Peter Mandelson's increasingly hostile accusations that candidates from poor backgrounds are being deliberately rejected by "elite" universities are now proved beyond doubt to be based on bias, as a new report demonstrates that potential applicants are being influenced by their schools and teachers not to try for top universities, which are perceived to be out of their league. This research has been conducted by the Sutton Trust, a body whose mission coincides with Mandelson's in aiming to '"improve educational opportunities for young people from non-priviledged backgrounds and increase social mobility".
While the perennially biassed are rethinking their stance (always supposing, of course, that they are prepared to accept the evidence), they would be wise to consider the word "elite", which they so often employ pejoratively. The Oxford English Dictionary supplies a succinct definition: "The choice part or flower (of society, or of any body or class of persons)". This certainly supports the idea of a chosen few; yet the same term or concept applied elsewhere, for example in sport, contains no sense of denigration at all, either overt or implicit. Earlier this year, for instance, when Sheffield University's Media Centre headlined a news release "Universities' sporting elite showcase their star potential", these sports specialists were clearly viewed as a good thing. The term was used equally positively in a House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts report for 2005-6 entitled "UK Sport: Supporting elite athletes", while in April 2006 an item reporting on increased financial support for UK sportspeople in preparation for the 2012 Olympics proudly announced "£65m funding boost for elite sport".
The application of the term "elite" in sporting contexts explicitly refers to the best; after all, the best are the ones who win sporting events. Those who are not good at sport must learn early on that life is indeed not a level playing field; but many, perhaps most, may find something else at which they excel where their sporting peers do not and cannot.
So, if elitism is embraced and valorised in sport, why is the word "elite" purely negative when applied to academia? Just like sporting selection panels, universities want to select the best applicants, regardless of background. Just as in sport, league tables are paramount and "excellence" in global competition a requirement for winning and maintaining funding; isn't it incumbent upon universities to attract and accept the best candidates then, just as it is for football clubs to identify and select the best tyro players to train for the future? The British Olympic Association was allowed to rewrite its ski-jumping rules to exclude competitors not in the world top 50, in order to avoid successors to Eddie the Eagle. So an elite is in fact a good thing; after all, who wants delicate brain surgery or a complex heart operation to be performed by someone who was accepted for medical training to fulfil a social quota, not because of aptitude and ability?
Now there is unambiguous evidence to the contrary, it's time to ask why Mandelson and Co have so doggedly insisted that their plans for social mobility have been thwarted by "elite" universities? It's an insistence all the more surprising given that many academics lean politically left, as demonstrated by the policies of their union, the UCU, and the stance of their newspaper of choice, the Guardian.
The answer can only be is that it's easier (and cheaper) to demonise universities than to turn around the schools that are failing to supply "the disadvantaged" with the education they need to deal with everyday life, never mind a degree. The schools' failures are, of course, the politicians' own.
While the perennially biassed are rethinking their stance (always supposing, of course, that they are prepared to accept the evidence), they would be wise to consider the word "elite", which they so often employ pejoratively. The Oxford English Dictionary supplies a succinct definition: "The choice part or flower (of society, or of any body or class of persons)". This certainly supports the idea of a chosen few; yet the same term or concept applied elsewhere, for example in sport, contains no sense of denigration at all, either overt or implicit. Earlier this year, for instance, when Sheffield University's Media Centre headlined a news release "Universities' sporting elite showcase their star potential", these sports specialists were clearly viewed as a good thing. The term was used equally positively in a House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts report for 2005-6 entitled "UK Sport: Supporting elite athletes", while in April 2006 an item reporting on increased financial support for UK sportspeople in preparation for the 2012 Olympics proudly announced "£65m funding boost for elite sport".
The application of the term "elite" in sporting contexts explicitly refers to the best; after all, the best are the ones who win sporting events. Those who are not good at sport must learn early on that life is indeed not a level playing field; but many, perhaps most, may find something else at which they excel where their sporting peers do not and cannot.
So, if elitism is embraced and valorised in sport, why is the word "elite" purely negative when applied to academia? Just like sporting selection panels, universities want to select the best applicants, regardless of background. Just as in sport, league tables are paramount and "excellence" in global competition a requirement for winning and maintaining funding; isn't it incumbent upon universities to attract and accept the best candidates then, just as it is for football clubs to identify and select the best tyro players to train for the future? The British Olympic Association was allowed to rewrite its ski-jumping rules to exclude competitors not in the world top 50, in order to avoid successors to Eddie the Eagle. So an elite is in fact a good thing; after all, who wants delicate brain surgery or a complex heart operation to be performed by someone who was accepted for medical training to fulfil a social quota, not because of aptitude and ability?
Now there is unambiguous evidence to the contrary, it's time to ask why Mandelson and Co have so doggedly insisted that their plans for social mobility have been thwarted by "elite" universities? It's an insistence all the more surprising given that many academics lean politically left, as demonstrated by the policies of their union, the UCU, and the stance of their newspaper of choice, the Guardian.
The answer can only be is that it's easier (and cheaper) to demonise universities than to turn around the schools that are failing to supply "the disadvantaged" with the education they need to deal with everyday life, never mind a degree. The schools' failures are, of course, the politicians' own.
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