An education on social mobility by degrees
‘Social mobility is about creating a truly level playing field and a fair race. That is why, for example, the Coalition government is encouraging universities to recruit on the basis of academic potential, on the basis of an ability to excel, not purely on previous attainment.’
Nick Clegg, May 22
Why does Mr Clegg want to lean on Universities?
Because he seems to believe that armed with an expensive enough education, a mediocrity can rise to the very top of British public life.
Nick Clegg should know all about that.
Harsh. It’s not his fault that he was educated at one of the poshest schools in the country.
Fair enough. What do the punters make of the idea?
Curiously enough, the private school sector doesn’t seem to make much of it. Tim Hands, a leading headmaster in the private sector, accused Mr Clegg of using “communist tactics” in trying to rig the market for university education after the event.
Daft to use university admissions to compensate for existing failures in the school system.
I think Nick Clegg and Tim Hands both have a point. It is easy, and lazy, to blame Oxford and Cambridge for society’s ills: David Cameron has done it, Gordon Brown loved to do it, and when an MP such as David Lammy says – as he did in 2010 – that getting a place at Oxford or Cambridge “remains a matter of being white, middle class and southern”, the dons are not terribly deft at defending themselves. It is far riskier to blame schools. Attacking university admissions is just good politics, even if the problems really lie in the school system.
I can see that – but are the attacks justified?
Less than you might think. Mr Lammy’s assault on Oxford was carefully phrased and many people, including Mr Cameron, inferred from his remarks that just a single black student was admitted to Oxford in 2009, which isn’t true. What is true is that not many black students are admitted to Oxford and Cambridge; but it is also true that not many black students get the A-level results that successful applicants usually boast. As far as I have been able to work out there is no serious evidence of discrimination but neither is there any evidence that Oxford has been bending over backwards to admit black applicants.
And this is the kind of thing that Mr Clegg would like to see.
Mr Clegg talked about class, not race. But he said, correctly, that state school applicants tend to over perform once selected for university, relative to public school kids. That implies that if universities lowered the bar for state school applicants and raised it for public school kids, we would expect more first-class degrees in the end.
Communism!
Actually, there is every reason to believe that such a tweak might make the “market” for education work better. Put it this way, if you had to race against Usain Bolt in the 100 metres, neither you nor Usain Bolt are likely to regard it as a serious contest. He wins, you lose, neither of you need put any effort. But if Mr Bolt had to give you a 35 metre start, suddenly there is a real competition and we might expect both of you to run harder. Positive discrimination based on “contextual” variables – probably an applicant’s school, postcode and family circumstances – might well light a fire under everybody.
Don’t universities already do this?
Yes. Mr Clegg wants them to do more, it seems.
But isn’t this undermining the very idea of academic excellence?
It all depends on what you want from your universities. The implicit model of people who complain about Mr Clegg’s proposals seems to be that university is a kind of prize for the best performance so far – along the same theory that the Wimbledon Girls’ title is awarded to the player who beats her opponents, rather than the player regarded as most likely to win the Ladies’ title in future. But that is a little hard to justify. More reasonable alternatives are that university places should go to those most likely to excel in the future, or to those most likely to benefit from the education.
And meanwhile our political masters just need to sort out the school system?
Yes. I’ll give them six months to get that done.
Also published at ft.com.
10 Comments
Tim Murray says:
The real elephant in the room that none of us wish to think about seriously is: abolish private education. Gove was recently slated for alluding to this.
26th of May, 2012Alun Edwards says:
Nicely argued Tim. However there are two major problems: 1. Messing around with Oxbridge admissions isn’t going to achieve social mobility. The intake is already of a vastly lower calibre than was previously the case. This will inevitably lead to a decline in the prestige of Oxbridge. (by the way I speak from a position of first hand knowledge about the intake, it is not some wild assumption);
26th of May, 20122. Governments need to improve the state schools. Tinkering incompetently with Oxbridge is to throw sand into the eyes of the electorate.
