&#x27;Oxbridgerial&#x27; will it ever happen?

pendragon

The other thing that you learn pretty early on in history is that it is possible to achieve knowledge without first hand experience and to learn something through the process; otherwise the whole subject would be a monumental waste of time. Nobody has enough experience to have a definitive picture of such a large issue, and I am under no obligation to accept your testimony. Another anecdotal point that has been made to me is that often academics outside the GT are more prolific, which might be because they are less worried about the reception of their work. But the only way to resolve conflicting claims of biased experientially based evidence is to have some kind of empirical test.

Well I've done a head count here and over in chemistry and, excluding foreigners, there are more of us without degrees from GT institutions than with them. However, one thing you also learn in history is that one must take account of biases in sources when considering second-hand evidence. In a case where were are not talking about historical events, but current employment practices in the higher education sector, I would definitely say that having first-hand experience of the recruitment procedure is worth a lot more than second-hand opinions. I was actually offered a job ahead of internal applicants at Oxford - of course I could be the exception that proves the rule, if I was the only person to have ever done this, which I'm not.

I don't really understand what you mean when you say that academics outside the GT are less worried about the reception of their work - in my area we try and get published in the same, peer-reviewed, mostly american journals. We are all judged by the RAE too. In nottingham we have rules about submissions to journals with low impact factors (to be avoided at all costs) which means we have to do good work to get published. All academics are worried about the reception of their work, because that defines their success - and this dominates over any kind of notion that because one is at oxbridge or london one has a duty to publish extra good work, why? Because and academic career is a very individual thing.

I think if we were to do a detailed study of the evidence in terms of number of citations for works published by academics from various institutions in the field of history it would support the following conclusion - that there are a few outstanding academics based unpredictably all over the place whose works have a huge impact in particular subfields and are among the most widely cited and a great many top academics revealed by highly significant clusters of citations to be found in and around golden triangle institutions.

As shady said, where an academic works has little to do with your assertions. If one wanted to look in my area at the most highly cited articles and locations of researchers (a slightly historical look at things) one would find two universities stand out above the others - UAE and Liverpool, because these guys were doing the research well before anyone else and most of the top academics in my field have been associated at some time with either or both of them and the seminal works were carried out in these places.

If you want to do the work to test that assumption and perhaps disprove it, by all means have a go. I am willing to be swayed by a strong empirical case.

Believe what you want, I know it isn't true for my area.

Reply 182

FadeToBlackout

15

ChemistBoy

However, one thing you also learn in history is that one must take account of biases in sources when considering second-hand evidence. In a case where were are not talking about historical events, but current employment practices in the higher education sector, I would definitely say that having first-hand experience of the recruitment procedure is worth a lot more than second-hand opinions.

I'd say it was more the other way around- your first-hand experience is limited and will inform and shape your own personal point of view of the limited area of it that you saw, compared with the more general overview of a good secondary source. :p:

But that's just arguing semantics, really- it all depends on how informed are the secondary sources, and if it's just ill-informed opinion, then they've got to be treated with care.

For my twopenny worth, considering History again, looking through the journals and the publications, a LOT of what is published- especially in the more traditional historical fields such as political or constitutional history- comes out of Oxbridge. Looking at the author's names and institutions at the bottom of the article, "....... College" comes up a lot. Even those who're listed at other universities tend to gravitate towards Oxbridge over time, maybe starting elsewhere and then moving into the ivory towers as they become a bit more experienced and, basically, better.

I've not done much non-traditional history- of course, in areas such as African history, I suppose specialised institutions such as SOAS come into their own. For American history, certainly, the majority of the scholarship happens in America- but the principle English authorities are, generally, at Oxbridge.

Maybe I have been a little bit blinkered by this- as in, I might not notice when people aren't from Oxbridge- but I don't think that that's completely true. Lots of the more traditional historians, who are publishing in high-quality journals on traditional aspects of History, are based in Oxbridge. For example, looking at the Royal Historical Society's (www.rhs.ac.uk annual report, of the 20 or so historians mentioned by name, at least 6 are recognisable as being from Cambridge (And I'm lucky enough that one of them is my dissertation supervisor) with a few more from Oxford.

I've just been onto Jstor and picked a few issues of traditional and non-traditional journals at random.

