - I think too many have moved on to places where they have caused harm to people not like them.

How anyone can pontificate that public school “makes better people” after witnessing how a public school clique behave whilst in power - well no words really.