Higher Education in yhe UK

Change needed for Oxford and

Cambridge to remain leaders

Oxbridge could keep its research quality but still increase efforts to reach out to new students, says Peter Scott

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• • Peter Scott
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 4 January 2011
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Oxford – and Cambridge – still draw many of their students from a privileged social base. Photograph: Travelpix/Alamy Oxford and Cambridge are very special universities – on that, at least, their supporters and detractors agree. But attempting to define how (and why) they are special opens up an intriguing debate, and one that is crucial for the whole of higher education in the UK. Put simply, are Oxford and Cambridge leaders, role models, or so different as to be irrelevant? One reason, of course, is simply their antiquity – and riches and peculiar governance. For half a millennium they were the only universities in England (Scotland was better provided for with its four ancient universities). Between them they share almost £8bn of endowments – plus profits from world-famous university presses. They have also remained self-governing academic communities. This is wholly true of the colleges, but also largely true of the universities. A second reason is that they play a key role in reproducing – or, sceptics would argue, reinforcing – our national elites. This is certainly true in politics; however many prime ministers have been ex-Etonians, more have been Oxbridge graduates. But it is also true of higher education itself; the leadership class of universities is dominated by Oxbridge graduates. A third reason is that Oxford and Cambridge attract the best and the brightest students – provided, the same sceptics would add, that they are also white, middle-class, went to independent schools and generally reside in the southern half of the United Kingdom. Be that as it may, Oxford and Cambridge still attract the best-qualified students, as measured by prior attainment. A fourth reason is that undergraduates are taught in a different way, most notably in the arts and social sciences and least notably in science, engineering and medicine. The standard method is one-to-one, or (very) small-group tutorials. Lectures, the mainstay of undergraduate teaching in most other universities, play a more subdued role. Only in special circumstances – for example, studio-based teaching in art and design – do other universities come close to replicating the intimacy of Oxbridge undergraduate life. The high cost of providing such intimacy is why Oxford and Cambridge can claim, more plausibly than other "top" universities, that they make a "loss" on teaching. A fifth reason is that Oxford and Cambridge are world-class research universities. In the 2008 research assessment exercise (RAE), they accounted for more than a third of units with at least 35% of "world-leading" research (or 4*). However you crunch the numbers – whether "grade point average" or "research power" (ie quality times volume) – Oxford and Cambridge come out on top. There are three possible reactions to this display of difference. The first is simply to accept that Oxford and Cambridge are different. So they should be protected and nurtured as part of the diverse ecology of British higher education – an argument that can equally well be applied to the Royal College of Art, the Open University, Birkbeck... A more hostile variant of this reaction, taking its cue from Dunning's famous 1780 House of Commons resolution on the influence of the crown, is to argue that the dominance of Oxbridge has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished. In other words, the centre of gravity should be shifted elsewhere – perhaps to the big civics of the North and Midlands or possibly to some new category of "entrepreneurial universities"? But a third (and my preferred) reaction is to assert that Oxford and Cambridge are simply too important to be set aside. For better or worse, they discharge a leadership role within the whole UK (certainly English) higher education system. The real question is the quality and direction of that leadership. In recent years, both universities have tended to emphasise their roles as "world-class" research universities, with Harvard or Stanford as their peers and rivals. As a result, they have drifted into becoming "mid-Atlantic" institutions, picking up in the process a "mid-Atlantic" set of free-market, high-fee, ideological preferences. However, without retreating one jot on research, their leadership could be defined in broader terms. Efforts could be redoubled to dilute the privileged social base from which most Oxbridge students continue to be drawn; a step-change is needed, not a series of worthy but meek outreach measures. Similar efforts could be made to connect the Oxbridge tutorial system with the teaching culture of mainstream higher education, to create new 21st-century models of learning and teaching. Those "mid-Atlantic" ideological preferences would obstruct this wider educational project. So Oxford and Cambridge face a choice – to be "mid-Atlantic" – and semi-detached, or English (and European) – and connected. • Peter Scott is professor of higher education studies at the Institute of Education