Articles:Oxbridge ratio

Historical Journal 43.3: 9:3
Past and Present No. 163: 5:1
English Historical Review 116.467: 3:1

Journal of Economic History 63.3: 7:1 (All the non-Oxbridge articles are by Americans)
Economic History Review, 63.4: 4:0 (One of the articles being from LSE)

Journal of African American History 88.3: 7:0

Reply 183

apotoftea

19

It's only when you start getting into the much less traditional forms of History eg: Postmodernism, later Modern Historiography where you see other university names cropping up again and again.

This is the editorial & advisory board for the Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice:

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1364-2529&linktype=5

Granted that obviously they'll have others publishing in it but even on that board - only two from Cambridge and none from Oxford

Reply 184

shady lane

FadeToBlackout

I'd say it was more the other way around- your first-hand experience is limited and will inform and shape your own personal point of view of the limited area of it that you saw, compared with the more general overview of a good secondary source. :p:

But that's just arguing semantics, really- it all depends on how informed are the secondary sources, and if it's just ill-informed opinion, then they've got to be treated with care.

For my twopenny worth, considering History again, looking through the journals and the publications, a LOT of what is published- especially in the more traditional historical fields such as political or constitutional history- comes out of Oxbridge. Looking at the author's names and institutions at the bottom of the article, "....... College" comes up a lot. Even those who're listed at other universities tend to gravitate towards Oxbridge over time, maybe starting elsewhere and then moving into the ivory towers as they become a bit more experienced and, basically, better.

I've not done much non-traditional history- of course, in areas such as African history, I suppose specialised institutions such as SOAS come into their own. For American history, certainly, the majority of the scholarship happens in America- but the principle English authorities are, generally, at Oxbridge.

Maybe I have been a little bit blinkered by this- as in, I might not notice when people aren't from Oxbridge- but I don't think that that's completely true. Lots of the more traditional historians, who are publishing in high-quality journals on traditional aspects of History, are based in Oxbridge. For example, looking at the Royal Historical Society's (www.rhs.ac.uk annual report, of the 20 or so historians mentioned by name, at least 6 are recognisable as being from Cambridge (And I'm lucky enough that one of them is my dissertation supervisor) with a few more from Oxford.

I've just been onto Jstor and picked a few issues of traditional and non-traditional journals at random.

Articles:Oxbridge ratio

Historical Journal 43.3: 9:3
Past and Present No. 163: 5:1
English Historical Review 116.467: 3:1

Journal of Economic History 63.3: 7:1 (All the non-Oxbridge articles are by Americans)
Economic History Review, 63.4: 4:0 (One of the articles being from LSE)

Journal of African American History 88.3: 7:0

This still has nothing to do with the fact that pendragon is stating totally erroneous information:

1. the majority of academic staff at top universities studied at Oxbridge (false)

2. an undergraduate degree from Oxbridge carries enough weight to skew a department's hiring decisions at the level of a PhD holder (false)

The best universities in the UK are publishing the most research, no question. But that doesn't have anything to do with where their faculty studied. Very few of the authors that I'm reading for my dissertation now studied at Oxbridge, and not even half work or worked there.

Reply 185

FadeToBlackout

For my twopenny worth, considering History again, looking through the journals and the publications, a LOT of what is published- especially in the more traditional historical fields such as political or constitutional history- comes out of Oxbridge. Looking at the author's names and institutions at the bottom of the article, "....... College" comes up a lot. Even those who're listed at other universities tend to gravitate towards Oxbridge over time, maybe starting elsewhere and then moving into the ivory towers as they become a bit more experienced and, basically, better.

Bear in mind that Oxford's is a huge department capable of swallowing up a much larger number of history academics than most other universities. It's like Christ Church students bragging about how their lot got more firsts than any other college - they've got more students too!

Also, in my subject (English) a few too many journals are Oxford-edited and Oxford-based. There is a clear and unashamed bias towards their own academics (and DPhil students). Their house style and content are both completely dictated by the Oxonian stuffed shirts of old-school lit crit: no obscure or non-canonical authors (and Oxford's canon of important writers is much smaller than one might expect), nothing too recent (too recent often means 1938+), nothing too speculative (meaning no original ideas - just manuscript-based research backed up by good old-fashioned facts), and so on. With this kind of editorial control-freakery (not to say pompousness), I'm not surprised that many academics have no interest in writing for these journals. These journals do publish some good scholarship, but they stifle a whole lot more.

