Was arguing about exclusion, and by extension lack of social mobility on a recent LC thread (still only 1 female supreme court judge in the uk) – this time Oxbridge rather than female judges has been put forward as a vehicle to explore long standing bias in favour of a narrow, and privileged social group.

Mind you, some say, and I quote, ‘it’s not obvious that social mobility is wholly desirable’
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2012/05/social-mobility-cui-bono.html

In other words do we really want elite education, or the top strata of the legal profession for that matter, being polluted by ‘the sons of electricians’ (who were responsible for corrupting the banking system apparently) – not easy, is it?

I’m in favour of this sort of scheme. My parents were poor, but with intellectual aspirations. I benefited from the Tory assisted places scheme in the 1990s, going to an independent school at a cost of around £150 per term. This school pushed me, against some reluctance on my part, to apply to Oxford. I got in, as part of the very last year group to benefit from a full grant. Had I had to pay fees, I wouldn’t have gone. But I went and am thoroughly glad I did; I’m now a journalist at the BBC.

Interestingly, I spent a wilderness few years after Oxford in jobs that were taking me nowhere because I didn’t have the money to pay to do a postgrad. It wasn’t until I was 30 that I had saved the money to afford a year without working in order to study. Had my postgrad been free, I would have done it much sooner.

Another interesting point: I have family members who I believe to be of similar ability to me but who did not benefit from having their fees paid for them. Suffice to say they do not work in careers as ‘middle class’ and ‘influential’ as mine.

Steve Stevens @2 beat me to the point. These grants will make a huge difference to the perceptions of poorer Oxford students about taking on debt to pursue post graduate studies.

And a thank you to Chris Attrill for the thoughtful post even though I disagree with its conclusions.

But they know, just like everyone else, that a loan from the Student Loan Company, to fund a degree, is not like a normal loan.

Or at least you hope they know. No one has ever gone poor underestimating the intelligence or knowledge of the masses after all.

The Oxford announcement was never really about helping poorer students as much as it was for Oxford to generate some PR about how it’s not all for the toffs and keep the accusations of catering for the privileged at bay. That Oxford has rich people willing to pump money in to Oxford is not really news.

Steve Stevens: All undergraduate education is now free at the point of delivery, so your point is a little dated.

It’s good to consider the impact that non-financial (in this case cultural) factors might have on applications. Nevertheless, I think some of the claims here are mistaken.

My fiance did her MPhil research (in 2011) at Cambridge on the attitudes of working class young adults towards elite HEIs and especially on their perceptions of Oxbridge (given its unique cultural role in Britain), based on in depth interviews. Contrary to what you would expect, almost none of the students felt that Oxbridge was an elite cultural club and none were put off by the thought of the interview. Without exception they said that they definitely would accept an unconditional offer to Oxbridge. This is the precise opposite of what my own lefty, Bourdieu inspired, state-school intuitions would have said, but the main reason for this being the case seemed to be that most working class students don’t really have any views about Oxbridge. It seems that in order to believe that Oxbridge is full of gowns and port and has an interview that requires non-academic skills, you need to be relatively plugged into various networks of information (as more middle class students are and the most working class students tend not to be).

I would say that you are quite right about a number of things though. The number one barrier to working class entrance to Oxbridge is definitely grades and w. class students are completely aware of this. Also from this one study, it didn’t seem that the students were very much put off by the fees. This could be seen to be due to the fact that these students had long since decided that they would go to university (by the time the fees changed, going to uni was a ‘natural’ decision); it remains to be seen whether this will be the case for students who grow up with increased fees.

Also I would disagree about the idea that it is false (and insulting) to think that w. class students know that SLC debt isn’t real debt and so aren’t affected by it. This is too intellectualist a stance on what may be more a gut decision. Speaking from my own experience (I graduated in 2009), I was sufficiently impoverished to get the maximum means-tested bursary, loans etc. (though not from a very w. class family) and my family, who knew exactly how much money I was getting and what my fees and bills were, *still* against the completely unambiguous evidence, insisted that debts were a thing to worry about and that Cambridge *must* be more expensive (because people of their class and generation *knew* that it must be).

The social class gag for educational achievement: a review of the literature

‘Although social class intersects with gender and ethnicity in complex ways to reproduce educational inequality, it remains the strongest predictor of educational achievement in Britain. Striking inequalities are witnessed during early years education, and throughout compulsory schooling, where the literature has shown how the quasi-market in schooling, and processes of segregation and distinction
therein, exacerbates inequality. Such inequalities are also reflected in the rates of participation by working-class young people in further and higher education. Following the recent recommendations of the Browne Review, which include the removal of the cap on tuition fees (Browne, 2010), concerns have been raised at the likelihood that young people from less affluent backgrounds may be further deterred from pursuing a path into higher education in the future (NUT, 2010; Sutton Trust, 2010b). Thus, as Archer et al. (2003) have recommended, analysis of inequalities in the various education sectors should not only take into account the complex and diverse identities of young people, but should also challenge the
institutions and structures that sustain educational inequality’.
http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/367003/RSA-Social-Justice-paper.pdf

Freudian slip there – meant social class GAP, not gag.

@ Lee Griffin. Free at the point of delivery, perhaps. But in that case so are houses, BMWs, Rolex watches and tea at the Ritz. Provided you buy them on credit, obviously.

Less flippantly, when I was a kid I didn’t know anyone who’d made a fortune. It was beyond my comprehension that I would benefit to the tune of thousands from my education. My parents hadn’t, neither had my sisters, aunts or uncles. Why would I? We viewed education as a good in itself, something that you did to make yourself a more rounded person. It took going to university and being exposed to people who had had successful careers to make the link between education and wealth.

As an aside, my wife doesn’t work. Out of choice, she has chosen to bring up our children herself. Hence, we have one salary of around £23k to support a family of four. There isn’t much slack in the family budget I can tell you — extra repayments on student debt would be extremely painful.

I have to agree that the number one barrier to Oxbridge entrance is grades.

Looking at private schools where the average A level grade in the classroom is an A, compared to state schools where the average is perhaps a C or D or worse highlights the different learning environment.

How can state school students achieve the highest grades, when they are constantly waiting for the rest of the class to catch up? After waiting for the entire 7 years of secondary school education, the differences build up.

Anon#11. Agreed about the grades, of course, but it’s not just the learning environment. The effect of schools per se has been estimated to be around 17% of the total influence on attainment levels. The real issue is class background, which is why working class students perform worse on various measures even before they’ve started at school.