Are the days of Oxbridge dominance over?

Are you sure of that? On Trinity website, you can find the number of MPs who graduated from their college. They were 49 (!) on 615 in 1935, but only 7 on 650 in 2010. I suspect it is the same for Oxbridge, but I'd like to see the figures if they exist.
http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/node/517

Mmm says here http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9322492/the-politics-of-ppe/ that 50% of ministers and 28% of MPs are oxbridge though it's mainly having a dig at Oxford PPE for training youngsters to treat life as if it were an essay crisis.

Trinity probably isn't a particularly bad culprit for unleashing annoying career politicians on the nation because it's maths & science heavy... you'd expect it to produce lots of annoying investment bankers instead.

Reply 21

ClickItBack

18

Original post by cambio wechsel

I wonder about the extent to which talk of 'Oxbridge dominance' has ever really been reference to research output anyway.

Oxbridge (graduates') dominance of particular professions is what is much more usually being referred to here.

In most fields, either Oxford or Cambridge is often top for research quality in the UK - and very rarely outside the top 3. In fact one of the two tend to show up as top 3 in Europe consistently across research fields.

I don't think they're quite as dominant in research as they are at undergrad, where it is very rare for people to turn down an Oxbridge offer - but they are still the best all-round research universities in the UK, and probably Europe.

Reply 22

The Clockwork Apple

18

It is true that UCL, King's and Imperial College are climbing up the ladder of top universities at a vertiginous rate. I believe in little time they will be on-par with Oxbridge. Perhaps some day the UK will be similar to the US, where Yale-Harvard-MIT (perhaps this one is more respected than the rest)-Columbia-Stanford and a few more are all similarly respected, rather than Oxbridge and then a huge gap between them and other universities (although IMO this gap is practically non-existing, as other universities have topped them in many aspects. Birmingham is #1 for research, right?).
I think the problem lies with the fact that outside the UK, people only seem to know Oxbridge, as they are always in movies and all that. I hate it when people ask me (here in Spain): "what universities have you applied to?" and apparently only Cambridge is good, because when they hear about Imperial, UCL, Manchester or Birmingham they say "Oh but those aren't good, right?". B**** NOOOOOO
rant over

Reply 23

nulli tertius

21

Original post by Josb

Are you sure of that? On Trinity website, you can find the number of MPs who graduated from their college. They were 49 (!) on 615 in 1935, but only 7 on 650 in 2010. I suspect it is the same for Oxbridge, but I'd like to see the figures if they exist.
http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/node/517

In 1935 35% of male university first degree graduates graduated from Oxford or Cambridge.

In 2013 there were 403770 graduates in the UK of which about 48% were male. That is about 194,000 male graduates. If Oxford and Cambridge had kept up their relative proportions there would have been 67,900 men graduating two years ago. That is a very long degree ceremony!

I am guessing that in 1935 about a quarter of all students at the University of Cambridge attended Trinity. So if Trinity had kept its relative size (and ignoring women entirely) it would have had a little over 11,000 new graduates in 2013. In fact it probably had less than 300. The number of MPs at Trinity might be only 1/7th of what it was 80 years ago; but the 7 of the current Parliament represents a far higher proportion of the country's entire (male) graduate population than the 49 of 1935.

Reply 24

LutherVan

2

Original post by cambio wechsel

I wonder about the extent to which talk of 'Oxbridge dominance' has ever really been reference to research output anyway.

Oxbridge (graduates') dominance of particular professions is what is much more usually being referred to here.

This is really not true.

For the 2008 RAE assessment, Oxford was 1st for research power and Cambridge was 2nd.

In the 2001 RAE assessment, Oxford was 1st for research power and Cambridge was 2nd.

I am sure it would have been similar for the 1992 and 1996 RAE assessments. Oxford should normally come 1st due to its larger size and larger research manpower than Cambridge and the calculations of "research power" is influenced by size.

UCL was 3rd for both 2001 and 2008 RAE assessments. So, prior to this 2014 REF assessment, Oxbridge had actually dominated in terms of research output only for UCL to beat Cambridge this time round.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/about/documents/rae2008.pdf

Reply 25

cambio wechsel

20

Original post by LutherVan

This is really not true.

I fear we're talking at cross-purposes. My point had been that the term 'Oxbridge dominance' is employed, typically resentfully and sometimes with justification, to describe the preponderance of Oxbridge BA degree holders in particular professions. It has never been about showings in the RAE/REF.

Reply 26

LutherVan

2

Original post by The Clockwork Apple

It is true that UCL, King's and Imperial College are climbing up the ladder of top universities at a vertiginous rate. I believe in little time they will be on-par with Oxbridge. Perhaps some day the UK will be similar to the US, where Yale-Harvard-MIT (perhaps this one is more respected than the rest)-Columbia-Stanford and a few more are all similarly respected, rather than Oxbridge and then a huge gap between them and other universities (although IMO this gap is practically non-existing, as other universities have topped them in many aspects. Birmingham is #1 for research, right?).
I think the problem lies with the fact that outside the UK, people only seem to know Oxbridge, as they are always in movies and all that. I hate it when people ask me (here in Spain): "what universities have you applied to?" and apparently only Cambridge is good, because when they hear about Imperial, UCL, Manchester or Birmingham they say "Oh but those aren't good, right?". B**** NOOOOOO
rant over

I believe you actually forgot the London university that is actually performing the best and continuously beating Oxbridge:

LSE!!!

It has beaten Oxbridge in 2008 and 2014 in regards to having the highest percentage of research that is world leading.

It just does not get the same praise because people, as usual, focus on money. That is, they focus on 'research power', which determines the size of money got and this is dependent on size. LSE is small, hence does badly in research power rankings.

The point is that LSE is already beating Oxbridge, not just climbing the ladder.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/ng-interactive/2014/dec/18/university-research-excellence-framework-2014-full-rankings

http://www.theguardian.com/education/table/2008/dec/18/rae-2008-results-uk-universities

Are the days of Oxbridge dominance over?

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