Think that Oxbridge is elitist? Try the Ivy League

David Lammy’s attack on Oxbridge “apartheid” is weirdly out of touch. I went “up” to Cambridge in the late Seventies, although, country bumpkin that I was, I insisted on saying I’d come “down”. Technically, arriving from a comprehensive in Lincolnshire, I was correct, although for obscure, posh southern reasons, you could only come “up”.

Lammy’s revelation that Oxford “made more offers to applicants from five of the home counties than the whole of the north of England” is only shocking if you have established how many applications there were from north of Watford. Ditto ethnic minority candidates.

You can’t blame colleges for not admitting bright pupils if they don’t apply. Many state-school teachers are virulently opposed to the “elitist” universities they weren’t clever enough to attend themselves.

The truth is that both Oxford and Cambridge perform commendable contortionist acts to admit students from poorer backgrounds. Compared to US Ivy League colleges, which shamelessly give priority to “legacy” candidates – the kids of rich alumni – Oxbridge is a model of fairness and transparency.

Privilege has become the new disadvantage. Not long ago, my old college held a dinner for its donors. Parents who were sending their own offspring to the very best schools listened in stony silence as the Master enthused about how few of those pampered public-school products he was taking.

One fact Lammy doesn’t mention is that social mobility worked perfectly 50 years ago when grammar-school pupils took 70 per cent of Oxbridge places on merit. No need for hectoring quotas when poor, clever children had access to the same high-quality academic education as their richer peers. They put a stop to that, though. Because it wasn’t fair.