Is Doxbridge a thing?

[mids2019]

Oxford and Cambridge both outside top 3 in uni rankings for first time https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15114137/Oxford-Cambridge-outside-three-prestigious-university-rankings-time-London-School-Economics-first.html?ito=native_share_article-top

I think the DM was trying to make a point about social inclusion but given the Times is a reputable university of guide is this a beginning of a shift where Oxbridge aren't undisputed in their dominance?

Durham is a really good university and in 2025 is it that Oxford and Cambridge have competitors?

I wouldn't worry. The free market tends to prevail. If people who aren't very good are let into Oxbridge they won't get or keep jobs. I didn't try Oxbridge by siblings went and we all did fine and none of my children even tried either (3 chose bristol over their Durham offers and 4 of them are London solicitors - last 2 qualified last year). If you are pretty good as I think those 4 are you will do fine. Employers are pretty clued up on contextuals who may not be very good v contextuals who are really good and did very well from a difficult background.

Do you have any evidence of this ideology taking over the Oxbridge curriculum, to the serious detriment of the well being of the professors? Or are you simply exercising that key private school skill mentioned on the previous page?

Gender ideology has certainly caused problems for some academics. A brief search of MN will provide plenty of evidence. Though it has often been fellow academics that cause the problems, not the students.

If I am exhibiting a key private school skill then it shows you do not need to go to a private school to obtain such skills, which rather disproves your earlier theories. I went to a very ordinary non-selective state school that hadn’t had an Oxbridge student for years. Indeed, not many students went to university at all. But don’t let your prejudice against private schools stand in the way of the facts or a quick search that is all that is necessary to find such evidence

https://www.hybridmag.co.uk/p/even-faculty-feel-frightened-says

https://afcomm.org.uk/2024/07/25/oxford-university-brings-out-flimsy-new-free-speech-code/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/25/richard-dawkins-trans-women-slogan-scientifically-false/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/24/academics-muzzled-by-cancel-culture/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65620586

Absolutely these things are happening, but not more so at Oxford and Cambridge than anywhere else? I don’t see why it’s relevant to this conversation. This is going on at most universities across the entire “league table”.

‘Everyone else was doing it too’ is not much of an excuse, and doesn’t stop Oxford academics wanting to leave when faced with it.

duplicate post

I’m in no way trying to excuse it. I’m just saying that it’s affecting all academics, not Oxford disproportionately, so is irrelevant in a discussion of “do people think academic standards at Oxford etc have slipped compared to other uk universities”.

But the fact that oxbridge has embraced these harmful ideologies like other universities surely shows that Oxbridge is not special compared to them?

Not in this sense, no. But why would it be. There are plenty of other criteria that universities rank themselves on, and that outsiders rank the universities on.

I don’t think that Oxford, Cambridge and other “top” universities working to ensure they get the actual brightest, highest potential students by casting the net as widely as possible is a bad thing, and I don’t think it’s “responsible for the decline of these once-great institutions” (or whatever the air of anxiety is when this sort of thing is discussed). They’re working to make students who are the first in their families to go to university, students who shine and achieve top grades at schools where a high proportion of students massively struggle, students who would have been put off Oxford or Cambridge because “everyone says it’s not for you”, to get all these people to apply. I do not think this sort of “widening participation” equates to weakening or devaluing these top universities. I do not think that it equates to the same sort of thing as gender ideology.

Statistics apparently suggest that those who went to private schools are more likely to vote Labour.

I don't disagree that accepting ideology, whether gender or whatever, is not solely an Oxbridge problem. However I wonder whether top Universities both in the UK and the US will suffering relatively more reputational damage if they accept things without being open to debate and alternative views. Thinking is what they are supposed to do, so cancel culture becomes very damaging.

London Universities seem to have done better. Perhaps because UCL was formed as a non religious alternative to Oxbridge. Perhaps because of the high numbers of overseas students and the "vocational" nature of so many of Imperial and LSEs degrees. Not perfect, but on gender good female academics seem to have been allowed a voice.

