Stephen Toope is destroying Cambridge
You can tell the University of Cambridge is not a meritocracy. If it were, Stephen Toope would never have become vice-chancellor. Entrusted with the post back in 2017, the Canadian lawyer and human rights specialist has spent his controversial tenure eroding 800 years of academic liberty and educational excellence in what looks, to this alumna’s eyes at least, like an attempt to turn the Crown Jewels of British education into a plastic tiara set from Claire’s Accessories.
Canada is the wokest country in the world. To the quiet horror of many dons, Toope has imported its Leftist Right-think into what was once the natural home of the maverick. In 2020, the university proposed new rules which would require academics to be “respectful of the diverse identities of others”. A valiant group of lecturers fought back, insisting Cambridge could not demand that they be respectful towards all beliefs. “We have a right, in some cases practically a duty, to satirise and mock them,” they said.
Thankfully, Toope is leaving the university in September, but not before one final attempt to punish the children of its own graduates who hauled themselves up by their brains and hard work. Not satisfied with warning independent schools (many with underprivileged children on bursaries) that their intake would fall over time, he said Cambridge might even introduce figures on grammar school recruitment and free school meal eligibility because, as one report summarising his views said, “focusing on intake from state schools alone was not an effective indicator of wealth or social class”.
So Rosie and Matt, brilliant kids from suburban semis, work their socks off to get into a grammar. Their parents sacrifice holidays and treats in order to afford the 11-plus tutoring which Rosie and Matt’s Ofsted “inadequate” junior school could not provide. Flourishing in that unashamedly academic grammar school environment, Rosie and Matt achieve perfect GCSES and stellar A-levels. Brimming with hope, they aim for the glittering prize of a place at Cambridge. Like me at their age, they have no idea which college is which, so they pick the prettiest one on the river. Nooo! Don’t choose that one, guys, it’s really hard to get into.
Rosie and Matt are exactly what Cambridge is looking for. Or used to be. Little do they suspect that their applications will be unsuccessful because some Canadian bleeding heart thinks they’re too privileged because they weren’t born to a pitbull-owning single mother on benefits and can afford their own school lunch.
When I went up to Cambridge in 1978, I was among just a handful of students in my college from a comprehensive, and the only one reading English. Things needed to change. Before most of the grammars were culled, Oxbridge had been full of kids from my kind of background. Far from creating the level playing field that was promised, the comprehensive system denied the most intellectually able children the rigorous learning they would need to compete with their better off peers. By the time I got there, diversity had declined sharply and public school representation was at a level not seen since the War. What a magnificent own-goal for socialism!
A campaign for Cambridge to more accurately reflect society has worked. State school pupils made up 72 per cent of its intake last September. Privately, some professors will tell you things have gone too far. Outstanding applicants are being rejected because their parents could afford to send them to a great school. More mediocre candidates who match the new criteria slip in and need assistance. One college I know of is getting around Toope’s edict on the quiet by recruiting its undergraduates from top schools in Germany and Scandinavia; no boxticking of social deprivation required!
If this class war by elite educationalists against selective and private schools goes on, Cambridge will start to slide down the international rankings. How would it make sense to reject a gifted boy like, say, Greg Winter because he didn’t attend some sink comp? Greg read Natural Sciences at Trinity College, part of that extraordinary 1950s generation which became a great motor of achievement and upward mobility for our nation. In 2018, Sir Gregory Winter was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the therapeutic use of monoclonal antibodies.
You know, I can’t help wondering, would Cambridge admit a young Greg today? Or would it do as Toope suggests and reject a “privileged” product of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, in favour of someone less brainy and more diverse? For my alma mater, the best university in the world, it’s just so incredibly stupid.