Britain Gives Top Schools an ‘A’ for Arrogance

A star public high school student turned down by Oxford University but accepted at Harvard with $100,000 in financial aid has become the poster child of a British government war on snobbery.

To Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown of the Labor Party, the Oxford medical school’s rejection of 18-year-old Laura Spence--a straight-A student from economically disadvantaged northeastern England--is a sterling example of the elitism rampant in Britain’s top universities and “an absolute scandal.”

The Tory opposition lashes back that Labor is returning to old-style “class warfare” instead of pursuing excellence in education.

And political observers say the brouhaha smacks of electioneering ahead of next year’s parliamentary race: The Tories have gone on the rampage against immigrants and lawbreakers in recent weeks, so Labor is taking on elitists and unequal opportunity.

On Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott promised universities such as Oxford and Cambridge financial incentives for increasing their recruitment from state schools--part of what is expected to be a huge wave of public spending on health and education in the coming year.

“This government’s mission is to deliver opportunity and security in a world of change,” Prescott said in a speech to Labor Party members in Kent. “That’s what we’re all about . . . giving to the majority of people the life chances taken for granted by the privileged few.”

The government has found an issue that goes to the heart of the British psyche: class. Unfortunately, it may have picked the wrong example for its lofty campaign against the old boys’ network.

Of the 125 students accepted to Oxford’s medical school for next year, 80 are women, the university said. Of the five accepted into the university’s Magdalen College, where Spence applied, three are women, three are ethnic minorities and two are from state schools--all with straight As. The university did not explain how much double- or triple-counting went into its breakdown, however, and the bottom line is that overall figures at the top universities are not good for the economically less advantaged.

About 85% of high school students attend state schools, but they account for only about 45% of the student bodies at Oxbridge, as the state-funded universities are collectively known, according to government figures.

Furthermore, a study by the independent Sutton Trust foundation found that about two-thirds of the students qualifying for the country’s top five universities come from state schools, but they get just half the places.

“What can that be if not a bias against class?” said columnist Jonathan Freedland, who wrote on the issue for the Guardian newspaper today. “This is the privilege gap. They are qualified. They just can’t get it.”

Few Britons would doubt that Oxford and Cambridge are bastions of elitism, particularly after the notes from Spence’s interview at Magdalen College were leaked to the BBC. In them, Dr. Ajit Lalvani remarked that she was “outstandingly intelligent” but that she lacked confidence, “as with other comprehensive [state] school pupils.”

Spence subsequently secured a place studying biochemistry at Harvard, which is being held up by the British media as a model of egalitarianism. They fail to mention Harvard’s $22,700-a-year tuition when attacking the Labor government for introducing university fees of about $1,600 a year that discourage lower-income students from attending universities even if they do get in.

Meanwhile, a spate of newspaper articles has appeared in recent days by state high school graduates defending the top British universities that allowed them into their ranks.

Jonathan Thompson wrote in the Independent this week that never during the three years he spent studying modern history at Oxford’s Jesus College did he feel at a disadvantage, or that barriers were put in his way because of his class.

“Nobody at the student newspapers cared where you had been educated, as long as you could write, just as nobody in the rugby club cared about your schooling, as long as you could drink,” Thompson wrote.

His graduation ceremony, conducted last weekend largely in Latin in the 17th century Sheldonian Theatre, was full of pageantry, a procession of bows, oath-taking and gown-changing that he said an outsider might mistake for elitism. “However, there is a distinct difference between tradition and elitism,” he wrote.

The difference might be lost on Labor’s traditional working- and middle-class base that helped give the party its landslide victory in 1997.

The Sun tabloid, betting that the campaign against snobbery resonates with these people, eagerly joined in the assault on “stuck-up Oxbridge.”

The Guardian accused Chancellor Brown of misguided populism in the attack on elitism. The solution is not just to press the universities, the left-of-center paper said in an editorial, but also to improve state high school education with a lower teacher-student ratio.

The Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, has noted that Prime Minister Tony Blair went to private school before attending Oxford.

“Elitism, it might be added, used to be a positive word,” the conservative paper said. “When used in its truest sense, it referred not to the entrenchment of privilege but to the encouragement and reward of excellence.”

Excellence for the privileged few?

Just for the best, said Oxford’s vice chancellor, Colin Lucas.

“We are interested in the best students, and we don’t care where they come from. But one thing we won’t do is lower our standards,” Lucas said. “We cannot compromise on excellence if we are to remain a world-class university.”