I know a couple of young people who have struggled because of they were open about their support of the Conservative party, even though it was the Government of the day. In the peak "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" days it was pretty grim to be a Tory at Oxbridge, even though the young person was very bright and personable and happy to debate. More recently a second was in despair when the only non-Marxist academic in his University in London department (not politics!) left and he essentially started treating his degree as a wfh qualification that he cynically progressed along with an interesting and career enhancing part time job. (He did perfectly fine!)

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-09-25-oxford-co-led-study-finds-majority-britons-continue-support-edi

Majority there being 52% - a drop from 62% over just 18 months. If that trend continued over the six months since the survey was done we would now be at a minority. And let us consider the question asked:

“Do you think that diversity, equity and inclusion is a good thing or a bad thing?”

It was not about the DEI industry, though given the drop in support it would suggest considerable failure on the part of that industry. It is also interesting to note that the publics understanding of these terms differ from activists. The public also don’t want DEI initiatives impacting their private lives.

Plus we should always consider the perspective of the authors of reports.

Either way, I think we never went as extreme as the US nor will we go as extreme the other way, as they seem to be doing.
So when people talk about US ideology on this thread infiltrating British unis, this is already a past phenomenon we are talking about?

There is definitely increasing push-back against these ideologies but it is certainly not a thing of the past.

Sure but most of us sitting in the centre, can live with a bit of DEI on speed vs the opposite extreme of manosphere/Reform/Andrew Tate/Adolescence nonsense that is being fed to our boys via social media.

They don’t sit on a spectrum from one to the other though. There is a lot of toxic masculinity within DEI - especially around gender ideology which is as much a men’s rights movement as Tate represents.

In the 80s we found it quite hard when inviting Tory cabinet members to speak to deal with left wing students throwing things rather than allowing free speech. Hopefully things will settle down in 2025 - we have had new guidance on "Free Speech" for universities this summer which might help ensure people can express the views they want - https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/for-providers/freedom-of-speech/

I do favour more free speech in most contexts but not if people do things like block roads or criminal damage. They can certainly insult gods and prophets and burn books which they own if they want.

That's kind of good to hear as DS just missed his STEP offer for Cambridge and is about to start at Warwick for maths. It has a good reputation but we never know whether it's true in the real world.

So how many faculty have been canned for saying things like "you can't change your sex"? And what does any of this have to do with that Cambridge classics professor's decision to leave, which even according to him had to do with Cambridge's undergrad rather than issues of faculty free speech.

So you are accusing this professor of lying over why he decided to quit?

Was this a classics professor? Kind of obvious that if central government does not provide enough funding for classics for state schools- why is that Oxbridge’s problem? How about online courses after school hours funded for state school
pupils, for example?

I searched around and I think previous posters are referring to this guy: https://thetab.com/2024/10/28/cambridge-uni-professor-resigns-over-alleged-declining-standards

His main comments seem to be focussed around what he sees as too much adaptation of teaching methods, due to increasing numbers of students requesting disability accommodations.
(I can’t see anywhere where he mentions gender ideology, though that has doubtless been a huge issue for many academics across many universities).

Araminta1003 it was pointed out earlier in the thread that Classics has a particular problem with access and standards - or rather, perceived standards. Some unis such as Durham have gone language lite ('The core of the Classics course is language, although how much language is studied and at what level, depends on you') but at Oxford and Cambridge language is fundamental, hence the additional challenge for state school students and the accusations of declining standards.
That said, the curriculum at Oxford has changed starting this academic year, after much faculty/ student debate about how it should be altered. But until now, first class classifications were overwhelmingly achieved by those who had studied classical languages at school and in fact by male rather than female students. So basically firsts went mostly to boys from the big name schools who had the advantage of excellent teachers and strong cohorts.
It's definitely unfair to make the claim that standards have declined, given the push to make Classics degrees at Oxford and Cambridge more open to state school students. They have an inbuilt disadvantage despite intensive language courses in their first year. It requires an astonishingly talented linguist to make up the difference, and state schoolers have been further held back by the (generally) poor quality of MFL teaching in state schools in recent years which has fed into the problem.

Cross post. I see, reading the article, that the objections are based on more than just access. Some of his points seem perfectly fair.