I've studied in Cambridge myself, and feel like some context needs to be added here for American readers not to misunderstand something here: Admission to Cambridge & Oxford isn't related to family wealth in the same way as admission to "elite" universities in the U.S.
For example: Tuition fees are in line with government-set rates and are no different for these institutions than other British universities (at least it was that way, back when I was there in 2005-2009). While the U.K. was part of the E.U. these low rates even applied to students coming to study there from elsewhere in the E.U. It is only "overseas" students who are asked to pay significantly more.
One thing that I found noteworthy when applying was also the fact that, for Cambridge, the admissions process had two phases: The first was academic acceptance. Those application forms made absolutely no mention of money. After a student has been academically accepted, there is a second phase in the application process that involves application to scholarships and ends with the applicant having to provide proof that they have the required funds to sustain themselves through the study period.
This was very different from what I remember about applying to universities in the U.S. which asked you to disclose your family's financial situation on the same application form that was also used to decide academic acceptance. That form, incidentally, also asked about things like family members who have attended the same university, etc. ...so there is much less transparency there to guarantee that a U.S. school wouldn't just use your socioeconomic standing directly as a criterion to decide admission.
There are, of course, impediments to social mobility into the class of Oxbridge-educated people, but it revolves more around academics than about money. For example, I found that the students disproportionately came from families where their parents were career academics. The relationship with those families having a lot of money was not something I particularly noticed.
The "poshness" of it all, particularly where undergraduate circles are concerned, also comes to a large extent from free choices that students themselves make to try to socially set themselves apart from their peers at other unversities. For example many willfully adopt "received pronunciation" to replace their natural dialects.
Cambridge And Oxford and a few other “elite” unis don’t allow students to work during the school year afaik, this alone filters many students but “ironically” not the poorest ones which may be eligible for a full tuition cover + stipend.
Low income families above the low income limit set by the government who cannot afford tuition + covering living expenses tend to be those who can’t really afford to attend those schools and this includes a lot of what would normally be considered middle class.
Yes you can take a loan but Cambridge and Oxford as notoriously expensive to live around, student accommodation aren’t cheap and the overall cost of living is quite high.
So you tend to skew towards either those who have money or families which planned for this from the get go, a few token poor people but quite a few of those that come from an “average” household.
I think it needs to be clarified that this (and the financial statement on application mentioned in a grandparent comment) are only correct for postgraduate study.
There's no financial statement required for undergraduates because government loans are available to all UK students. This covers tuition and living costs (albeit scaled by parental income). No family needs to "cover tuition" for undergraduates.
People don't work during term time because they are very short (8 weeks) and intense. Plenty of people had work at home during the holidays.
I guess there are some people who have on paper wealthy parents who don't contribute as much as the government thinks they should, but in general lack of familial wealth is really not a barrier to undergraduate study at Oxbridge.
Cambridge at the very least provides reasonably affordable accommodation for all years of your undergraduate degree. And some colleges provide accommodation for Masters and PhD students as well.
The UK student loan is not perfect, but it does include a living stipend (which is family income based). Obviously it sucks to have to take a loan, but working is not a necessity (until after graduation). I’m not sure how reasonable the living stipend amounts are, but Cambridge is definitely reasonably affordable if you go out of the way for groceries etc. It’s a bit more expensive from a nightlife perspective, but again, college bars tend to have fairly cheap drinks.
The loans aren’t great if you are a student not living with their parents and studying outside of London if your parents have a household has a combined income of £45,000 you will be eligible for only £6000 p/a grant.
If we take a £80,000 combined household income which won’t go that far in London especially if the family has more than one child and still paying for a mortgage or what is becoming more and more common these days rent. And while 80K is more than double the median household income this literally can be the salary of say two teachers or police officers with some seniority then you are only eligible for £4000.
For Cambridge last time I checked student accommodations cost £150-200 p/w at the minimum. That more or less your loan gone on housing alone.
The university itself requires the students to have £10,000 (well £9880) per year for living expenses this means that a family making £40K needs to add about £4K or 10% of their pre-tax income to their child’s education even with the stipend.
