An Oxbridge education should be a matter of merit not preference
SIR – Like Allison Pearson (Features, May 22), I went to a state school and won a place at Oxbridge. My husband and I have worked hard so we could send our children to private school.
So it strikes me as deeply ironic that they may now be discriminated against in their own attempts at Oxbridge entry. Surely this is the way to cancel out social mobility in a generation. Jo Senior
Bedale, North Yorkshire
SIR – Allison Pearson is concerned that Oxford University’s decision to offer preferential admission to candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds will deprive other, fully qualified applicants of an Oxford education. There is, however, another matter of equal concern.
Students clearly unable to perform to the university’s high standards are normally sent down. In the case of those granted preferential admission this would be perceived as unfair, since their level of academic achievement was acknowledged to be lower when they were accepted.
But if those whose anticipated potential has not been realised are allowed to stay on, they could suffer from a harmful degree of anxiety and stress. Pastoral care is not enough in such a situation. Have the architects of the new policy addressed these potential problems? Patrick Hickman-robertson
Eastbury, West Berkshire
SIR – If Oxford wants to encourage students from disadvantaged families to apply, it should offer financial help but not lower the necessary grades.
India currently has a similar policy based on caste in university admission, and also in recruitment for government jobs. However, a recent survey indicated that only 15-20 per cent of such students are employable after their university education.
Oxford and Cambridge are worldclass centres for quality education, and no one wants to see this downgraded. Rama Murthy
Basingstoke, Hampshire
SIR – Previous, similar experiments to that proposed by Oxford suggested prioritising the children of parents who had not gone to university. In both cases, these people, having been successful, will find that their own children are put at a disadvantage because of it. This seems odd.
Similarly, people living in a house that they have worked for all their lives will find themselves ending up in the same care home, receiving the same care, as their neighbours who have never worked in their lives and whose identical house was paid for and maintained by the council. These people might justly advise their own children not to bother saving but to blow it all on holidays and fine wines while they still can.
Our country today has a strange way of encouraging and rewarding generational self-betterment, hard work and prudence. Victor Launert
Matlock Bath, Derbyshire
SIR – The idea of retiring old university lecturers and professors (report, May 23) so as to allow younger people to take their place was tried in the early Eighties.
All that happened then was that many members of staff left by the front door with a handsome golden handshake only to pop in by the back door to give their lecture courses (at a price, of course). Richard Holroyd
Cambridge