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?

Looking at trainees in a law firm there is a baseline of intelligence needed of course but you only succeed with other qualities too. The real world weeds this out!

Our most successful friends financially and socially both from modest backgrounds went to sub standard state schools and don’t have more than a 2:2 between them.

But in the middle ground there isn’t necessarily much value in trying to correlate degree class with something like suitability for a graduate scheme. That’s why schemes are happy to take 2:1s

Depends. Mid- and low- tier employers will be happy with 2:1, Investment banks and the likes will try to scoop 1st. That's how these kids end up with juiciest jobs but nobody bothers to review the journey, they will believe it's privilege

@nearlylovemyusername - if investment banks really do want 1st now and that is one someone’s radar, then it makes zero sense to go to Oxbridge and would in most cases be far easier to get a 1st at another uni? Because the 1st go to the top players at a specific uni and you are directly compared to the attainment of your peers.

The whole anti academic elitism eventually comes full circle. No point going to a top state school either if you are going to be compared to your peers? Go to an average one and tutor your kids on the side and pretend to be educationally disadvantaged?

I mean what exactly are we encouraging here?

Such a narrow view of success. I would hate it if mine ended up in a flipping investment bank! I did a secondment in one in my twenties they offered me a job as my “face fitted”! Ha. No thanks!!

You misunderstand me. Certain schemes may prefer to take those with a First but no scheme will state expressly that only those with a First should apply. It is, however, common to say that a 2:1 or above is needed (eg my Magic Circle law training contract needed a 2:1)

“Such a narrow view of success. I would hate it if mine ended up in a flipping investment bank!”

@TheaBrandt - do your kids get a choice as to what they want to be? Surely it is entirely up to them.
Over here we run a liberal household. You want to be a chef, violinist or investment banker- it’s up to you! My sentiments are secondary. Whatever you my child choose, I will support, as long as it is legal, of course!

Ha yes of course just that the tone of the comments on this thread are that getting into Oxbridge and going into an investment bank are what is seen as most desirable. My academic one flatly refused to even apply for Oxbridge and the other is a creative type.

@Araminta1003

My response was to the post that Oxbridge 1st is not important for employment. This post was in turn trying to devalue importance of the fact that PS kids statistically have 1.4 higher chance of having one.

Not trying to encourage anything at all, just trying to say that those PS kids who managed to get to Oxbridge are of super high calibre and life will eventually get them to a place they deserve. Investment banking is frequently used as an example of desirable job not open to state kids, hence my response. The bottom line of my statement - it's about qualities, not privilege

@nearlylovemyusername - completely agree with you. The top employers now have so many psychometric and personality type tests as well. I do have my reservations on some of the latter, but hey ho.

Heuristic judgements are unconscious, fast, necessary for survival in evolutionary terms and for negotiating everyday life from minute to minute. Once you are aware that there is more than one possible explanation for something you are in analytical territory. You have described examples of analytical judgements

In this case, I came to the same conclusion that you have, for the same reasons, and it was predicted a long time ago.

Geoff Parks, was Director of Admissions for the Cambridge Colleges for ten years until 2012 (when he published the analysis for the university in 2012 titled "Academic Performance of Undergraduate Students at Cambridge by School/College Background"). He was concerned about lowering standards for a particular type of applicant and said "...it actually would be a really, really cruel experiment to take a bunch of students and hypothesise that they have what it takes to thrive at Cambridge and then see them fail because they don't." Speaking for the university, he said it would resist pressure to make adjustments."None of us in good conscience want to be ruining people's lives on some gut feel or political imperative based around getting votes or pandering to some particular bit of the populace."

But after he left the role, resistance went with him, and the participation and access plan a few years later presents a starkly different picture.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/09/10/universities-admissions-dr-geoff-parks-widen-access-poorer-students_n_1869772.html

But are these students failing and being treated cruelly? Or are they managing? Or has Cambridge changed to accommodate them?

Agree with @EmpressoftheMundane . Usually with very selective entrance, there are more applicants who could cope with - and benefit from - admission than there are places. Unless they are genuinely failing, then a less meritocratic admission process may harm the university but not the students.

It looks like a bit of all three.

In 2012, 154 students from state schools were awarded thirds, and from private schools 96. In 2023, the figures were state 197 and private 51. I haven't looked at figures for dropouts, and they may not be available for mental health problems.

We have yet to see if it will be sustained, but the fact that ICL is ahead of Cambridge (and Oxford) in one of the most respected world rankings is certainly interesting. The ranking takes into account employability and student satisfaction, and one would expect these to suffer if, as the evidence suggests, the universities have gone out of their way to take weaker students.

