Friday 20th February 2026
Blog Page 4

Oxford study projects population experiencing extreme heat to nearly double by 2050

Olivia Miller
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Oxford study projects population experiencing extreme heat to nearly double by 2050

Climate researchers at Oxford University have published a study in Nature Sustainability, according to which the population experiencing extreme heat is projected to “nearly double” by 2050 compared to 2010 levels.

According to the study, 41% of the global population will live in extreme heat regions by 2050, defined by the number and severity of cooling degree days, compared to 23% in 2010. This new data will be crucial for predicting energy demand for heating and cooling buildings as climate patterns change due to global warming. The data shows that heating demands will decline while cooling demands will increase as the average global temperature rises.

The data is essential for planning climate change adaptation, assessing geographic inequalities, and identifying vulnerable populations. According to the study,  the 20 countries with the most drastic increase in cooling needs are all developing nations, with the Central African Republic, Nigeria, and South Sudan topping the chart, whose socioeconomic development will further suffer from global warming.

Most increases in cooling demand will occur by the time the planet reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to pre-industrial temperatures (i.e. within the first half a degree of global warming going forward).

The study used heating and cooling degree days as quantifiable representations of human response to global warming. Heating degree days refer to colder-than-usual temperatures, which prompt people to use heating technology such as radiators to warm buildings. Cooling degree days refer to the opposite – warmer temperatures that prompt the use of cooling technology like air conditioners. This benchmark also reflects the energy use and emissions associated with heating and cooling systems.

The researchers visualised the dataset with 30 different maps that depict heating degree days and cooling degree days around the world according to three hypothetical increases in the average global temperature: one degree Celsius, one and a half degrees Celsius and two degrees Celsius, each compared to a pre-industrial baseline. The average global temperature increased by about one degree Celsius between 2006 and 2016. 

The data set is particularly flexible because it is temperature-dependent, rather than time-dependent: The results are not affected by when the warming happens, only by how much warming occurs. The findings are therefore especially helpful to policy-makers for planning, adapting, and preparing infrastructure in the face of uncertain futures; the data will remain relevant regardless of how quickly the planet warms.

The results can also pair with existing time-specific models of climate change. The researchers chose to cross-reference their data with Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) 2-4.5, a popular moderate prediction of future climate change which sees a decline in emissions – without reaching net-zero – by the end of the century.

The Oxford research team included lead author and Associate Professor in Engineering Science Jesus Lizana alongside Senior Researcher Nicole Miranda, Associate Professor in Environmental Impact Sarah Sparrow, Professor in Informatics David Wallom, Associate Professor Radhika Khosla, and Professor of Energy Systems Malcolm McCulloch.

All buttered up: Broche, and the art of the perfect croissant

Luis Prenninger
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All buttered up: Broche, and the art of the perfect croissant

During these cold winter months, in which – thanks to that pinnacle of British construction, breathable walls – I wake up in a freezing room, I find great solace in hiding beneath my blanket. Very much aware of my spatially limited happiness. Beyond the edge of my bed, however, I have found another place of naïve joy, one that offers a time-out from some nuisances of everyday life: a tiny hole-in-the-wall coffee shop in Jericho called Broche.

The moments of concentrated happiness sold at Broche take the form of unbelievably good pastries. Here is my ranking of those I have tried, from great to most incredible: Danish Three Cheese (£4.80), Croissant (£3.50), Pain au Pastrami (£5.60), Bostock (£4.40), Cinnamon Bun (£3.80), Chocolate & Cherry Croissant (£5.60), Pain au Chocolat (£4.00). But it is the Vanilla & Raspberry Croissant (£5.40) which stands out as my favourite. The crisp outside, the illegal quantities of butter folded into its dough, the luscious vanilla custard, the sweet-acidic raspberry jam with seeds: any Frenchman would be happy to claim Broche’s pâtissier as one of their own. Knowing that they must have worked relentlessly to learn the craft – and then to make these pastries daily before sunrise – the brazen price might very well be justified. But I don’t think we’re paying £5.40 for the croissant; rather, we are paying for the luxury of engaging in that luxury. This may be a little cynical, but it puts the Vanilla & Raspberry croissant into a different perspective, and perhaps a more honest appreciation. At least, I hope so.

