The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Who is afraid of social engineering?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 05, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Who is afraid of social engineering?

By Hasan Suroor

How is it that "lowering" standards to make an extra buck is all right, but making allowances for bright though socially deprived pupils becomes "social engineering"?

IT IS not quite in the same league as the infamous anti-reservation agitation that rocked India in the 1980s, and thankfully no one has come out on the streets yet, but there is no mistaking the indignant passion behind the current campaign in Britain against a new Government policy to force elite universities such as Oxford and Cambridge to admit significantly more students from state schools and poorer backgrounds.

The move has provoked outrage and the Government is being accused of committing that ultimate "sin" — attempting "social engineering" at the cost of "merit" and Oxbridge's cherished academic standards. What started off as a political debate on widening access to higher education — a key plank of the Blair Government's education reforms — has assumed shades of a class war at the heart of which lies the old elitist fear that any attempt to open up the system is an invitation for the "hordes" to take over. Indeed, one well-known right-wing academic has called for "burger-munching multitude" to be kept off the haloed portals of Britain's "Ivy League" universities.

Protests had started even before the Government threatened to penalise universities for failing to admit more students from state schools. The very idea of expanding higher education on egalitarian grounds was dismissed as politically inspired. But in recent weeks, the tone has become more belligerent after the Government set up the Office for Fair Access (Offa) to negotiate "access agreements" with universities. Although universities have not been told in so many words to lower their admission norms, the message underlying the so-called "access agreements" is clear: those who do not "agree" with Government plans could face consequences. The Office for Fair Access could impose fines on recalcitrant universities and refuse them permission to raise tuition fee. At a time when even traditionally rich universities are facing a resource crunch, this is seen as blatant arm-twisting to force them to toe the Government line.

A distinguished Oxford University administrator has told the Government to take its "tanks off Oxford lawns" and warned that otherwise the university would be forced to go private. Michael Beloff, president of Trinity College, says universities are "not laboratories for social engineering" and should be left alone — a view that has become a battle-cry for the university establishment. The two main arguments advanced against the Government move are that it is bad for standards, and poses a threat to the autonomy of academic institutions.

Leading universities argue that they have been able to achieve international standards because of their insistence on academic merit as the sole criterion for admission. They say any attempt to tamper with the present arrangement would destroy the very foundations on which their reputation as world-class institutions rests.

"To alter our standards in pursuit of social or political rather than educational objectives would be a betrayal of what the university is for," is the angry response of Prof. Beloff to the Government's plea that "covert" social factors should also be taken into account while assessing a student for admission.

Chris Patten, Chancellor of Oxford University, finds the whole idea "appalling" and sees it as a threat to free society. "It's appalling. Universities are independent institutions and part of the manifestation of their autonomy is their control over their admissions. In its way, if you are talking about defending liberties, it is almost as important as arguing in favour of the freedom of the press," he says.

Universities reject the allegation that they are biased against students from state schools or those from deprived backgrounds and claim that the reason why more students from state schools do not get into top universities is because they are simply not as good as those from expensive private schools.

"The real problem about widening access to leading universities is the failure of most state schools to offer their pupils the teaching and facilities available in independent schools," said one Oxbridge academic echoing Mr. Patten's view that the Government wants universities to "lower their standards (in order to accommodate pupils from state schools) because standards in secondary schools are not high enough."

The background to the controversy is the Blair Government's commitment to make higher education more accessible so that at least 50 per cent of school-leavers are able to go to university by 2010. More importantly, the idea is to get potentially bright students from the state sector into big universities by lowering the "barriers" that discourage many of them even from applying for fear of rejection. The biggest "barrier" is the way admission interviews are conducted with a lot of stress placed on the applicants' class background.

Novelist Clare Sambrook, who went to a state school, recalls how when she appeared for an interview at Cambridge 20 years ago, the first thing her admission tutor asked was: "Does your school realise this university has rather high standards?" And, then: "He tapped his pencil against my application form (which gave her father's occupation as: unemployed). He regarded me over his specs: `what business was he in?' He was a school caretaker, I said. He smiled: `I think we can consider this interview over. Don't you?"

Yet, a boy with lesser marks but who was able to give his parents' occupation as "Queen and Consort" was promptly admitted. Having herself managed to find a place, finally, thanks to another tutor who was less swayed by class preconceptions, she discovered that the university was least interested in attracting students from poorer homes. She quotes one "older fellow" as saying: "Come on, it's not as if we want to encourage applications from the children of dustmen." Was that not "social engineering?" she wonders.

The situation has changed greatly in these 20 years and it has become a lot easier for children of "school caretakers" and "dustmen" to find a place in a top university. Latest figures show that since the Labour Government came into power seven years ago, the number of state school pupils admitted to major universities every year has risen by 35 per cent. Both Oxford and Cambridge claim that in recent years they have made special efforts to admit students from diverse backgrounds and point to a significant increase in the number of state school entrants. But the Government, clearly, believes that this is not enough and more needs to be done to make universities really inclusive.

Martin Harris, head of Offa , a former vice-chancellor of Manchester University and a self-confessed "Old Labour" trouper, insists that the class "divide" remains at the heart of Britain's education system making it difficult to attain true "meritocracy." "Class underlies almost all the inequalities and unfairness in our system... and until we tackle this issue at its roots, everything else is a distraction," he says. Rather than relying on more overt factors such as an expensive school education, high grades, debating skills and social ease, he calls for "sensitive consideration of covert characteristics" of applicants such as their deprived family background or inner-city schooling which may have come in the way of achieving their full potential.

Even those who do not entirely agree with the Government policy say that universities are protesting too much about "lowering" admission standards considering that many of them have no qualms bending rules to attract dollar-waving foreign students. "Cash for degrees" has become quite a scandal as cash-strapped universities bend over backwards to embrace foreign students who — unlike the pittance paid by domestic students — pay full fee. And in hard cash.

According to a Sunday Times investigation, confirmed by other media reports, some of Britain's best-known universities are favouring fee-paying foreign students by setting them lower grades than British applicants because what they get in return is twice the amount they earn from domestic students. Its two undercover reporters — one posing as a foreigner and one a Briton — discovered that a "quarter of the university departments" in the country were "more accommodating to the foreign student."

Cambridge historian David Starkey has warned that British universities risk losing their international reputation by awarding degrees to "substandard" foreign students for lucrative fees. "The word is starting to get around in Asia and the Middle East that these degrees are not worth taking," he says.

So, how is it that "lowering" standards to make an extra buck is all right, but making allowances for bright though socially deprived pupils becomes "social engineering"? Moreover, what is so ghoulish about "social engineering", anyway? All it means is taking society in a certain direction, and if the direction points to a fairer, more equal and just future we should all welcome a bit of social engineering. And, in this case, it certainly does.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News Update

Stories in this Section

FLIP-FLOPS AND JUSTICE

TALE OF TWO BALLOTS

Who is afraid of social engineering?

This is now a Bush era