Nanny Cameron and Clegg are giving Oxbridge a hard time at the moment.
Their gripe being that not enough poor and ethnic minority pupils are being given the opportunity to study there and at other top universities.
This is somewhat ironic given that they are both from privileged backgrounds, and that they both went to Oxbridge.
When will Nanny learn that social engineering does not work, and that it invariably makes things worse?
Like it or not, educashun (beyond the 3 "R's") is a privilege not a right.
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Just imagine the future OxBridge prospectus.
ReplyDeleteEntry requirements;-
a) Five GCEs at ordinary level at grade B or above and three GCEs at Advanced level at least two at grade A
OR
b) A non white skin colour.
It really makes a mockery of our University education; In my experience, universities give places to people that have shown academic abilities and on no other criteria. When I say Universities, I do of course refer to our old red brick universities and not to the "Upgraded Pollys" that were born over the last couple of decades......Lord knows what their criteria for admissions are.
They would have to put dumbed down degrees on the curiculum to accomadate the dumbed down intake.
ReplyDeleteOr leave the state system and go private.
If they can.
Which,if they had any sense at all,they would.
If anything, the educational dilemma facing most of the Western world is that people are in stuck in school for far too long already. It's really only a minority of people (can I say "minority?") whose benefit from a university education outweighs the associated costs.
ReplyDelete10 years of schooling is more than enough for most.
So, Cameron and Clegg are of the opinion that not enough poor and ethnic pupils are going to Oxbridge? Has it not occurred to them that the introduction of tuition fees and the hike in these to £9,000 a year might have something to do with it?
ReplyDeleteI was the electronic engineering undergraduate admissions tutor for several years at a leading University of London college. We regarded ourselves as being in competition with places like Imperial College and Oxbridge and sometimes we were successful in attracting students who would have been seriously considered by these institutions.
ReplyDeleteI can say with complete honesty that neither I, nor any of my colleagues gave a hoot about an applicant's colour, ethnic or social background as long as they could meet our entry requirements, and here lies the crux of the matter.
Sadly despite what we get told every year, the academic standard of A levels has declined and this now has a major impact on the quality of the degree courses because the first year has to try and make up for these deficiencies with a knock on effect into the later years of the course. Yes, the best and brightest students are still very good, but there are many others who just don't cut it for one reason or another.
I used to regularly have to tell applicants that without at least a grade B in A level maths they quite simply would not survive our courses, and I have lost count of the times I have had to listen to pleas of "I promise I will work really hard, I know I can do it" only to reject the pleas because experience showed that such students would not make it. I would always try and point them at another university or college with less mathematically demanding courses and I remain convinced that this was the right thing to do in the interests of the student even if they didn't realise it. at the time.
I agree, social engineering is a disaster.
"Like it or not, educashun (beyond the 3 "R's") is a privilege not a right"
ReplyDeleteActually given the current inability of the public school system to properly instruct in the 3R's would seem the most of the emphasis should go toward at least doing that first, before worrying about sending students to higher learning, when they've not had the basic learning accomplished first.
The top Universities should follow Buckingham and go independent, then they could ignore threats from Conman Cameron and his sidekick Clegg.
ReplyDeleteI passed the 11 Plus but by the time I arrived they had turned my local Grammar into a Comprehensive. Happily many of the best staff stayed on though in diminishing numbers as the years passed. By the Upper Sixth Polytechnic trained teachers were arriving, you could always tell as they wanted to be your 'friend', wankers one and all.
The local EA hated that school (for being a former Grammar and therefore elitist), ran it into the ground and, so poor had its' reputation become, it closed a few years after I left.
That is why top universities have relatively few state schooled students of whatever supposedly disadvantaged background.
To hear you say that social engineering doesn't work took me rather by surprise Ken, even more so on a post about education.
ReplyDeleteThere has been an ongoing and insidious campaign of so called reform in western education for decades which has resulted in the mess we see today and it continues to gather pace around the world.
Social engineering and behaviour modification is the sole purpose of modern western education. As Professor Benjamin Bloom, psychologist and one of the leading figures behind the brainwashing said - "the purpose of education is to change the thoughts, actions and feelings of the students".
Please download and read the book by Charlotte Iserbyt-Thompson from http://deliberatedumbingdown.com
and you will also find the documentary about the American College Scam pretty interesting I think.
http://youtu.be/VpZtX32sKVE
None of this is a U.S. exclusive, it is all part of UNESCO's aim to destroy society as we know it and follows Hitler's view that "if you wish to control the future, you must control the youth".