The pastries at Broche are not only damn good; they are also highly aestheticized objects of status through which customers define themselves. The evidence I have of this is some unprofessional observational ethnography I attempted, from which I can report that the ‘posh croissant’ functions as an accessory for the following: middle-aged women in knee-length down parkas (extra points if they are walking a dog; additional extra points if it’s a Chihuahua in designer dog-wear); elderly men in colourful trainers, sometimes accompanied by their sons in Japanese denim, beanies, French workwear, and the last remaining hipster beards; young professionals in body-toned kits with sleek £10k carbon racing bikes, who order V60 pour-over coffee. It is also a place where people who would ordinarily meet their future partners on LinkedIn meet them in person, I’m told. If Notting Hill had an official outpost, it would be the five square-meters making up the tiny shack that is Broche.

None of this is to say that you shouldn’t go. You should. If it happens to be sunny, cross the street and lean against the neighbour’s garden wall, as I usually do – Broche, unfortunately, sits in its own shade. Be cheap; get a plain croissant. Have a matcha latte. Enjoy a brief, luxurious moment of immunity from all things troubling. Like a retired man in a Minneapolis mall, vegetating on a vending massage chair while US politics unfolds outside. It’s awfully nice under the warm blanket, isn’t it?

West Oxfordshire District Council approves plans for carbon-neutral village

Siyeon Lee
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West Oxfordshire District Council approves plans for carbon-neutral village

West Oxfordshire District Council has approved plans for a new carbon-neutral village near Eynsham as part of the West Oxfordshire Local Plan 2031, a framework adopted in 2018 to improve infrastructure across the district.

The proposed development, Salt Cross Garden Village, will include 2,200 new homes, a science business park, and community facilities such as schools and employment opportunities, according to the council’s website.

A spokesperson for the West Oxfordshire District Council told Cherwell that Salt Cross “was one of a number of strategic-scale site options that were considered in order to assist neighbouring Oxford City with its unmet housing need”.

They added: “It will be an exemplar community built to garden village principles with the need to tackle the climate emergency running through its core.”

Promotional material for the Salt Cross described the neighbourhood’s philosophy as having “climate action at heart”, balancing the “benefits of vibrant village life with the beauty and delight of the countryside”. The material emphasised the village’s focus on sustainability, with  affordable homes and “opportunities to grow food locally… through community gardens, allotments, and edible planting in public spaces”.

In early January, a government inspector confirmed that the town’s Area Action Plan (AAP) met standards for approval. The inspector’s report, according to the Ducklington Parish Council website, “fully supports the Council’s strategy for delivering a climate-conscious, well-designed and future-ready community” and confirms that the council’s flagship Net Zero Carbon Development policy is “justified, effective, and fit for purpose”.

The approval follows protracted disputes between planning inspectors and local authorities over the village’s environmental obligations. In 2023, government inspectors published a report questioning the council on Salt Cross Village’s net-zero emission goals and whether it was consistent with national policy. Climate group Rights Community Action (RCA) subsequently challenged the report, taking legal action and arguing that the national policy was out of date.

A High Court judge then ruled in 2024 that inspectors “incorrectly applied national planning policy to proposals” for the homes in Salt Cross Garden Village”.

Asked how the plans for the village were altered between the inspectors’ 2023 rejection and recent approval, the West Oxfordshire District Council spokesperson told Cherwell: “Following the Inspector’s initial report in 2023 and the subsequent legal challenge, the council commissioned further evidence to support its zero-carbon ambition.

“The updated evidence considered a low-carbon option and a zero-carbon option, concluding that the latter was far more effective… but would be no more expensive to implement.”

They went on: “Based on this updated evidence, the council put forward a revised version of its zero-carbon policy which… retained the core requirements for 100% renewable energy and energy-based metrics.”

Construction on the village is planned to begin in 2030 and last for about 13 to 14 years.

The case for doing nothing (on holiday)

Trevor Lee
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The case for doing nothing (on holiday)

The greatest part of gallivanting around Europe? Not the ancient churches steeped in culture, nor the towering spires in which you have to pay £20 to gain the privilege of climbing up hundreds of steps, and certainly not the historic castles, which you suspect have seen more starry-eyed tourists than actual battle. 

No, my best memories were of parks. They were found in the tranquility of self-reflection as I enjoyed the serenity of nature, clutching my too-expensive coffee and watching the ducks swim about in the river as the cold winter wind whipped the fallen leaves off the ground beside me. And so it was that I soon discovered a strange new hobby: I made it a point, in each major city I went, to try visiting a park. 

