How elitist is Oxbridge? New data gives a picture of the divide in race and class at Oxford and Cambridge. Find out how many people went there from where you live
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Are black students excluded from Oxbridge? How many people from your local authority went to Oxford or Cambridge?
A series of requests made under the Freedom of Information act by Labour MP David Lammy, also show that Oxford's social profile is 89% upper and middle class while the Cambridge student body is 87.6% drawn from the top three socio-economic groups. The average for universities in Britain is 66%.
Jeevan Vasagar writes today that:
A bleak portrait of racial and social exclusion at Oxford and Cambridge has been revealed in official data which shows that only one Afro-Caribbean student was accepted for undergraduate study at Oxford last year, in an admissions round when 13 Oxford colleges made no offers to black candidates. The admissions figures also reveal that one Oxford college, Merton, has not admitted a single black student in five years and just three in the last decade. Eight Cambridge colleges made no offers to black students for the academic year beginning in autumn 2008
The figures come just before the key commons vote on tuition fees this Thursday. Oxford and Cambridge are expected to charge the maximum fee possible to maintain their expensive tutorial system. Key findings from the data show that:
• White students were more likely to be successful than black applicants at every Cambridge college except St Catharine's, where black candidates have had a 38% success rate, compared with 30% for white students
• The starkest divide in Cambridge was at Newnham where black applicants had a 13% success rate compared with 67% for white students
• At Jesus college white candidates were three and a half times more successful than black candidates over an 11-year period
• of more than 1,500 academic and lab staff at Cambridge, none are black. Thirty-four are of British Asian origin
Oxford says the figures are too low for the variation between colleges to be statistically significant. A spokesman for Cambridge said 15% of students accepted last year were from minority ethnic backgrounds.
David Lammy writes today that:
You will not find these figures on the Oxford or Cambridge websites. Our proudest universities were obstructive in responding to my inquiries. They provided patchy data, challenged valid requests and deliberately pushed back their deadlines until after Thursday's vote. If Oxford and Cambridge are ashamed of these statistics, they are right to be
You can download the full data below, including a variety of different indicators. What can you do with it?
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