Chris says:
In my limited (and dated – 1988) experience, the biggest factor in Cambridge admissions seemed to be the way many public schools would get all their pupils to apply, would help them fill out their forms, would make sure they had extra-curricular activities that would look good, taught them how to interview well, and overestimated their predicted grades systematically. Whereas at a comprehensive, I was the first to apply for a few years, just got given the application form as help, and had my grades estimated accurately. No idea if the difference is still as stark.
Note – I didn’t get in, I could probably have done so via clearing, but I’d gone to Durham and fallen in love with the place by then. Had I got the place I’d have gone to Durham anyway.
26th of May, 2012Chris says:
Having said that, I think many people when they talk about University think of it like it was pre-90′s, when getting a degree was a guarantee of a good job. Those days are gone, it’s now become one of several entry level requirements for many mediocre jobs. In addition, many of these jobs newly requiring graduates expect too much of them. Generally a degree teaches one to think and adapt quickly, and give you a general grounding in a subject. It doesn’t teach one to know a companies business on day one! A higher qualification does not mean a company needs to give no training to do a job (with clearly exceptions on some vocational courses).
26th of May, 2012Ianathome says:
Isn’t there some uncharacteristically tricksy reasoning involved here?
“if you had to race against Usain Bolt in the 100 metres, neither you nor Usain Bolt are likely to regard it as a serious contest.”
That’s a contest that would never take place and Usain Bolt always has to try his hardest in races because there are peers who are constantly pushing to better him. So it’s not a very good analogy for university entrance.
“But if Mr Bolt had to give you a 35 metre start, suddenly there is a real competition and we might expect both of you to run harder.” And almost certainly we both end up with poorer absolute results than might be attained if we competed on an even playing field, i.e. both started in the same place. That point needs at least to be made as a qualification to this “model” of educational opportunity.
“More reasonable alternatives are that university places should go to those most likely to excel in the future, or to those most likely to benefit from the education.”
Quite a lot to unpack here. The former – most likely to excel – is surely most certainly measured by attainment so far (so Usain Bolt does get the place!). The latter – most likely to benefit – is a value judgement that is very hard to measure and implement. It seems to involve reasoning something like this: Why should Usain Bolt always get to run the 100 metres? Look at all the chances he’s had to run it so far! If Joe Bloggs was given the chance instead, OK, he wouldn’t run it as well but he would gain more personal benefit than the privileged Mr Bolt.
Is that really where we want to go?
26th of May, 2012Nick says:
If you ran a race meeting where Usain Bolt had to give you a headstart I think it highly likely that he wouldn’t enter – He would go and race somewhere else where they want to see who’s the fastest without handicaps. Similarly we can expect that handicapping priveleged candidates trying to enter top universities will just drive them abroad thus lowering the standards and prestige of UK universities.
27th of May, 2012This is another example of an idea that might make sense for an isolated state or a world government but is just silly when people can just go elsewhere.
This is a bigger problem for education than the often stated mobility of financial firms and top managers – students explicitly EXPECT to study somewhere away from home and the privileged are well able to afford it.
No UK government policy is going to get more disadvantaged students into Harvard.
Ken Taylor says:
“Those most likely to benefit from the education” means you have to define benefit. For a vocational course anyone intending to take time out from the vocation for child rearing is likely to benefit less which is surely not the intended effect.
27th of May, 2012Kaitain says:
I would quite like to see a scheme used whereby 80% of an exam’s mark comes from your objective score and 20% of it from your ranking within your school. This would have the intriguing side-effect of making it attractive to ambitious middle-class parents to place their kids at ‘weaker’ schools.
28th of May, 2012Chris says:
Imho, the comprehensive education system that leads to average attainment, is never going to produce vast quantities of Oxbridge entrants.
30th of May, 2012Bring back state Grammars to give middle & working-class kids a fighting chance of competing with the privately educated kids (and give less academic kids a chance of competing with the Polish plumbers).
Sam says:
Kaitain:
Your proposal is not very robust against small schools. In the extreme case, consider a home-educated child. He places 1/1 in his class. Is that a good score? A bad score? An average?
12th of June, 2012