My parents were dumbfounded by this. They could scarcely believe that I, having flown 13 hours from sunny Singapore to live and study in a foreign land, would squander a magical European holiday just sitting around. Surely, they argued, I ought to have taken it upon myself to visit the ‘must see’ tourist attractions of these wonderful places. 

Perhaps they had a point. But, in my defence, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Having obsessed over  trying to do precisely that in the earlier part of the winter break, I soon found myself wondering what the point of it all was. What does it even mean for a tourist attraction to be a ‘must see’? Is it truly the culture and history that lies behind them? The sheer volume of tourists that are drawn to them in droves? That they were featured on websites and travelling blogs (read: other people said it should be visited)? Or, is it, as I came to suspect, simply the expectation that one must see it, just to tick it off the list?

At any rate, I was quickly fed up. I didn’t enjoy waking up early to have a head start. I didn’t enjoy going to see yet another cathedral for what must have been the third day straight. I didn’t enjoy posting aesthetic pictures on Instagram so that everyone who probably scrolled past my story in less than half a second would know I had a good time. So why did I feel a need to do so? 

There is a strange irony in that even on holiday – the ultimate exercise of our free will – there is a particular ideal or prescribed way to spend it. We feel obliged to optimise everything, to feel productive, and to make the most of our leisure time – even when we are meant to be in our most relaxed state. 

This pressure to do things that we are told we ought to do, rather than what we actually want to do, is not unique to travelling. In fact, it manifests in most aspects of our daily lives. It is what drives us to go partying or clubbing for the fear of missing out, rather than because we want to, or to enter a relationship because we feel we really ought to have done so by now, or to default to choosing the most prestigious career options available, because our educational pedigree behooves us to do so.

Being cognisant of this, it is worth taking a moment to pause and reflect. Is this something I really want to do or something that I feel like I should be doing? Granted, in some cases perhaps we really ought to do certain things – those tutorial sheets and essays are not going to complete themselves, nor will your body thank you if you pull constant all-nighters and eat meal deals every day.. But, I suspect, in more situations than we might realise, we are unwittingly swept along by these dominant social narratives and cultural pressures. And, in letting ourselves be carried by these currents, we run the very real risk of losing sight of what makes us, well, us.

Perhaps I cannot convince you, dear reader, to relook at every aspect of your life. Perhaps some of these pressures are too deep-set to simply be cast away by sheer force of will. Perhaps, having just entered the cusp of adulthood, we haven’t a sufficiently strong sense of self to distinguish our own desires from those which others and society impose upon us.

But, we can, and should, start to try. Change is possible, and at the very least, it should start with how we go about having fun. Go crazy. Visit parks instead of tourist traps. Put down the Phenomenology of Spirit and start kicking your feet whilst reading  a trashy romance novel (no one will judge you, I swear). Sit by the marina and watch the warm rust-red hue of the evening light fade away into an unfamiliar metropolitan skyline . 

Have fun doing what you genuinely enjoy. After all, once you’ve seen one ancient European church, you’ve basically already seen them all.

The King appoints Wim Decock as new Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford

Siyeon Lee
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The King appoints Wim Decock as new Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford

Last week, the UK government announced that the King has approved Professor Wim Decock, Professor of Roman Law, as Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford.

A Regius professorship is considered the most prestigious professorship in the nation. Positions have been historically restricted to a “handful of the ‘ancient’ universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland” and appointed only by a “Royal patron”. Founded in 1504 by King Henry VIII, the professorship can be endowed to scholars of Divinity, Medicine, Greek, Hebrew, Civil Law, Modern History, and English Literature. 

A Professor of Roman Law, Legal History and Comparative Law, Decock is currently teaching at Université Catholique de Louvain and the University of Liège, both in Belgium. He will assume his position on 1st October and become a Fellow of All Souls College.

Decock told Cherwell: “I was deeply honoured – and, I admit, rather humbled – by my appointment as Regius Professor of Civil Law. The chair carries an extraordinary historical and intellectual legacy stretching back to the time of King Henry VIII. To be entrusted with a role that has been held by scholars who helped shape the study of civil law in Britain and beyond is both an immense privilege and a great responsibility.”