It’s possible sure but many families simply can’t afford that.
And more importantly because students are required to show proof of funds the parents would have to prove that they have that money ready and quite possibly for the entire duration of the degree if their income is too low for the uni to consider them to be able to afford support.
That's not only a side effect, but a stated principle: After you gain admission, you have to prove that you have the money you need to sustain yourself either through a scholarship, or you have to literally show a bank statement that shows that you have a lump sum in your account that will sustain you for the normal amount of time it takes to finish the degree. Living expenses are factored into this at a set rate. You are not allowed to rely on funds you intend on earning while you're actually studying.
I don't think this is all that wrong: If you are dependent on working to be able to cover your living expenses, it takes time away from your studies, which reduces the likelihood you'll pass, increases the likelihood of needing more time to get to a degree. Needing more time, means having to spend more time with low-paid jobs to sustain yourself until you get to the degree, and it all adds up to a risk that's difficult to manage for the student, and universities definitely don't want the drop-out rate that results from that.
You wouldn't start building a house when it's uncertain that you have enough money to be able to complete the project.
The way to manage the social ramifications is by keeping tution rates low and providing scholarships. Cost of living is not something you can control particularly well although, at Oxbridge, they at least do what they can on that front through university-owned housing etc. Also: Those are university towns that don't have cost of living and rents spiralling out of control as a side-effect of other industries that are there, like is the case in the Bay Area or Boston, which is a major metropolitan area even without the universities.
The people who get shafted the most by this as I said aren’t “poor” but rather in the middle, the stipend that is available as a loan to students is dependent on the income of the parents and even a £45K household income would limit that stipend to around £6 whilst Oxford requires £10K for affordability and it’s unlikely that most households would be able to make up the difference unless they planned for that and made sacrifices early on in their child’s life and most importantly were lucky enough to able to afford to make those sacrifices consistently.
"You wouldn't start building a house when it's uncertain that you have enough money to be able to complete the project."
Sorry for the completely OT reply, but this triggered me because it is exactly how banks in Thailand do lending to build a house. Once all the details and total cost are known, the bank lends about half of the needed amount and then checks on your progress. If you didn't get about half the house built they don't fund the remainder.
I think it’s needed when the collateral for the loan is something that doesn’t yet exist. If you were to put up something other than your yet to be constructed home as the collateral you could do without a draw schedule. The bank is rightfully concerned that you build your house to the level you described in the plans so that they can recoup their money if you some day default.
Some of them get finished other ways. Others get taken back by the bank when the owner decides to stop making payments on a loan for an unfinished house. You often see half finished houses that are slowly rotting.
>After you gain admission, you have to prove that you have the money you need to sustain yourself either through a scholarship, or you have to literally show a bank statement that shows that you have a lump sum in your account that will sustain you for the normal amount of time it takes to finish the degree.
I think this is for graduate students - the undergraduate student system is different.
> There are, of course, impediments to social mobility into the class of Oxbridge-educated people, but it revolves more around academics than about money. For example, I found that the students disproportionately came from families where their parents were career academics. The relationship with those families having a lot of money was not something I particularly noticed.
My observation studying in Oxford was that there was a big dispatity in opportunity, but it derived more from inequities in the quality of schooling available than unfairness in the admissions process. I met a lot of state educated students, but most of them came from well-regarded schools on upper-middle class areas that got hundreds of students into Oxbridge univeristies each year.
Very few came from schools like mime that couldn't even work out which entrance exams I needn't to take for the course I was applying to.
I don't remember being asked about wealth on college apps. Are you thinking of the FAFSA, which is a government form, and not part of the application process?
I was thinking of the M.I.T. application form circa 2004. I seem to recall that it explicitly asked not just if I had enough money but to disclose how much money I had precisely, and it also explicitly asked if there were family members who had attended M.I.T.
