Do Oxbridge grads get a negative reputation in the workplace?

[hungarianharlot]

I was having a conversation at work the other day which somewhat surprised me. A few colleagues and I were talking about universities and where their kids were going to apply. DS is going to apply for history at Oxford.

I’m new to the workplace but the company sometimes has graduates from Oxford or Cambridge.

Colleagues said that those who went to Oxbridge were much less likely to want to get stuck in with the “boring” jobs and more likely to feel “entitled” to the more interesting work or for other people to assist them. Another said she finds them more likely to ask lots of questions rather than just getting things done. Is this fair?

Honestly, it wasn’t a particularly positive sentiment.

Ridiculous. I doubt any of my colleagues even know I studied at Cambridge.

I have DEFINITELY known some people who practically introduce themselves as Name Cantab 😁and I would say overall, yes, but no group is a monolith. I know some very down-to-earth Cantabs/Oxons, some smug but useless ones, and some pompous grads from other universities who believe their 2:1 in classics should preclude them from ever having to actually work hard

What a load of classist rubbish 😂

Oxford and Cambridge are not small universities so it's pretty common to have gone there. I live quite near Oxford and once I saw into the postie's trolley on the day the (late, unlamented) Oxford and Cambridge alumni magazine came out. The bag was absolutely stuffed with copies of said magazine so I'd estimate a third of households in our extremely boring housing estate were Oxbridge grads.

Everyone in the entire North East of England knows I went to Oxford, because my dad told them all. Guess what, everyone in the North East either went there/Cambridge themselves or has a child, niece, nephew or whatever who did too.

There is a disproportionate number of posh people at Oxbridge and probably a disproportionate number of eccentric, focused people and they're the ones who stick out and fit the stereotype. Everyone else is pretty ordinary really.

Don’t be ridiculous.

@deplorabelle Oxford takes less than 3500 undergrads a year. It’s relatively small. Most people I suspect don’t work with a time who has been. Large numbers of Oxbridge grads work in the south or south east. Fewer as you go north. London is a big pull.

Oxford, last year, noted 20% of their students declared a sen.

It’s also worth noting, dc with rich parents can also be very bright and their parents are often bright too! Intelligence runs in families I find.

I've found some Oxbridge grads on work experience to be startlingly impractical. Like the one who was completely baffled at the fact that letters weren't automatically printing out on letterhead paper. He saw no correlation with the fact that, when he refilled the printer, he put plain paper into it.

If you are super-bright then you will bring your intellect to your job - and that means asking questions rather than just ‘get things done’. If you want someone who just follows basic instructions doing a repetitive task then employing someone who is superbright to do it is pointless. That person should be used to improve systems/develop better products/etc. There will be others for whom the boring task represents sufficient intellectual challenge that they will be satisfied by the task.

Intelligence has a large inherited aspect to it. Something that is rather inconvenient for government policy around things like ‘closing the attainment gap’ at schools.

@Multibarpack I can think of many jobs where grads won’t be rocking the boat by asking questions when they turn up for work. That’s going to guarantee others are not going to gel with you. Teamwork is something valued by companies and the best ones have very secure processes and working methods. Most grads have enough to
learn to work quickly and efficiently without questioning everything.

You missed my point - it is about fit. High intellect is not a good fit for many roles. One reason why they may seem successful in their careers is because they are not a good fit for many jobs so they get bored and look for more stimulation quickly so move on (possibly before previous failings have come to light). If you want to recruit someone who will do a job steadily and well then they are the wrong people. If you want someone to take on a very challenging role involving large amounts of constantly changing information then they might be a better fit. This may include eg investment banking.

My issue is with candidates who have an over-inflated sense of self worth. They are more likely to be public school boys from certain public schools, but not all public school boys and not all public schools,

To be absolutely clear - Oxbridge public school boys are over rather than underrepresented in the “promoted above their abilities” section of the job market. If there is prejudice against them, it’s not very effective.

