Whenever I read headlines like the one in The Times this week – ‘The new Oxbridge trick – go private then switch to state’ – I am astounded.
I’m not shocked that parents are gaming the system - that starts from primary school - but that people care so much about their kid going to Oxford or Cambridge that they will stop at nothing to get them there. No pressure kids, but it seems your entire educational journey is geared towards one destination: Oxbridge, a five-star resort in the Maldives, while literally any other university is the equivalent of Whitley Bay caravan park in the Nineties (maybe it’s got nicer since we used to go there…)
And as someone who has been there, done that, got the ‘St Hugh’s Freshers Week’ T-shirt, I wish I could tell some of these pushy parents to chill about Oxbridge, because it’s really not the be all and end all.
There’s an old joke along the lines of ‘How do you spot an Oxford graduate?...because they’ll tell you within five minutes’. Here I am though, a full eight months into writing this newsletter, and only just declaring myself as a fully-fledged Oxford dweeb, because – much like dreams or talking incessantly about your children – I know that nobody cares. Except maybe my mum, and even she got over it a decade ago.
I can tell you how many potential employers have mentioned my Oxbridge graduate status in my whole 14 year career: precisely zero. I honestly don’t think any of my editors have been aware, at least not until it finally comes up in conversation about a year into each job and they look at me like ‘Really…you?!’
Instead, the publications I’ve written for have made far of an impact on my employability. As soon as I had Cosmopolitan on my CV it propelled me in editors’ eyes in a way that writing for Studentbeans or Hairdressers Journal simply never had (weird that).
And while I largely enjoyed my time at Oxford and met some fabulous friends, it’s a bloody stressful place to study, and certainly not for everyone. I found the workload frankly horrendous much of time, and it was a difficult adjustment to go from being one of the smart pupils in my state school to suddenly feeling like a right thicko compared to my peers. There was a shocking level of mental health problems among the student population, and I saw many people who’d been hot-housed through the nation’s top private schools have full nervous breakdowns when it came to exams, after years of academic pressure got too much for them.
While I’m glad I went to Oxford, I think I could have had a jollier time and exactly the same career if I’d gone to my second choice university, Leeds. This is why I find it so mad how many parents clearly still consider Oxbridge as paramount when it comes to their kids’ education – heaven forbid they should go to a bog standard red-brick! It would make sense if all the other options were crap, but that’s not the case here. Oxbridge is amazing, yes, but we’re lucky to live in a country that has countless excellent universities. And arguably the ones gaming the system are those who have the least to gain; kids with wealthy backgrounds and good connections will land on their feet wherever they go to uni (believe me, that is something I have seen in my journalism career).
Of course, I’m coming from the perspective of one industry, and in other fields the Oxbridge thing does matter more. One friend who works in corporate law says she owes her career to attending Oxford, partly because top law firms woo Oxbridge students with dinners and parties so that they can attract the brightest and best before they’ve even left university. It’s the same in certain areas of finance and consultancy.
But I’m not sure all these Oxbridge-obsessed parents are losing their minds (and quite possibly putting their kids’ minds at risk) to secure places at Magic Circle law firms. Instead, a certain social strata seem to view attendance at Oxbridge, like going to prestigious schools, as the goal in itself. To which I say: get a grip, use your imagination, and remember that you haven’t actually lived until you’ve had a night out in Cardiff University’s student union bar.
Agreed! And with university fees crippling graduates with debt they can never pay off, is university such an essential experience anyway?