Oxbridge and the Reproduction of the Ruling Class
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Title : Oxbridge and the Reproduction of the Ruling Class
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Title : Oxbridge and the Reproduction of the Ruling Class
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It's one of the great ironies of contemporary capitalism. The early 21st century gives off the impression of living in an age of rapid change, and that is true in some aspects. But in others, particularly relating to matters of class and economics, things are a deal more static. Not only is there a strong tendency toward stagnation, but our supposedly dynamic system is seizing up. The standard of living is flatlining and increasingly financed on the never-never, social mobility is down and the upper echelons of society are seeing the privileged and well-heeled pensioned off and replaced by ... the privileged and well-heeled. That's why the news of Oxbridge getting even narrower came as zero surprise.
According to the research, the top two income groups grew their share of successful applicants from 79% to 81%. Shock horror the Home Counties received more offers of a place than the entirety of northern England - some 2,812 vs 2,619, and despite not insignificant sums both universities spend on widening participation. This isn't the result of some crude conspiracy to keep out northerners and people from modest income brackets but a consequence of the relationship between inequality and educational attainment, a subject well studied and a link between the two generally accepted. Of course, in case the hard-of-thinking might be reading this, noting the impact of inequality on formal qualifications isn't to say working class kids don't do well and don't get sent up to Oxbridge, but it does mean the odds are stacked against them and are therefore less likely to.
Attending an Oxbridge college does offer tremendous opportunities. The programme of study is more intensive than that offered at virtually any other institution (Oxford alone is in receipt of £800m from the government alone per year, which helps pay for all those tutors). It requires students to deepen the kinds of analytical and presentation skills as standard that one finds among exceptional and auto-didactic students elsewhere, and allows for the cultivation of unmatched quantities of cultural and social capital. Cultural in that aptitudes acquired endows one with a habitus, or a set of conscious and unconscious dispositions that are advantageous when encountering the mores and expectations of the rarefied and privileged fields that cluster atop our society. And social because of the networks. Not only is an Oxbridge graduate more likely to know and be tied to people from privileged backgrounds, those linkages are passports to useful contacts and powerful jobs. They form part of the stretchy social glue that sees our establishment politics and, in some cases, our radical politics dominated by people who attended the same colleges doing the same degree programmes. This is why Oxbridge supplies almost a third of MPs, an overwhelming number of national journalists, increasing numbers of media personalities, senior civil servants, top lawyers, and, of course, the top managerial staff of British business.
If Oxbridge plays a pivotal role in the social and cultural reproduction of the ruling class and those who support it, then why the panic about thinning participation? Why do the runners and the riders of this story care so long as elites are turned out uninterruptedly? Partly, the huge stress on social mobility rhetoric from Blair onwards represents a set of strategies by the state to substitute its activities for the slowing up of social mobility. Post-war Keynesianism wasn't a golden age, but it did redistribute opportunity (and depress inequality) thanks to the expansion of clerical and managerial work in the state owned industries. The huge growth of further and higher education, as well as an extension of the state bureaucracy worked as transmission belts. The unleashing of the market was met by a seizing up of the mechanism. In an age of dog-eat-dog and privatised self-reliance, those who start out with advantage are always likely to do better. So while, for instance, a working class youngster is more likely to attend university in 2017 than 1997 or 1977 the opportunities beyond that exist in limited numbers except if you went to one of the elite institutions. The end of social mobility is a problem because the more our elites draw from a narrow segment of the population, the less they look like everyone else and that raises problems of legitimacy. You only have to look at our politicians and the general antipathy towards them to know why this matters.
Should the left add its voices to this critique of Oxbridge and the need for them to open up? Absolutely not. The problem isn't that the two universities are too selective, it's their being vectors of ruling class dominance. They are but the apex of a system riddled with class demarcation and snobbery, both in terms of institutional rankings and irrelevant disciplinary hierarchies - something the government's ludicrous market in higher education only reinforces. The answer isn't the abolition of Oxbridge, but in taking on and destroying these circuits of class. A flattening of entry criteria is part of the process, but the real key is massive investment along the lines of Labour's proposed life long education service, one that allows all institutions the resources to provide the intensive experience Oxbridge offers. Not only does this widen opportunity and the availability, and has the added bonus of cutting against the Conservative Party, it disrupts the established strategies of ruling class reproduction. What's not to like?