If the principle of prioritising the admission of students from state schools is a good thing, the universities can hardly complain if employers prioritise offering jobs to non-Oxbridge graduates, or at least adopting a university-blinded recruitment process - which many do now. Good candidates at this level will be identifiable regardless of which university they went to. For an employer who is looking for the ablest candidate, Oxbridge is a less useful proxy than it used to be. Weaker Oxbridge graduates will not be happy when life turns out to be different from their expectations.

Lol! Who sets these employer ‘tiers’?

And by what measure?

There are no ‘tiers’ other than personal preference.

In my world Mumsnet faves the ‘Big Four’ and investment banks as well as corporate law would all be raked ‘low tier’.

Your definition of juiciest jobs’ in my interpretation means highly paid for being a corporate parasite on society.

Heuristic judgements are unconscious, fast, necessary for survival in evolutionary terms and for negotiating everyday life from minute to minute

Ah, OK - I thought you meant the gut-feel, 'this makes sense' type judgement. You might still weigh things up, but you're more going by a sense of what 'feels' right based on previous experiences, rather than truly analysing it and looking up research/getting numbers to back up your theory.

When you judge that you can't trust your gut feel, that's when you dig into the uncertainty and find facts to help you confirm or refute your feeling. You learn from experience what areas are likely to throw up surprises and require that verification.

If you have to make a lot of judgement calls day to day in your job - and face the consequences - you hone that sense of 'this needs to be checked'. Partly by training, but mainly through being bitten by your own mistaken assumptions!

I do wonder whether the type of judgement people use most naturally depends on the type of work they do: what judgements they have to make, and how immediate the feedback is. I don't mean human feedback - which is a matter of opinion - but real, direct consequences. What you do day-to-day changes you.

So I can understand that Heuristic judgement is something quite specific. Eg someone says 'let's do xyz', and you immediately, viscerally think 'no way'. It's only when they ask you why that you consciously think of the reasons.

But are there different words for the two types of judgement I describe?

1.An experience-based 'that makes sense to me' judgement. It will at least implicitly include the words 'probably' and 'I think' (depending on how self-aware the person is)

2.Analysis where you go and check research, and often put an objective, numeric basis on it.

I think the difference you mention seeing in people in this thread is between these 2 types of judgement.

I think you're saying that a strong Heuristic reaction makes a person very confident about (1) so they don't bother with (2).

I think that how readily you switch from (1) to (2) is mainly down to practice, often from your work (although of course it will come more naturally to some people than others, like any skill)

I think you are absolutely right. One reason that medical diagnosis figures in the psychology literature, is that decisions are almost always high stakes, and are fired at you endlessly. There is considerable time pressure on experts in this field to minimalise the checking of hypotheses, which has to be resisted.

In a different line of work, say that of an art historian, I suspect that if an expert didn't come up with his artistic identifications sharpish, people would soon get round to thinking that he wasn't much of an expert.

I don't believe that representative practitioners from both fields would approach everyday life in the same way, because the former has learned to be analytical and the latter largely heuristic in his judgements.

An American psychologist called Shane Frederick investigated the two types of thinking with the bat and ball test:

A bat and a ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? __cents

The paper is worth a read.

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/089533005775196732

There is also a highly engaging, often very funny book by Daniel Kahneman titled "Thinking, Fast and Slow", that should be in everyone's Christmas Stocking. One of its important lessons is that it helps to recognise when your judgement is being manipulated, which is relevant to subject of this thread. Some of the research that he uses has been criticised for a lack of reproducibility but considering the ground that he covers that is nitpicking.

@strawberrybubblegum
"I think you're saying that a strong Heuristic reaction makes a person very confident about (1) so they don't bother with (2).
I think that how readily you switch from (1) to (2) is mainly down to practice, often from your work (although of course it will come more naturally to some people than others, like any skill)"

A few things make a heuristic response more likely. Probably best to read the paper, you will see why.

@Marchesman

Why are firsts the metric though?

You still haven’t properly justified this. You used heuristic decision making to decide firsts were the thing.

Can you suggest another?

The two of our children who have already graduated got Firsts. Most of their friends didn't, despite them having done extremely well at school (mostly better than our children). All the children are, by any definition, highly privileged. However, our children were under much greater parental pressure to get a First because we knew it would be important for accessing the best Masters degrees and best jobs.

Maybe those other parents know there is more to their children’s happiness than perceived good graduate schemes and jobs.

Absolutely. I'd also assume that most of these parents are very supportive of VAT, of "taxing the rich" etc etc. Not trying to achieve much but believing those who do only succeed because of privilege

I'm a huge fan of perseverance and taking the long view, I think it is what ultimately divides the sheep from the goats. But can anyone instill this as late as tertiary education in the disinclined?

@Marchesman you are assuming those from state school who do not get the top grades in a levels or entrance tests are “disinclined “. You come from such a place of privilege you cannot imagine that these children may have no internet, no desk space, may be carers etc etc etc