Why should tutors admit anyone but the best?
The Government's policies on student fees and its policies on student access are not so much joined up as at odds. Every time Oxford is falsely blamed for tilting the scales against state school applicants, such applicants will be further dissuaded from applying at all.
In Trinity, we recruit as widely as we can, without preconception or prejudice against applicants from any sector of society or sector of education.
Why, after all, should the tutors wish to admit anyone other than the best? Sensible selection involves giving intelligent weight to the relative educational advantages of the candidates. At the moment of selection what has to count is academic potential. We need students who can 'stay the course'.
The more we know about an applicant, the better the judgment that can be made. Professor Steven Schwartz recommends a "holistic experiment in which the contents of an applicant's achievement, background and relevant skills are taken into account." In his holistic approach he is proposing only what Oxford already seeks to do. Mistakes are made.
Those who pontificate about the system should recognise how carefully our selection process is carried out, and with what consciousness of its significance for those who apply.
Schwartz says universities should be "striving to create a more diverse student population." We should be striving to create a student population of higher quality. The criterion should indeed be ability to study, not ability to pay. But diversity as an aim makes no more sense for Oxford than it does for Arsenal. Outreach will actually lead to a more diverse student population.
Now the debate is no longer about whether Oxford's admission system is sufficiently meritocratic, but whether it is sufficiently egalitarian. The Government's Higher Education Statistics Agency identified Oxford as one of the 17 universities which had admitted too many pupils from independent schools, and too few from the lowest socio-economic groups.
I do not suggest that Oxford should wear these statistics as a badge of pride: nor should it wear them as a stripe of shame. Oxford has been given a target of admissions from the state sector of 77 per cent, an uplift from 55.4 per cent.
Failure to meet the Agency's target would not be evidence of institutional classism by Oxford admissions tutors, but of a desire to maintain the admissions criteria which are responsible for Oxford's reputation. To alter those standards in pursuit of social or political objectives would be a betrayal of the University's role.
Raw intelligence is not enough for an Oxford course. It has to be developed to a particular point. Children should not be penalised for their parents' choice of school. Universities are educational institutions: they are not laboratories for social engineering. Universities should not be coerced into relieving the Government of its own responsibility for ensuring an improvement of standards in the maintained sector.
At the start of the 1970s the state school students at Oxford outnumbered those from independent schools by 70 per cent to 30 per cent.
The abolition of so many fine grammar schools removed the ladder of opportunity. By definition an Oxford education is for the few, not the many - an élite. The real question is how that élite is to be identified. I am unequivocally in favour of outreach schemes.
If the result of such schemes is to encourage schoolchildren who come from a background devoid of university tradition not only to aspire to Oxford but to succeed, I shall be delighted. We have not by any means plumbed the reservoirs of talent spread among our teenagers. How much better it would be if the Government used the carrot, not the stick.
Instead we have the threat of the Access Regulator, who is likely to be the least popular public official since the post of public hangman became redundant. The DfES should take its tanks off Oxford's lawns.
It may be that, one day, Oxford will become independent of government. If so, every means must be used to ensure that it does not become merely a finishing school for the offspring of the rich, but honours the traditions of the founders of the colleges, whose concern was imparting education and ideals to those with the capacity to absorb them.
The young people of the current generation at my college compare favourably with those of any previous generation. The grant of equal opportunities to women at Oxford has itself significantly enhanced the quality of the intake.
14th Oct 2004