I don't think it's as simple as saying 'all the best journals publish mainly Oxbridge authors', unless by 'best' you mean 'most traditional, oldest', etc - which are also words used to describe Oxbridge itself. Traditional and methodical do not best describe all good scholarship, just the Oxford variety.

Reply 186

ChemistBoy

FadeToBlackout

I'd say it was more the other way around- your first-hand experience is limited and will inform and shape your own personal point of view of the limited area of it that you saw, compared with the more general overview of a good secondary source. :p:

Employement practices change over time, even in HE. I think first hand experience of recent practices is much more important than second-hand information that may not be contemporary.

Reply 187

moogle301

9

FadeToBlackout

Alas, poor Yorkwick... :p:

lmao!!

Reply 188

Phoenix Wright

8

Personally, for an amalgamation of LSE and ICL, the name The London Imperial College of Economics and Science strikes me as much better than any mentioned above. Trivial, of course.

Pendragon does have somewhat of a point. I'm not intimately familiar with the details of postdoctoral placements, but I did go through my personal library and it is overwhelmingly dominated by authors who studied at Oxbridge and Harvard. You have to remember, though, that my library isn't full of the most specialist materials yet and, really, is just a collection of four years worth of textbooks along with some books I wanted to read. Most of the big name historians in my library (Niall Ferguson, Paul Kennedy, Margaret MacMillan, AJP Taylor, Ian Kershaw, Eric Hobsbawm) are from Oxford (though Hobsbawm was at Cambs).

That having been said, vickytoria is also right. When I looked at my Asian history books, SOAS kept coming up again and again (WG Beasley, of course). Stanford, also, was very prominent in my Japanese history textbooks. Though, the pre-eminent China scholar, John King Fairbank was educated, apparently, at both Harvard and Oxford. In American history, Princeton was the big name there, it seems.

This seems true for history, but I am in no place to say that it holds true for every academic discipline. I should ask my sister who's big in Psychology when she gets back from Asia. I also have no idea how some of these American historians could afford to write a doctorate at Oxford as international students. But that's another matter.

Reply 189

shady lane

This still has nothing to do with the fact that pendragon is stating totally erroneous information:

1. the majority of academic staff at top universities studied at Oxbridge (false)

2. an undergraduate degree from Oxbridge carries enough weight to skew a department's hiring decisions at the level of a PhD holder (false)

The best universities in the UK are publishing the most research, no question. But that doesn't have anything to do with where their faculty studied. Very few of the authors that I'm reading for my dissertation now studied at Oxbridge, and not even half work or worked there.

What I said was

pendragon

Most top academics in the country have spent time at Oxbridge, and if they haven't they will have been very likely to have spent time at UoL...

I have already said that I am basing this on what I have been told by historians and economic historians...

Among historians it is apparent that it matters if you have studied within the golden triangle.

Which means:

Most top academics will have studied, researched or taught within Oxbridge or at least the GT.

Which I then modified with saying I was referring to the social sciences, particularly history and economic history.

And that having a GT degree helps you in academia, which is obvious. I didn't say anything would 'skew' your postdoctoral applications, a phrase which implies that there is something wrong with taking where you got your degrees from into consideration when you apply for your first academic post (coming from somebody who upholds the merits of a system where they still take into account non-relevant extra-curriculars when you apply for graduate studies that is rich). Oxbridge and UoL does still open some doors, whether you think thats wrong is another issue.

Which makes FadeToBlackout's evidence completely relevant to what I claimed:

FadeToBlackout

For my twopenny worth, considering History again, looking through the journals and the publications, a LOT of what is published- especially in the more traditional historical fields such as political or constitutional history- comes out of Oxbridge. Looking at the author's names and institutions at the bottom of the article, "....... College" comes up a lot. Even those who're listed at other universities tend to gravitate towards Oxbridge over time, maybe starting elsewhere and then moving into the ivory towers as they become a bit more experienced and, basically, better.

I've not done much non-traditional history- of course, in areas such as African history, I suppose specialised institutions such as SOAS come into their own. For American history, certainly, the majority of the scholarship happens in America- but the principle English authorities are, generally, at Oxbridge.