He also told Cherwell that he aimed to “strengthen Oxford’s position as a leading centre for the study of civil law in its historical, doctrinal, and comparative dimensions” and said that he was confident in realising this ambition. 

He added that he was deeply committed to the chair’s educational function precisely because “civil law is an essential part of the law curriculum”.

The Regius Professorship is especially important for communicating the “grammar and vocabulary of law to undergraduates, while simultaneously opening their minds to the international dimension of law and to its historical, philosophical, and cultural moorings”.

Having been raised in a small village in the Flemish countryside and gifted the Oxford English Dictionary as one of his first books, Decock told Cherwell that the honour was a “childhood dream come true”.

“I have spent many years living and working abroad in beautiful and stimulating places… but I am confident that Oxford will surpass them all.” Decock sees the opportunity to form part of Oxford’s community of scholars and teach “some of the best students in the world” as an exciting prospect.

Palestinian ambassador speaks to Oxford students

Leo Jones
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Palestinian ambassador speaks to Oxford students

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Husam Zomlot, delivered an impassioned speech at an Oxford Speaks event held at St Anne’s College on Thursday 5th February.

Appearing before an audience at the Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre, the talk marked the end of the ambassador’s tour around British academic institutions, to publicise the work of UK Friends of Palestinian Universities. The ambassador recently appeared in speaking events at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics (LSE).

Zomlot’s appearance was underpinned by a call to stand against “scholasticide”, in order to protect academic spaces in Gaza and the West Bank. Experts at the UN have expressed concerns that educational institutions are being targeted by the Israeli military’s “assault” in Gaza. 

Zomlot has served as Head of the Palestinian Mission to the United Kingdom since October 2018. The Embassy of the State of Palestine was inaugurated in London on 5th January, after the UK government took the decision to recognise Palestinian statehood in September last year.

Zomlot opened by expressing it was “genuinely good to be back in Oxford”. He went on to describe university environments in particular as spaces “where conscience is sharper, where power is questioned, and where young people refuse to accept injustice as normal”. 

The ambassador’s speech was tailored to its university audience, thanking students for “fighting to speak truth to power” and comparing recent protests about Gaza to student opposition in the United States during the Vietnam War. He said: “Your voices matter, I ask you to continue – to ensure that the arc of history bends towards justice, because it does not bend on its own.” 

Zomlot made reference to a raid by the Israeli military on his alma mater, Birzeit University, in the West Bank last month. Israeli soldiers fired live rounds and tear gas at students who had gathered for a planned screening of the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab. Eleven students were admitted to hospital for treatment.

Having just returned from the West Bank, including a visit to Birzeit, Zomlot remarked that “90% of schools in Gaza have been damaged”. He said that “what happens in Palestine does not stay in Palestine. The dehumanisation must end. That is peace”. 

Responding to questions about how Palestine is portrayed in Western media, the ambassador told Cherwell that “the media wants to deliberately strip things out of context”. He drew parallels with the role Palestinian young people have played in reshaping public perceptions of the nation through social media.

Following the ambassador’s speech, Oxford Speaks President Hussain Jeddy interviewed him, focusing on the subject of Palestine’s future. Jeddy told Cherwell afterwards that he was conscious not to “regurgitate any of the talking points that [Zomlot] always combats”. Jeddy brought up an October 2023 interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored, in which Morgan repeatedly asked Zomlot whether he condemned the actions of Hamas on 7th October that year. 

Jeddy stated that organising the event was “quite difficult” due to security considerations. However, he told Cherwell that the event was ultimately “very orderly,” reflecting the value of open academic discussion without having “people constantly trying to attack [Zomlot’s] views”. 

Reflecting on the value of the event, Jeddy told Cherwell: “Education is very important, because it helps people remember what has happened so that we don’t repeat it again.”

Questioned by a member of the audience about how to prevent radicalisation in Palestine and build a stable peace process, Zomlot dismissed the idea of deradicalisation through education alone. He repeatedly stated that the solution to political instability in Palestine was to “remove the core cause”, which he argued was Israeli occupation. 

“People are reawakening,” Zomlot added. “Oppression has globalised, but so has resistance to it. That’s why I still have hope.”

UK Friends of Palestinian Universities, formerly known as Fozbu, has been in operation since 1978 and is dedicated to building “UK and international academic solidarity, partnership, and exchange with Palestinian higher education institutions facing systematic attack”.

