"Bring on Oxbridge quotas"

Positive discrimination is now illegal. Positive action is legal:

On the Cambridge website admission statistics for home applicants 2016, it shows 3% of applicants were black; 1.7% received Offers and 1.5 % made those Offers.

On the Cambridge website admission statistics for home applicants 2016, it shows 3% of applicants were black; 1.7% received Offers and 1.5 % made those Offers.

I wasn't talking just about the UK.


That does sound like weasel words. Two candidates will never be exactly equal. Allowing a 'protected characteristic candidate' (I don't see how that can be defined without discrimination) to decide is obviously discrimination by another name.

The stats are all in the thread above you...

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Ideally it needs to be by course for the reason I gave earlier.

That's nice.

The data I linked to covers Cambridge, Oxford and every other UK university and uses the same methodology across all of them. It also adjusts for predicted grades and so restricts the population to 18 yr olds.

(and I think you're misrepresenting the percentages with your wording there 1.7% of black applicants didn't receive offers (18% of them did), 1.7% of offer holders were black, likewise 1.5% of those who were placed were black (not 1.5% of black applicants were placed - 13% of black applicants were placed)).

Do you think that maybe the more popular and competitive courses should be expanded?

We were talking about access initiatives and whether they were getting black students to apply so I was quoting their percentages from overall applications, offers etc. compared with their percentage of the population in 2011 Census (couldn't find any more recent data from ONS).

And you're absolutely right to point out that of those who applied 18% received Offers and 13% of those who applied got in.

I'm unsure about the idea of quotas, but one thing I am sure about is that it should not be based on whether one attends a state school or a private school, but instead based on income, as many private school students receive bursaries to attend their school, but their families still belong to the lower/middle classes. Therefore, if Oxbridge begins to introduce quotas for state school students, it would be wildly unfair to bursary students from private schools, who have still been limited by their parent's income. At the same time, I do appreciate how many state school students do not receive the same quality of education as a child attending a private school would, so bursary students do have an advantage over a state school student.

Quotas would be measured against intake not against applicants.

offers are being made fairly with regard only to academic ability regardless of race, religion, gender or anything else.

So the context of an application doesn't matter?

and so often going straight to private companies involved in the provision of outreach activities. It's scandalous.

The problem with quotas is that they don't address the root cause of the inequity in admissions which is the systemic barriers to achievement placed before students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and minority ethnic backgrounds. By the very structure of "modern society" such students are unable to move into more affluent areas with "better" schools due to the extreme limitations on their parents working conditions, and thus consistently have lower attainment regardless of individual ability - and so are less prepared for and thus less able to complete the degree programmes in question.

This is clearly beyond the students' control, but until universities leverage their political power to force politicians to acknowledge the issues and implement policy to remove these barriers, the problem will remain - no matter how many quotas, Oxbridge interview technique sessions, funded open day attendances and university rep visits to lower performing schools they put in place. It is a policy issues that needs to be addressed by politicians, not foisted off as the fault of the universities who are otherwise powerless (beyond the aforementioned political power - particularly Oxbridge given it's many alumni in that area) to make any long term change.

hehe. Other than a few tens of millions of pounds and a few acres of real estate. Perhaps Gap College might be an appropriate start for such an initiative, or River Island Hall, or maybe Next College. Presumably FCUK wouldn't be acceptable.

You literally have made about 20 comments on another thread espousing offensive ideas and commentary, some of which have actually been removed by moderators due to the offensive nature of the commentary.

My intention is to defend those from abuse and being intolerant of intolerance is the first step towards that.

with regard only to academic ability regardless of race, religion, gender or anything else.

Oxbridge is obviously good but it really isn't all that for there to be quotas for it.

Ivy leagues in the USA offer big financial aids to help poorer students, Oxbridge can offer that (although they do that anyway) but more substantially I guess.