The OxCam Entitlement Paradigm

I didn't go to Oxford or Cambridge (I didn't even go to the L.S.E.), however, it wasn't until recently that I actually clocked to how obsessed with these institutions certain parts of the media and the wider world are. Why?

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I actually attended the University of Warwick and in due course graduated with a 2:1 in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, having learned important life skills such as how to play poker, how to drink borderline fatal quantities of alcohol and how to wash my clothes, cook my dinner and vaguely manage my finances. It should also be said that I picked up a splattering of economics, was exposed to a range of political ideologies, and spent enough time immersed in the grand thoughts of two thousand years of human curiosity that it fundamentally changed how I view the world.

It should also probably be pointed out in the interests of fairness (and to some extent to lay the ground work for some of the comments below) that Warwick, for all the fact that pretty much everyone who goes there is an Oxbridge reject, topped the current university league tables for Economics (as it did in at least 1 of the years I attended), beating out the LSE (2nd), Oxford (3rd) and Cambridge (4th).

Those same university league tables also make for some interesting reading, for example Buckingham has the highest rating for Student Satisfaction and St George's University of London has the highest rating for graduate employability.

Oxford and Cambridge no doubt do well, and come out on the top of the table in a number of high profile subjects (such as Medicine, Law, Business and Mathematics), however this seems at least in part due to the innate bias in the system. Part of the ranking is made up of an assessment of the average academic attainment required to gain entry into an institution. Thanks to Oxbridge's vaunted status they set higher entry standards, thereby boosting their ranking, thereby keeping their elite status. This may have some intrinsic value if it were not for the fact that A-Level results prove little beyond short term memory ability and some basic aptitude in exam technique and dropping in key buzz words.

Are Oxford or Cambridge graduates a superior species then? I have no doubt that the words "Cambridge University" next to your BA (Hons) opens doors, and that a certain sense of entitlement settles on to those who spend enough time in these ancient institutions, an air that translates well into interview confidence and pay-negotiation demands.  I was told at least one anecdote of an Oxford graduate who submitted a CV to the graduate scheme of a major bank that read simply "John Smith - Oxford University". More worrying this individual actually got an interview (though not the role).
I have friends who attended these universities, I have met colleagues, acquaintances and randoms who have passed through them, they are, for the most part, intelligent, confident, well-informed individuals. But so are my friends from Warwick, Edinburgh, LSE, UCL, Cardiff, Durham and so on, Oxford and Cambridge do not hold a monopoly on genius, or curiosity or appreciation of beauty.

There are currently around 120 universities in the United Kingdom and a further 180 higher education institutions. They all have their share of the bright and brilliant, and to some extent the mediocre and the  drug-addled (students remember). Yet the media, the government (both political and institutional), certain parts of the city, are dominated by Oxford and Cambridge graduates, and a lot of them, subtlety, take part in the social paradigm that sets the Old Universities apart from the rest of the world, above, beyond, the normal "small u" universities that the plebs attend.

I don't really have a definitive point to this, I'm not going to produce statistical tables that show that Oxford/Cambridge graduates do, or don't, on average make less good or bad policy decisions than alumni of other high caliber universities. But I would call attention to the OxCam Entitlement Paradigm. Next time you hear someone, anyone mention, even in passing, that they attended one of these institutions, ask them how that is relevant to the point they're making, or why they think that's a helpful contribution.

Please let me know if you get any meaningful responses,

Ta.

/Z  (BSc (Hons) PPE)