Oxford is making you childish

Finlo Cowley
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Oxford is making you childish

Oxford is often separated from other universities in the public imagination, a result of this city’s illustrious history of academic excellence, sporting prowess, and gleaming architecture. Perhaps we should add another reason to the list – the infantilisation of Oxford.

You arrive aged 18, ready to start your independent, adult life, and are instantly thrown into a setting that resembles a vast boarding school. The childishness is glaring. The tone is set during Fresher’s Week when the standard fare of drinking and club nights is complemented by a range of non-drinking activities that bring back flashbacks of secondary-school icebreakers. Talk to an Oxford graduate of the 80s and they would be amazed to hear about a movie night in the first week of university rather than a night in the college bar. Living in halls, with its attendant niceties, inevitably means Oxford students do not undergo the typical student rites of passage. Scouts clean your rooms, put your bins out, and tidy your kitchens, not that you need to use that lone microwave available to you because your college dining hall will feed you seven nights a week. And this for the entirety of your course since nearly all colleges now offer accommodation for all years– student life sans energy bills, pesky landlords, or unblocking drains. 

Oxford students are actively discouraged from having a job during term time lest it distract from their degree, leaving those students who do need to work both academically stigmatised and socially isolated from their peers. And could there ever be a more telling sign of the willing regression of a group of nascent adults than the obsession with college puffers? Oxford students leave school complaining about school uniform and embrace the next best thing as soon as they get to university, cosplaying tourists wearing University-branded sweaters. 

Perhaps the infantilisation of Oxford is part of a broader trend of 20-somethings increasingly aspiring to be more childish. A generation that prefers to work from home as it means we can watch Netflix between meetings and don’t have to have awkward conversations at the water cooler because we’ve all developed social anxiety in lockdown. A generation that needs ‘adulting’ guides to help us with complicated tasks like doing laundry or navigating a supermarket. A generation that just needs to get a grip, or so we are told in the press.

Or maybe what we’re seeing is actually the excessive mollycoddling of university students à la américaine, whereby adolescents raised in an age of ‘helicopter parenting’ and Covid lockdowns have reached university age and found themselves unable to deal with opposing or upsetting views. Degrees are dumbed down. Trigger warnings are given for anything from Shakespeare to Harry Potter. It is not a leap too far to go from being infantilised in your college living arrangements to being patronised in your degree.

This would all make sense applied to Oxford. Describing his undergraduate years at Oxford, Balliol academic John Maier writes of his college JCR that ‘‘many of those in power behaved with a kind of wounded officiousness that suggested they had been bullied too much at school, or perhaps not enough’’. Enter into this febrile mix a crushing workload and you have a recipe for an increasingly childish and self-regarding student population. The prime evidence of this are JCR meetings where the very worst stereotypes of student politics come to the fore. Funds are allocated on the basis of virtue signalling by self-important committees so pleased with themselves to be elected that they forget that the point of their roles is essentially to hand out money to students.  

It is tempting to hark back to some imagined glory days in Oxford’s past where students spent their evenings sipping pints instead of scrolling and discussed Tolstoy rather than Twitter. But Oxford has always been childish – then, the scouts didn’t just take out your bins, they served you your port too. 

Might there be some benefit to this infantilisation? The university would certainly claim that scouts and college catering fosters an environment in which students can focus as much energy as possible on their academic work. After all, Albert Einstein reportedly wore the same suit everyday so that he wouldn’t waste mental energy deciding what to wear. The mathematician Paul Erdős could work for 19 hours a day precisely because he never learned to cook.

It’s not all doom and gloom, of course. Oxford is still full of brilliant students, willing to engage critically with their subjects and consume vast amounts of beer while doing so. But the University community would do well to remember that there is more to student life than churning out essays or winning JCR elections. There is more to life than Oxford.

Is lifetime membership a perk or a problem?

Lleucu William
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Is lifetime membership a perk or a problem?

Let me take you back to when I stood in the queue on the day of the election at the Oxford Union, voting on whether George Abaronye should remain President-Elect or not. I couldn’t help but notice the sea of grey-haired, geriatric, white, men (mostly), who somehow still had the right to vote at the Oxford Union. They cling to their fond memories of university days, trying to grasp onto some feeling of youth. Not only this, but I also heard an older woman, possibly late sixties, asking for confirmation for the proxy vote she was also filling in, adding to the number of voters who are not current students.

