Scatty but bright professor-types - have Oxbridge students changed?

[notyetretired]

Only asking, as of the young adults that I've come across lately, either currently at Oxbridge or who graduated in the last 10 years, none seem to fit the 'scatty professor' type as popularised in books and on TV/film. You know the type: slightly dishevelled professor sitting surrounded by piles of dusty books (I'm sure exaggerated too) but who have big ideas and talk fast.

Instead, the ones I know who are currently, or about to go, to Oxford or Cambridge are all bright but seem to, without fail, be of the 'extreme' work ethic ilk i.e. study all hours, and very organised to the point of perfection.

As I say, they're clearly bright but, at least in a several cases, I can't help feel that they don't seem particularly 'sparky'. Of course that might not be required or even preferred nowadays but I would have thought you'd need a full range of personalities and intellect, but that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Was that perhaps always the case or have the 'super bright and disorganised' types fallen out of favour?

Well, the whole point of academia is your research specialism, so it’s always going to be ‘niche’, rather than of general interest/application. And it’s certainly not been a ‘bubble’ in a long time — these days, an academic is usually running research projects with significant budgets, staff, administrative responsibilities and allied requirements to disseminate research in a public-facing way, not sitting tweedily in a library handwriting the same tome for 40 years and forgetting to show up to lectures.

I think those tweedy UC Old Etonian eccentrics are also largely fictional. These days, certainly, some of its best-known products are the intellectually under-endowed Prince Harry and Spencer Matthews. My college was full of OEs (90s) and “clever’ wasn’t the first word that would have leapt to mind as a descriptor.