I’ve only ever worked with one Oxford grad. I looked at her LinkedIn after she had been particularly insufferable and arrogant all week, in a way that no other colleague had ever been. Ahh Oxford University grad, well that explains it all, I thought.

@Mouldemort Who judges that? How do you know? Is there data on over promotion at work we can all see? Or just your prejudices?

I suspect that it is confirmation bias. The ones who brag about going to Oxbridge are most likely going to brag about other stuff too. But there will be many other graduates (like me) who rarely mention where they have studied. ds2 did get a comment from his internship mentor (company with Cambridge office) that they avoided Cambridge students but that was because they thought the course was too theoretical (initial years anyway) and they wanted interns who had more practical experience (this was for computer science).

The only person I knew that was overtly like that went to Imperial College London.

Oh and a law student, doing her degree at Bournemouth Uni. She thought that her and her fellow law students were existing on a higher plane of thinking because they were studying law.

A good place to start is politics, in particular the Johnson government.

I am very happy to have Oxbridge grads on my projects at work (Big 4). I work with a lot of brainy people but if I want real intellectual horsepower the Oxbridge ones are generally very strong.

One delightful bit of research demonstrates that the level of promotion of public school boys is strongly correlated not to academic achievement but to school fees.

It's certainly true that London (and Oxford and Cambridge themselves) have a much larger number - you can't sneeze without hitting an Oxford grad where I live in South Oxon- which is why I was surprised to experience the large reach of Oxbridge even in fairly deprived bits of the north east of England.

Because people bundle Oxbridge together it makes a moderate sized block of cohort every year (note, I didn't say big just not small). And because of the shiny reputation, people are also more likely to mention they went there for PGCE, postgrad, MBA etc so it punches above its weight from that point of view too.

The point is, people will always notice and make a value judgement on any Oxbridge grad they come across but there are many more who completely fly under the radar. Unless you ask absolutely every person who crosses your path if they've ever been of the Oxbridge persuasion, you will miss some. And they are more likely to the ones who don't fit the stereotype.

I agree. No-one wants to be poor, but there are an awful lot of young people who, while wanting to be remunerated well, don't prioritise money over job satisfaction.

The kind of jobs that pay six figures within a couple of years of starting are not the kind of jobs that interest DD or her friends. They would absolutely hate to be an accountant/lawyer/work in finance/work the brutal hours to earn that kind of money. It has nothing to do with lack of ambition or aspiration. Those jobs just don't appeal.

I have DEFINITELY known some people who practically introduce themselves as Name Cantab

How many non Cambridge graduates would know what that means? I'm not stupid, but I had to google it. I didn't do Latin at school.

It’s also worth noting, DC with rich parents can also be very bright and their parents are often bright too! Intelligence runs in families I find.

And because they also value education. You do get your rich but dim people as well.

Some of the stereotypical generalisations on here are rather depressing. TBH, none of the privately educated people/Oxbridge grads I know are full of their own self importance, and I agree that there is probably some confirmation bias going on.

I've not detected any differences between recent Oxbridge grads and others. Those who were not so delightful pre-Uni are much the same post-Uni, although one is vastly improved, I suspect due to having a girlfriend who won't put up with his misogynistic claptrap (an entirely different story).

Having said that, out of the friends who I know when there, approx. 2/3 NEVER let you forget it and drop it into any conversation they can, to the point that I actively avoid several of them now. Frankly, I'm too old for that kind of arse-holery and would likely tell them that if I saw them more than once in a blue moon.

@deplorabelle*Everyone in the entire North East of England knows I went to Oxford because my dad told them all”.

😂😂😂😂

Classic.

I’ve encountered graduates from other universities that were similarly entitled, they seemed to think their university degree meant they didn’t have to do the mundane tasks and weren’t at the bottom of the hierarchy, when actually they were, their degrees got them an interview, the interview techniques they had got them the job but now they start at the bottom and need to prove that they are good employees