The question I pose today is: should the Oxford Union still be allowing those who have graduated from Oxford to vote? If so, what age is the cut-off point?

I don’t mean to generalise, and whilst there are indeed many varying opinions held by older people, as with any group of people, the fact remains: it is statistically much more likely that older generations will vote more conservatively. We can see this clearly in YouGov polls, recording that the chance of someone having voted Conservative increases gradually with age, with 46% of 70-year-olds or older voting Conservative in the 2024 general election. 

There is also an even higher chance that this is true when we remember which university we are taking into consideration. A university where the representation of privately educated, male, white students has historically outweighed the comparative representation of state-educated students, women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and more. These figures have changed over the years, with more provisions in place to increase opportunities for more people. For example, 66% of UK students from the state sector admitted in 2024 in comparison to the 59.2% of offers to state schools in 2016. Although representation is still an issue which needs to be improved at our University, could the University politics now be reflecting a wider variety of opinions due to the increase in representation from various backgrounds? And can we see how opinions of the cohort at Oxford University are changing through the way we vote?

Currently, we cannot. And this is partly because those who possess lifetime membership to the Union are still allowed to use their membership to vote long after graduating, meaning that the votes are not completely made up of the current cohort of students. In addition to this, according to the Oxford Union’s website, other people who are eligible for life membership to the Oxford Union are the “spouses of individuals eligible for Life Membership”. The voting group should consist of the current members of the institution. Not only to make the voting and outcomes of elections fairer, but also to reflect the opinions of the current cohort at our University. If nothing else, to keep and make for a fascinating historical record.

But why should we even care about Union politics? Some think Union politics is nonsense, that the Union itself is full of its own unimportant and petty drama.  But, now and then, there is an incident which is so inflammatory and so major that it is enough to make waves that ripple across the whole nation, even across the whole globe, as we have seen of late.

Because of this, we need to do a better job at remembering the prowess the Union holds, the fact that it is not only affecting the ‘bubble’ that is the University of Oxford, but actually can spread across the entire world, causing global debate, discussions, and online abuse. So, the decisions we think have no effect actually shape the opinions of the wider public, too. I am not talking about protecting the reputation of the Union or the University here, but just about ensuring the outcome of elections represents the current opinions. 

Instead, there should be a cut-off point for voting of five years after graduation. They can keep their lifetime memberships for everything else, but voting should be limited to current students. There is a notable difference between newly graduated alumni of the University and those who now have children, careers, and are 20 years our senior, or even those who are now retired, spending most of their days roaming around their gardens. So those who do turn up to vote without a doubt have some of the most extreme opinions too. Those who have only just graduated most likely still reflect the current cohort of students at the University of Oxford, still understand how the University and Union function today, and still have a clear idea of current Union and University politics.

It is only right that the results reflect the current state of the Union. The results may still not be the desired one for someone like me, with socialist, left-leaning opinions, but at least they would be more accurate. It would be an actual insight into how the Union has changed, and whether it is still as conservative as it was. Or is it enough of a historical record to look at the Union in its current state, with its unfair elections? 

AI applications will quietly revive nepo hiring

Georgia Campbell
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AI applications will quietly revive nepo hiring

Over Christmas, I was chatting to a relative who works in finance. Their company, a relatively small firm, had just opened applications for its summer internship in Manchester. “We had 600 applications in less than three days, for a single internship spot”, they told me. The scale was unprecedented and, most bizarrely of all, at least 200 of those candidates had applied from the same place: Texas, in the US – a hallmark of AI application en-masse. 

Reports of the harms of AI in graduate recruitment are not unusual, either. According to The Times, UK entry-level jobs have reduced by 45% since the release of ChatGPT, and every day, thousands of bots are scraping websites and submitting applications indiscriminately. As my mind turned towards my own imminent graduation, I was disheartened to hear that even smaller companies aren’t safe. 

It made for a less-than festive end to our conversation about graduate recruitment. “It’s a nightmare”, we agreed. But then, after a shrug, my relative added: “We might just have to go back to hiring people we know.”  

I was taken aback by their candour. Nepotistic recruitment has never really gone away, especially in sectors like finance, but companies at least made an effort to pretend it had. Name-blind CV reviews and declarations of previous contacts at the company are interventions meant to level the playing field. To now return to an ‘oldboys’ recruitment method seemed like a huge step back. 