Maybe I have been a little bit blinkered by this- as in, I might not notice when people aren't from Oxbridge- but I don't think that that's completely true. Lots of the more traditional historians, who are publishing in high-quality journals on traditional aspects of History, are based in Oxbridge. For example, looking at the Royal Historical Society's (www.rhs.ac.uk annual report, of the 20 or so historians mentioned by name, at least 6 are recognisable as being from Cambridge (And I'm lucky enough that one of them is my dissertation supervisor) with a few more from Oxford.

I've just been onto Jstor and picked a few issues of traditional and non-traditional journals at random.

Articles:Oxbridge ratio

Historical Journal 43.3: 9:3
Past and Present No. 163: 5:1
English Historical Review 116.467: 3:1

Journal of Economic History 63.3: 7:1 (All the non-Oxbridge articles are by Americans)
Economic History Review, 63.4: 4:0 (One of the articles being from LSE)

Journal of African American History 88.3: 7:0

Reply 190

pendragon

And that having a GT degree helps you in academia, which is obvious.

It is by no means obvious, or true. It helps you get city jobs, but the only thing that helps you in academia is writing a brilliant PhD thesis and getting it published by a respected press. And also publishing a lot of articles and attending lots of conferences during your PhD. And getting stunning references from well-known academics.

Sometimes, when applying for an academic job, this GT could even work against you: academics are full of all kinds of strange prejudices. But, in general terms, it makes no difference because it is your knowledge and skill, and how this translates into publishing power, and how this itself translates into RAE returns, that count. Most Oxbridge academics well tell you this - it's what I've been told ever since I said I wanted to write a PhD and go into academia. Publish or perish. Write a crap thesis at Oxford, and perish just the same as you would anywhere else.

Reply 191

And on the misleading journal statistics you applaud, let me just repeat what I said earlier:

the_alba

Bear in mind that Oxford's is a huge department capable of swallowing up a much larger number of history academics than most other universities. It's like Christ Church students bragging about how their lot got more firsts than any other college - they've got more students too!

Also, in my subject (English) a few too many journals are Oxford-edited and Oxford-based. There is a clear and unashamed bias towards their own academics (and DPhil students). Their house style and content are both completely dictated by the Oxonian stuffed shirts of old-school lit crit: no obscure or non-canonical authors (and Oxford's canon of important writers is much smaller than one might expect), nothing too recent (too recent often means 1938+), nothing too speculative (meaning no original ideas - just manuscript-based research backed up by good old-fashioned facts), and so on. With this kind of editorial control-freakery (not to say pompousness), I'm not surprised that many academics have no interest in writing for these journals. These journals do publish some good scholarship, but they stifle a whole lot more.

I don't think it's as simple as saying 'all the best journals publish mainly Oxbridge authors', unless by 'best' you mean 'most traditional, oldest', etc - which are also words used to describe Oxbridge itself. Traditional and methodical do not best describe all good scholarship, just the Oxford variety.

Reply 192

the_alba

And on the misleading journal statistics you applaud, let me just repeat what I said earlier:

I don't see how the fact that you don't like the top British journals in my subject (by analogy with your own) because they are too traditional and stifling does anything to damage what I was saying. That is the nature of a stuffy academic elite.

I don't like the fact that Oxbridge is generally anti-populist, but that and what you complain about just reinforces the fact that they are arbiters of what is considered good scholarship. After all if they were not such well respected journals, publishing in some of which mark the pinnacle of some academics careers, how could the fact that they don't accept unorthodox work be so annoying to you or stifling to academic creativity?

For if they matter no more than any other journal there is no reason to complain and you can simply recognise them as journals for that kind of scholarship and publish elsewhere. Your sense of grievance is routed in exclusion (not personal I hasten to add, but in terms of what you think is great scholarship being excluded), and if they were not elite journals why would you be bothered about this? I ignored your post because I think it indirectly supports what I am saying more than it attacks it.

Reply 193

the_alba

It is by no means obvious, or true. It helps you get city jobs, but the only thing that helps you in academia is writing a brilliant PhD thesis and getting it published by a respected press. And also publishing a lot of articles and attending lots of conferences during your PhD. And getting stunning references from well-known academics.

The GT has a disproportionate number of these, so in that way it helps. (I meant well-known academics, I think there are less stunning references)

I did not say it helps you get a place over someone with a better publishing record than you, I clearly meant it helps you all things being equal. If you were competing to get appointed at HKU with someone who did their degrees at UEA and you both had a poor publishing record it would help. And in the more likely example if you were competing for your first research job within the GT with someone from UEA and you both had great publishing records it would help a bit.