It's one of the great ironies of contemporary capitalism. The early 21st century gives off the impression of living in an age of rapid change, and that is true in some aspects. But in others, particularly relating to matters of class and economics, things are a deal more static. Not only is there a strong tendency toward stagnation, but our supposedly dynamic system is seizing up. The standard of living is flatlining and increasingly financed on the never-never, social mobility is down and the upper echelons of society are seeing the privileged and well-heeled pensioned off and replaced by ... the privileged and well-heeled. That's why the news of Oxbridge getting even narrower came as zero surprise.
According to the research, the top two income groups grew their share of successful applicants from 79% to 81%. Shock horror the Home Counties received more offers of a place than the entirety of northern England - some 2,812 vs 2,619, and despite not insignificant sums both universities spend on widening participation. This isn't the result of some crude conspiracy to keep out northerners and people from modest income brackets but a consequence of the relationship between inequality and educational attainment, a subject well studied and a link between the two generally accepted. Of course, in case the hard-of-thinking might be reading this, noting the impact of inequality on formal qualifications isn't to say working class kids don't do well and don't get sent up to Oxbridge, but it does mean the odds are stacked against them and are therefore less likely to.
Attending an Oxbridge college does offer tremendous opportunities. The programme of study is more intensive than that offered at virtually any other institution (Oxford alone is in receipt of £800m from the government alone per year, which helps pay for all those tutors). It requires students to deepen the kinds of analytical and presentation skills as standard that one finds among exceptional and auto-didactic students elsewhere, and allows for the cultivation of unmatched quantities of cultural and social capital. Cultural in that aptitudes acquired endows one with a habitus, or a set of conscious and unconscious dispositions that are advantageous when encountering the mores and expectations of the rarefied and privileged fields that cluster atop our society. And social because of the networks. Not only is an Oxbridge graduate more likely to know and be tied to people from privileged backgrounds, those linkages are passports to useful contacts and powerful jobs. They form part of the stretchy social glue that sees our establishment politics and, in some cases, our radical politics dominated by people who attended the same colleges doing the same degree programmes. This is why Oxbridge supplies almost a third of MPs, an overwhelming number of national journalists, increasing numbers of media personalities, senior civil servants, top lawyers, and, of course, the top managerial staff of British business.
If Oxbridge plays a pivotal role in the social and cultural reproduction of the ruling class and those who support it, then why the panic about thinning participation? Why do the runners and the riders of this story care so long as elites are turned out uninterruptedly? Partly, the huge stress on social mobility rhetoric from Blair onwards represents a set of strategies by the state to substitute its activities for the slowing up of social mobility. Post-war Keynesianism wasn't a golden age, but it did redistribute opportunity (and depress inequality) thanks to the expansion of clerical and managerial work in the state owned industries. The huge growth of further and higher education, as well as an extension of the state bureaucracy worked as transmission belts. The unleashing of the market was met by a seizing up of the mechanism. In an age of dog-eat-dog and privatised self-reliance, those who start out with advantage are always likely to do better. So while, for instance, a working class youngster is more likely to attend university in 2017 than 1997 or 1977 the opportunities beyond that exist in limited numbers except if you went to one of the elite institutions. The end of social mobility is a problem because the more our elites draw from a narrow segment of the population, the less they look like everyone else and that raises problems of legitimacy. You only have to look at our politicians and the general antipathy towards them to know why this matters.
Should the left add its voices to this critique of Oxbridge and the need for them to open up? Absolutely not. The problem isn't that the two universities are too selective, it's their being vectors of ruling class dominance. They are but the apex of a system riddled with class demarcation and snobbery, both in terms of institutional rankings and irrelevant disciplinary hierarchies - something the government's ludicrous market in higher education only reinforces. The answer isn't the abolition of Oxbridge, but in taking on and destroying these circuits of class. A flattening of entry criteria is part of the process, but the real key is massive investment along the lines of Labour's proposed life long education service, one that allows all institutions the resources to provide the intensive experience Oxbridge offers. Not only does this widen opportunity and the availability, and has the added bonus of cutting against the Conservative Party, it disrupts the established strategies of ruling class reproduction. What's not to like?
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You are now reading the article Oxbridge and the Reproduction of the Ruling Class With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2017/10/oxbridge-and-reproduction-of-ruling.html