Cambridge University discriminates against children from private schools.

[Marchesman]

MN threads persist in claiming that Oxford and Cambridge Universities do not discriminate against private schools. Now two "academics" have written a half-baked book that argues for further reductions in the number of Oxbridge students from private schools (to 10% of the intake).

In 2023 at Cambridge 19.9% of students from comprehensive schools obtained first class degrees (23.5% from grammar schools) compared with 28.6% from private schools - evidence of unequivocal discrimination against the latter at the point of entry.

Cambridge's own analysis shows that British state-educated students already significantly underperform relative to foreign and privately educated British students. If more of the latter are excluded, the inevitable outcome will be that at these universities the best students are foreign, while the best British pupils decamp to US universities.

Is this really what the Left wants? If so why?

Thank you and sorry for the late reply.

You’re right I don’t know who it went to! 😂 at the foreign student comment.

It was the dishonesty of it that upset me the most. And people going “oh didn’t you get your grades?”

If they’d put in my original offer they wanted a B in X subject fair enough! But they didn’t and made me look like I had failed! I got a an A in the subject I was going to study plus I did an extra A level, at a low achieving comprehensive school! 😂 All whilst my poor Nan was dying may I add. So to get AAAC was a real achievement.

So I’m a bit biased towards these elite units tbh. 😂

It was shit at 18 a real life lesson. I cried in bed the next day to my Dad and took the day of work I know it sounds dramatic. 😂 I was shocked at working hard for 2 years, getting my grades, to be deceived. During my final exams my Nanna was dying but I kept on to achieve my grades she would have wanted that.

I was unable to appeal because they never sent the offer with the grades on paper……! I can’t recall exactly but I think they sent an offer letter without grades and the offer with grades was just on UCAS (which they edited retrospectively the wankers). So a bit HMMM.

Unlike lovely uni of Leeds who took me in a heartbeat and DID put their offer on paper!

I got my degree with them and in a good job it all worked out.

I'm sure the FOI data will not emerge, I sent it to some journalists a long time ago. But the Samoylova, Hall paper is more interesting in this respect.

Firstly, you have to give credit to the authors and/or the university for doing the research and putting it onto the university's website. There is no sign, that I can see, of data cherry-picking, manipulation, or obfuscation - despite the findings not being to their liking.

I say the findings are not to their liking because: it looks embarrassing; the authors avoid discussing school type in their conclusions; the paper is certainly not as easy to find as a page devoted to the findings of the outdated and less thorough study that found no difference for school type; and as far as I can see it hasn't been peer reviewed and published.

Of course it might have failed to survive peer review but I think that is unlikely considering the standard set by the competition. I have searched Google Scholar and ORCID without success, so it looks as though it has been more or less buried.

Interesting. Its the whining about a private school advantage that I find hard.

A meritocratic Oxbridge admission system would produce equal outcomes for the different school types. It might mean making concessions to pupils from say state schools, for the sake of argument at interview, but at the end, if admissions tutors were spotting potential successfully, students from state and private schools would do as well as one another on average.

There used to be a story that the Oxford and Cambridge admission system favoured privately educated applicants because they weren't doing quite as well as students from state schools, in other words weaker applicants from private schools were getting in. When Cambridge started to collect data on this in 2011, students from comprehensive schools were 1.05 times more likely than privately educated students to achieve a first class degree. This appears to be the basis for a widespread complaint that the university favours applicants from private schools.

Students from private schools are now 1.44 times more likely than students from comprehensive schools to get a first.

Own it people?

So, only secret conspiracies and hidden data which does not agree with published research.

So Cambridge’s own data collection is a conspiracy. Eh?

This is absolutely fascinating and thank you very much for bringing this data/insight to wider attention here on MN.

Should we hypothesise that Cambridge admissions have been over-compensating for markers of a less privileged educational background? And that a correction is in order?

OP has pointed out that the study you keep referring to applies to students entering University in 2006.

18 years ago.

Cambridge have changed their entrance criteria since then, with a specific goal to bring in more state school students. They have changed the relative bar for state school and private school students.

OP gave a link to Cambridge's own published analysis
https://www.cao.cam.ac.uk/admissions-research/app-research-papers-2020

You can download 'Analysis of student characteristics and attainment outcomes at the University of Cambridge' which was done in 2019. Still 5 years out of date, but a full decade more recent than your study.