Maybe things were different in 2004, but those forms do not cross paths with admissions decisions whatsoever, for at least the last decade. The financial aid office won't communicate with admissions until offers have been decided. MIT is actually one of a few schools that is need blind for even international students, but almost every top school is need blind for domestic students these days. They want to have a financial aid package available to offer at the same time as admissions, which makes sense, so submitting your financial info prior to acceptance would be necessary for that.
Yeah, I'm not suggesting that they would have done anything nefarious with that information. I'm just saying I liked the transparency of the Cambridge system. You'd hold an admission letter in your hand before anyone had asked any questions about money, making it very transparent that money had nothing to do with that decision. The possibility that you could end up in a situation of having an offer but no money would still exists, but then at least you'd know that that's what happened. If you put all the info on one form you have to basically just trust them to handle the information appropriately.
Yeah I guess also the sticker price of Oxbridge being lower may make this the better choice. Even though the majority of students don't pay the list price at top US schools it is a really daunting number, and so for low income students not familiar with the process I can imagine getting an offer without any info about aid would be more stressful.
I think you may have a misunderstanding of how the US education system works. There are lots of scholarships and financial aid opportunities accessible for students that need them. Most “Elite State Schools” also have some kind of programs that give preference to bright students from their own state. E.g. University of Texas gives an automatic admission to the top 7% of Texas high school graduates. In state tuition is almost always ridiculously cheaper.
Yes, also the private schools in the US that are comparable to Oxbridge all do need-blind admissions, and have very generous aid. Average cost paid at those schools is much lower than at mid-tier private schools or out of state schools. There are definitely a lot of indirect selection effects that lead to a smaller number of low income students at these schools, including legacy admissions at most of them as he points out. But acting like Harvard sorts by income in its admissions decisions is definitely not an accurate reflection of how things work in the US.
There are many of parts of the US education system that weed out poor people and disadvantaged people before the University has to deny their application. The poor people who get into elite universities in the US are very much an exception. Having parents that went to an Ivy League or going to one of their expensive "feeder" schools is the best indicator of whether you can get into an Elite US university.
I never said that wasn't the case, just as it is obviously the case at Oxbridge. Making misleading comments about US schools using parental income directly in admissions decisions doesn't help fix any of that.
Again, OP claimed that top US schools directly ask your income in applications, implying this information was used directly in admissions decisions. It is not, and any admissions tests Oxbridge uses certainly have similar issues of correlation with wealth.
They claim to be "need blind", but they still ask. I'm not sure when they started that policy, but a quick search claims they are only one of 5 schools that claim to be "need blind".
That is need blind for internationals, which is quite rare. Need blind for domestic students is a long list which you can see here, and includes basically every school that one would call "top": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission
They ask for the information at the same time as the application so that aid packages can be offered in a timely fashion. It can take months to process everything, and students need to know the cost far enough before the decision deadline to weigh their options.
The financial aid office operates entirely separately from the admissions office at MIT, and I'm sure this is the case at other schools that claim to be need blind. Need blind has a clear definition, and there are legal implications to being a need blind school (for domestic students) in the US. It isn't just some marketing thing.
To your point about indirect economic discrimination, I'll note MIT is very clearly the best Ivy+ at admitting low income students: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...
That doesn't mean there isn't still a long way to go, but MIT is for sure not using need information in their admissions decisions, and if anything actively tries to not just take a ton of elite private school kids.
Actually, the next step probably will be to stop need blind admissions so that parental income can more explicitly be used to correct for disparity in opportunity.
Surprisingly, Texas is a real outlier here. Most states have some last resort college you can attend, but it's usually a community college, or AS degree institution.
UT Austin is a really good school from what I hear.
UT-Austin has an enrollment of 40K in a state with almost 350,000 high school grads in 2021. It is in no way a 'last resort' college and is in fact at the top of the UT system in terms of exclusivity and admission requirements. There are a variety of other UT campuses around the state with lower admission requirements and a similarly lower academic ranking. You are correct that Texas is an outlier though, it has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country.