You are right that some aggrieved people have prejudice against Oxbridge (probably not the rest of the GT so much), but I would say there is plenty of prejudice in its favour. You have admitted as much:

the_alba

a few too many journals are Oxford-edited and Oxford-based. There is a clear and unashamed bias towards their own academics (and DPhil students). Their house style and content are both completely dictated by the Oxonian stuffed shirts

You don't think this applies to hiring people for their first research positions as well to a small extent all other credentials being equal?

Reply 194

fat_hobbit

2

cramnotes

Also, it may have trouble becoming known like that, because it is a purely science university.

I know a physics lecturer at Imperial (just recently retired) who said to me:

Spoiler

Reply 195

It really doesn't help, all things being equal. It makes no difference. When I was considering whether to stay at Oxford or go to York (which is much better for my subject), the advice coming from my tutors was not to stay in Oxford just because you think it will help you get jobs, because it won't.

As for most famous academics being in the GT. In my field, that most definitely NOT the case, though I can see how that would be different for other fields. If I had stayed in Oxford, I would have been working with people who had very little understanding of my research area. On a side note, the famous academics who taught me at Oxford were, on the whole, pretty crap. And like the mafia, they look after their own...

Your point about the journals is pretty irrelevant; I don't think mine was. I said the journal statistics were misleading for two reasons: a) there are many more academics at Oxford than at most other universities (many of its departments are positively huge), and b) good scholarship is not confined to Oxford-based and Oxford-style journals. I wasn't 'complaining', as you say, because I think they matter more than other journals, but because FadetoBlackout's statistics were suggesting as much. Believe it or not, many, many academics would have no interest in getting an article past the radar of Essays in Criticism. In my subject, biographical or bibliographical essays are not powerful scholarship - they are often the work of academics who have no opinions about books, who couldn't write an original or intellectually brilliant essay if they tried, but who have found that they can write about, I don't know, 'Walter Scott's Heterogeneous Use of the Semi-Colon from 1823 - 1829'. That is the sort of thing that your 'respected' journals would be falling over themselves to publish, and better academics are right to leave them alone. Oxford is rife with that sort of scholarship, which is why its English department is considered by many to be a bit of a joke. All I'm saying is that I reject the notion that these journals represent the finest scholarship, 'and by the way it all comes out of Oxbridge'. The Oxbridge brand of scholarship, as represented in these journals, is certainly nothing to aspire to, and is the touchstone of only the most narrow and inward-looking kind of (what some would call) scholarly excellence.

Reply 196

ChemistBoy

I can't emphasise enough how things differ between academic disciplines. In science (a relevant point if we are talking about imperial college) things are very different to what pendragon or the_alba are saying in terms of the standards of scholarship within and without the golden triangle. In science there seems to be no difference at all in the way research is conducted between institutions - the quality of the research output varies, but there is no emphasis on more or less esoteric work (i.e. science doesn't have the scholarly schools of thought that other disciplines have). Making any sort of generalisation here seems utterly pointless.

Also, in my field and many other scientific disciplines the big journals are all american (Nature and Science, for example) and that means that their editors don't give a **** if you are at Oxford or Nottingham Trent, the only bias I've seen from these journals is a national one (they tend to publish articles from stateside academics more readily.

Getting on in academia in my area is about two things alone - publications and who you know - so working with a well-respected academic is more important than going to Oxford, as the varied educational histories of the academic community attest to. My current boss did his PhD in Swansea, but he did it with one of the most respected academics of the time (the guy who wrote the book on his research area) and that stood him in much better stead than if he had done his PhD with a junior lecturer at Oxbridge. However many top academics end up at GT institutions, why? Because they have the most money, simple as that.

Reply 197

pharmakos

8

Phoenix Wright

This seems true for history, but I am in no place to say that it holds true for every academic discipline. I should ask my sister who's big in Psychology when she gets back from Asia.

FYI, according to the Thomson databases, of the world's top 10 most-cited researchers in neuroscience and behaviour in the past 11 years, 4 are based at UCL (Friston, Dolan, Frackowiak, Frith) and 1 in Cambridge (Robbins). The other 5 are based at different institutions in the US (http://www.in-cites.com/top/2006/sixth06-neu.html ).

Reply 198