Oxford Postpones Admissions Reforms
The Admissions Office on Little Clarendon St: reform proposals have been postponed.
Oxford University has postponed publication of proposals that would revolutionise the university’s admissions system by quashing the rights of applicants to apply to individual colleges.
The Oxford Student has learnt that the Working Party on Admissions, a group set up ‘to ensure that the best candidates are admitted across the university, irrespective of college choice’ was to recommend scrapping the current system, in which potential students apply to their college of choice, and replacing it with a centralised admissions system in which applications are made only to Oxford University itself.
The working party, due to report to the university’s Admissions Committee last Friday, decided on Wednesday it could not meet that deadline. A University spokeswoman said: “It still has more to discuss.” At present no date has been set for the group to publish its plans, amidst fears that proposals being formulated by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) on switching to post A-level university applications could compromise Oxford’s reforms.
The DfES set up a working group in Autumn 2004 to investigate the feasibility of sixth form students applying to university after receiving their A-Level results. Sources in the working group have told The Oxford Student that it is close to reaching the stage where proposals are sent to universities for consultation. Should the DfES’ recommendations differ from Oxford’s assumptions, the university’s entire admissions proposals could have to be redrafted.
The dissolution of Parliament and the forthcoming general election has meant that the DfES’ working group has currently ceased operations, delaying the publication of its consultation plans. The overwhelming majority of Oxford hopefuls apply to, and are interviewed by, a college of their choosing, with 13% submitting an ‘open’ application, in which they are assigned a college by the university’s Admissions Office.
Unsuccessful applicants can be entered into a pool system from which other colleges can interview them and offer them a place.
In 2004 nearly one in five places offered across the university was from the pool system. Some dons have called into question the integrity of the pooling system, particularly over the levels of ‘salesmanship’ employed by tutors intent on gaining places for students their college cannot accept. One said: “it is bizarre seeing academics virtually transforming into second hand car salesmen.”
The tutor claimed that there were documented cases of admissions tutors ‘bumping up’ interview marks of candidates in order to increase their chances of being accepted from the pool. A submission to the previous Working Party in 2003 warned of the “distressingly wide currency” of the argument that “Tutor Z lacks judgment and College A would be reluctant to accept candidates on the basis of his decisions”.
A University spokeswoman said: “we are happy with the pool system, but we always need to scrutinize our procedures.” Oxford is in the process of integrating a system for centrally ranking applicants into the ISIDORE student administration system. The process, set to be complete by 2007, will ensure that, under a centralised admissions procedure, college admissions tutors will be able to access a list of applicants graded by their combined interview scores.
In the event of the publication of the university’s admissions proposals readers should not expect to see mention of the word ‘centralisation’. Information released to The Oxford Student under the Freedom of Information Act shows the University believes: “the use of terminology is important and that the use of ‘collectivisation’ would be better than ‘centralisation’.”
28th Apr 2005