That shows that the pendulum has swung the other way from 2006: when as the OP pointed out, the difference was far less statistically significant than it is now... but was still seen as proof of inequality and a reason to bring in change

Cambridge university already came out after Tope left to state that they are going to change admissions again and look more broadly, rather than just a state vs private divide? So one would assume that they already know anyway. It won’t be politically correct to admit anything but they are planning to change things anyway.
It’s a university - if they want to stay globally competitive they will find a way. Just like business does. I am not sure we need to name and shame. To what effect?

Also all these articles in eg the Guardian on limiting private school pupils to 10 per cent in Oxbridge. Is it not just some academics trying to cash in on their book sales? Friedman & Co? Universities are businesses run by very smart people at the end of the day, they will do what is best for themselves.

You're right, @Araminta1003 . I just get tired of the misinformation and populist attacks on private schools.

And if we just take the high road and don't challenge it, then we end up with some blatantly nonsense trope becoming embedded in what 'everyone knows'.

And that then becomes embedded prejudice which affects actions.

So actually, @Leah5678 you don't have kids at private school and are just trying to stoke anger against private schools.

Nice try 😂

Actually I think this is achievable if we just do away with student loans. Most plebs who take them out never pay them back so it's a complete waste of money anyway

You can’t take statistics at face value. They are easy to manipulate.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/19/quarter-students-three-ds-graduated-university-firsts-ofs/

😂

I'd have to ban many of my family and friends from my house too.

I find the disconnect in understanding of why people choose private school - which you're expressing with that stereotype - quite interesting.

You see it upthread as well, where people tell us that if we aren't just trying to 'buy advantage' then we can send our kids to state school so that they aren't discriminated against. They say it as such a 'gotcha'.

I highly value education, and think it changes and improves a person. I find it quite weird when people seem to think that children should be ranked for University according to some sort of fixed 'academic worth' at birth rather than that person's actual capabilities and potential. It's such an internally inconsistent view of fairness, given that innate academic ability is itself 'unfair'.

I think what matters - for University admissions and for life - is how capable a person is, and what their potential for future achievement is. That comes from an interplay of innate ability and education/experiences. You really can't separate the two. And that's why I have my DD in private school.

I don't really care if she gets an extra '9' instead of an '8' at Gcse, and I don't really care how she compares to other children. I want her to learn and grow as much as possible in these critical years between 4-18 where her character and core personal capabilities are being formed, because that will stay with her and help her during her whole life. Not because she has access to some secret handshake, but because she is a more capable person than she would have been otherwise.

If that extra growth over her 14 years schooling makes her a better candidate for a university or a job, I don't think that's unfair or cheating. She has that capability and potential: it is now an intrinsic part of her.

If current ideology means that Cambridge discriminate against her and she doesn't get in (when she would have if she'd gone to state school), well so be it. Any discrimination is annoying - but going to Cambridge is absolutely not the most important thing in the world.

@strawberrybubblegum

This, 100%.

And life will sort everything out longer term. I think it's very telling when people believe that paying fees is an attempt to buy grades or any other advantage.

I think it shows those people seeing educational attainment as a barrier - which 'other people' are gatekeeping - rather than seeing education as a mechanism for individual growth.

They see it as a destination - you need grades to get that job, rather than a journey - you become a richer person and doors will open for you.

These two approaches usually lead to very different outcomes but they complain later that it was privilege.

Some poster on another thread complained that her state educated kids got to one of the top unis whilst privately educated kid of a friend didn't. That kid got a high flier job in investment bank in Switzerland. She's adamant it's because of connections 😂

The left typically sees education as a collectivist endeavour, a competition that requires equal conditions for everyone - a race. The right typically sees education as an individual endeavour, a means to develop personal talents and skills. Most mass education systems are somewhere on a left-right spectrum. Very left of spectrum systems (eg France) demonstrate the manifest hypocrisy of such systems because parental education/wealth is in fact a huge performance driver for individual children in France - parents buy extra opportunity on the open market when school doesn't develop individual talent.

And here we go, didn't take long:

UK university rankings 2025 | The Times and The Sunday Times

The University of Oxford has fallen into third place and Cambridge down into fourth in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025 - the lowest positions ever held by the two prestigious universities since the list began 31 years ago. Instead, first place went to the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), while the University of St Andrews came in second place. The judges said LSE rose to the top because of its good graduate employment figures and high teaching satisfaction ratings.

We predicted it on this thread early on

I agree with every. single. word.