DEGREES OF MONEY

I was musing this morning about the demands of the Norrington Table - the measure of the relative success of Oxford colleges calculated by the (First class) degrees achieved by their undergraduates and balanced by the number of students reading for degrees.

Just as in the football premiership, there seem to be three broad bands of colleges (excluding the small institutions usually focused on religious orders): the top ones always challenging for the top spot, the middle order which always do fairly well and seem not to need the tension of pushing higher and the bottom segment who have at least the consolation, unlike in football, that they cannot be relegated.

[My former college, Pembroke, is at the bottom and there is a move there to create a motto (in Latin) along the lines of: "At least we can row."]  

My musings arose from a conversation last night with a young woman currently reading Biology at Christchurch, one of the grand colleges but one whose sense of its own importance has not, in recent years, been reflected by its position in the Norrington Table (currently seventh).  The authorities at Christchurch have decided, in my view surprisingly, that financial inducement is the way forward and first year undergraduates (for example)  are being offered discounts on next year's fees, better rooms and all sorts of other goodies if they achieve Firsts in their first set of (qualifying) exams.

This, so the young woman said, is leading to interesting conversations regarding plans for the Long Vacation along the lines of, "Well if I get a first then I'm planning to go to Thailand but if not, I suppose I'll spend the summer at home."   

The implication of these monetary carrots is interesting.  It suggests that the admissions tutors at Christchurch (and, by the way, I am not saying this college is unique in going down the financial route) are sure that the quality of students admitted to study there is as good as it can be and it is only the Oxford life, with its manifold diversions, that has shifted them from the strait and narrow path to academic glory - a shift that can be corrected by the application of a few pounds sterling.

Is this true?  Is a grade B undergraduate likely to be turned into a grade A by the prospects of lucre or is it the case that those with the exceptional minds required to achieve an Oxford First class degree are already so driven and that no further investment, perhaps we might call it 'pressure', is either helpful or desirable?

For me, there's another consideration in play here which is the strenuous efforts being made by many colleges to encourage the application and admission of students from what we might euphemistically call 'poorer backgrounds'.  I gather that some of these non-traditional undergraduates blossom in Oxford's highly demanding atmosphere but many do not.  In either case, the goal of the admitting college here is to be a broader, all-embracing centre of learning and not, therefore, a hothouse forcing Firsts.

It is arguable, although in these liberal days the argument runs the risk of being labelled as socially divisive, that if financial inducements are brought into play, they should be aimed at this non-traditional group encouraging them to try for good Seconds.  Ah but sadly, Second class degrees don't help when it comes to a college's ranking in the table which, despite its name, was not invented by Sir Arthur Norrington.     

  

ROWING RANT

I am very raw. I feel the stupidity of one who has committed himself far to enthusiastically to a cause and, in so doing, involved other people as well, only to find fulfilment ripped away literally at the final second by a twist of fate (and, candidly, the stupidity of a cox).

I won't do this again, I won't be supporting my old college at Oxford's Summer Eights regatta or anywhere else. I will not to sucked in to the ambitions (and emotions) of others who I barely know and with whom I have nothing in common barring an occasional tendency to wear Pembroke College pink. (And the way I am feeling, I won't be doing much of that again either).

I wanted the Pembroke Woman's First Eight not only to win but to go Head of the River. They are the only college women's crew since about 1976 whose names I have known and whom (in some cases) I have met and spoken to on more than one occasion.

And they should have done. With two World silver medallists (also winning blues) plus others of a calibre much better than anything in any other college, what we had here was arguably the fastest Women's Eight ever put out by an Oxford college.

And what happened? On Thursday they got away with rowing into the bank. At the time, because it came out OK, everyone thought this was a lucky thing - a piece of serendipity but no, we should have foreseen that one piece of bad steering or bad control can lead to another; can lead in fact to missing a bump that was sitting, in the middle of the river, waiting to be taken.

And then making such a cock-up of the post bump phase (a phase where the bumpee had refused to acknowledge that anything had happened bump-wise): Stopping, starting. God there was a chance they could have ended at the bottom of the Divison not the top.

I am writing this before I know the outcome of appeals. But Head Crews are not removed on appeal and even if Bailliol do go down to Pembroke, who cares now? It's the riverbank where these things count not a desk somewhere in OUBC.

I feel sorry irrelevantly for me but I feel dreadfully sorry for Natalie Redgrave, a woman for whom I have huge respect and, today, an equal amount of sympathy.

Well rowed Bailliol.