The outgoing Director-General of the BBC has voiced his concern at the number of Oxbridge graduates working at the organisation.
Mark Thompson, who will step down from his role in autumn of this year, told BBC executives in a confidential meeting that he was “disturbed” at the predominance of staff who had attended the Oxford and Cambridge universities, particularly at management level.
Between 2006 and 2010, 5.7% of all successful applicants for jobs and work experience at the BBC were Oxbridge graduates.
Thompson himself graduated from Merton College, Oxford, with a first in English. The current Controller of BBC One, Danny Cohen, also graduated with first-class honours in English, from Lady Margaret Hall.
The remarks, first published in the Mail on Sunday, were reported by Conservative MP Nadine Dorries after she attended a meeting last month which involved the Director-General and senior figures in the Corporation.
A spokesman for the BBC said, “We do not have any plans to change our recruitment policy, which is to attract the very best talent on the basis of merit alone. We are very proud that the BBC is one of the most popular choices for graduates of all backgrounds.
“But we also want candidates with outstanding talent who may not have chosen to go down a traditional higher education route. Our training and apprenticeship schemes are designed to help remove barriers to entry to the broadcasting industry.
“The British public expect the best from the BBC and we want to access the best talent from wherever it comes.”
President of the Oxford Media Society, Matt Stokes, commented, “It’s undeniable that the BBC has the reputation Mark Thompson described, although I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate. I do think the BBC has made positive steps, although there’s clearly a very long way to go.
“We ourselves welcome many figures from the BBC. One of them, whom we hosted last week, counts among the most powerful black people in the media today. Many are not Oxbridge-educated, so though there may not be enough diversity, there’s definitely some.”
The University Careers Service told Cherwell, “While Oxford does not have specifically vocational courses such as publishing, TV or journalism, many of our students enter these careers every year. We encourage all prospective students to study what they are truly interested in and develop their career ideas while they are here.
“We encourage potential Oxford applicants to review broad and detailed destination data, publicly available on our website, from courses they are interested in. The BBC, for example, is the 13th most popular destination of recent leavers.
“It is a truism that all graduate recruiters want the best recruits for their roles. They set their selection criteria, and measure candidates against them to decide. Each selection will be of one individual. Mark Thompson is concerned about diversity; so is the University. However, we want the best, regardless of background, and we suspect that the BBC does too.”
The academic background of employees was discussed as part of a wider review of staff diversity at the BBC, which also looked at categories such as ethnicity and gender.
As of August 2011, 12.3% of BBC employees were from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds, up from 8.2% in 2000. The male-female split was more or less equal. According to information on the BBC website, the Corporation do not use diversity quotas, but have broad aspirational targets for disabled and ethnic minority representation.