>One thing that I found noteworthy when applying was also the fact that, for Cambridge, the admissions process had two phases: The first was academic acceptance. Those application forms made absolutely no mention of money. After a student has been academically accepted, there is a second phase in the application process that involves application to scholarships and ends with the applicant having to provide proof that they have the required funds to sustain themselves through the study period.
As far as I can tell this only applies to graduate students, and possibly those from overseas (and other weird edge cases
like people studying for a second undergraduate degree). If you apply as an 18-year-old from a British high school, you automatically get a loan from the government for tuition fees, can choose to borrow more to cover some of your living expenses, and will be given money by the university or your college if you come from a low-income family. You never have to show proof of funds, because the university will make sure you can afford to go.
Do you think universities still offer knowledge otherwise not accessible anywhere else?
I mean, there are courses that require "hands on" experience and guidance, but for things like IT, how uni is any better than e.g. Udemy, free lectures from around the world and meetups?
I think going to university is a luxury. It is a luxury I personally enjoyed having in my life. It is a luxury I want my children to be able to enjoy one day. It makes your life richer in the same way that, say, having horses makes your life richer, or sailing around the world in a yacht.
Of course there are people who don't enjoy horses. Or yachts. And not enjoying university should be seen as being no different.
If you look at them as an investment, I don't think they're a particularly good one.
And I think that this cycle of runaway inflation with regard to academic credentials as a prerequisite for jobs that don't actually require them is something that should be stopped.
When I was doing CS we had a lecture course on Pi calculus with very extensive hand written notes, because it was a field still very much in development and there was no textbook.
I think there is a lot to be said for taking a degree which lends an element of structure not chosen by you. Sometimes you need to learn the stuff that doesn’t interest you to have a foundation to really understand the stuff that does, and you might find there are other things you had never been interested enough in to even consider which will turn out to be really interesting.
On top of that I think tuition in small groups is much better than I’ve seen any meetup group manage. I’ve organized it once at a previous employer to help get some our application developers to the point where they could work on the our core vm and database, and I think they found it helpful being able to ask questions and talk over where exercises had given them trouble.
Competent teachers with time for you and a body of advice (students, who have most definitely understood the material in the way it was offered if they are ahead of you) that isn't full of nonsense. There is something to be said for self-study when it comes to IT (I've learned significantly more on my own than at school), but it takes a lot of being able to recognise bullshit. That's not compatible with a lot of folks when they want to study.
I have been lucky enough to have some of my university courses taught by some luminaries in their field. Most of them have taught me a framework for thinking as well as their course, not to mention being able to transmit some of their passion and love for curiosity. There is so much more besides lessons at the university, I would not even compare any video course with it honestly.
For example: Tuition fees are in line with government-set rates and are no different for these institutions than other British universities (at least it was that way, back when I was there in 2005-2009). While the U.K. was part of the E.U. these low rates even applied to students coming to study there from elsewhere in the E.U. It is only "overseas" students who are asked to pay significantly more.
One thing that I found noteworthy when applying was also the fact that, for Cambridge, the admissions process had two phases: The first was academic acceptance. Those application forms made absolutely no mention of money. After a student has been academically accepted, there is a second phase in the application process that involves application to scholarships and ends with the applicant having to provide proof that they have the required funds to sustain themselves through the study period.
This was very different from what I remember about applying to universities in the U.S. which asked you to disclose your family's financial situation on the same application form that was also used to decide academic acceptance. That form, incidentally, also asked about things like family members who have attended the same university, etc. ...so there is much less transparency there to guarantee that a U.S. school wouldn't just use your socioeconomic standing directly as a criterion to decide admission.
There are, of course, impediments to social mobility into the class of Oxbridge-educated people, but it revolves more around academics than about money. For example, I found that the students disproportionately came from families where their parents were career academics. The relationship with those families having a lot of money was not something I particularly noticed.
The "poshness" of it all, particularly where undergraduate circles are concerned, also comes to a large extent from free choices that students themselves make to try to socially set themselves apart from their peers at other unversities. For example many willfully adopt "received pronunciation" to replace their natural dialects.