But there’s a bleak kind of logic to it. You, as an employer, have no way of telling which applications are genuine human effort and which aren’t, and you don’t have the time or human resources to even read them all anyway. Your corporation, like most, doesn’t have an entire team dedicated to recruitment. It’s wasted work for you and the grads that actually did put the work in and whose applications won’t be given the attention they deserve.  

So next year, instead of advertising the opportunity widely, you hire your next door neighbour’s son, who you’ve known since he was six and is a stand-up lad. Or you take on a grad from your alma mater, a rigorous university which you know produces hard-workers. With any luck, your neighbour will return the favour by offering your very capable niece an internship. And so it continues. Decades of progress in widening access reversed. 

The only alternative appears to be a total embrace of AI on the other side of the hiring process. The vast quantity of AI-generated applications require the processing-power only AI can provide. Recruitment becomes reduced to chatbots applying to chatbots: dead internet theory at its finest. 

And on top of that, companies specify that applicants shouldn’t use AI in their submissions, but why would they listen? AI will almost definitely be used to judge them, and given the number of job applications needed to secure a single graduate spot, students are choosing quantity over quality. Who can blame them? 

Of course, there are options besides nepotism and AI armageddon. Hiring teams could specify criteria to reduce the overall number of applications and boost those from underrepresented groups: state-school educated, BAME, those with disabilities. Such “positive action” schemes have already been implemented successfully at a number of big corporations, including NatWest, The Guardian, and PwC. Though it doesn’t solve the issue for students not included within those groups, maybe it’s a start. 

But do we really expect that most UK companies will make the effort? Their bottom line is their bottom line: they don’t really care about access. Grads without connections are collateral: unlucky – try again next year. I tentatively suggested the positive action policy to my relative, who seemed to just sigh hopelessly: “AI’s just wrecking the whole thing anyway.”  

Which leads me to my final point, we often hear people using AI as a catch-all bad guy for the UK’s problems: “It’s all AI’s fault.” But AI itself can’t be at fault, AI doesn’t have agency: it doesn’t have consciousness (yet). For the time being, at least, humans are still behind the bots – there are people pulling the strings and making hiring policies. Just resigning to the idea that AI is taking over won’t solve anything. It’s more than depressing: it’s disempowering, and this kind of fatalism can only result in lazy policies.  

In the meantime where does that leave the grads? Is the answer really just… network more? Make nepotism work for you? It’s hardly a fair or realistic conclusion. But if that is where recruitment is heading back to, there doesn’t seem to be much other choice. Oxford is privileged in the sense that its alumni networks are amongst the best in the world; many of the big societies, such as LawSoc, Oxford Women in Business, or the Union, have direct lines to some of the best in the business. I feel uneasy suggesting such a solution, especially given the barriers to entry to those societies in the first place, and the fact that Oxford students still struggle to get grad spots in spite of the promised leg up by the university brand. To say we can do absolutely nothing to help ourselves, though, feels like giving up.

But the real change can only come from employers, who must be emboldened to take meaningful action. It’s not over yet, and a real solution would benefit everyone involved. Because, lest we forget, there are still humans behind the chatbots applying to chatbots: students who just want prospects. Nepotism doesn’t provide that, aside from for the lucky few, and AI only complicates an already-crowded space. 

Students want to put in the effort. We just need a fair chance – only human choices, not AI, can give that to us. 

In defence of the internship spreadsheet

Antonio Reis
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In defence of the internship spreadsheet

Every few days, without fail, my friend sends me a screenshot of his cold email spreadsheet. Dozens of colour-coded rows list firms I’ve never heard of, tracking interviews, rejections, and the occasional win. I receive them with a familiar cocktail of guilt, stress, and vague dread. I tell myself I don’t care. I came to the University of Oxford to pursue knowledge, not to optimise my LinkedIn. But hours later, I inevitably find myself doomscrolling CareerConnect.

It’s easy to criticise “internship culture”, with its nerves and competition, but it’s worth asking why it’s so contagious. At Oxford, where ambition is concentrated and comparison is practically unavoidable, the pressure to plan early isn’t a bug but a feature. The question is not whether this culture exists, but whether it is entirely corrosive – or whether, handled well, it can sharpen purpose rather than hollow it out. For this reason, it’s worth defending.

There’s a classic line: you are the product of the five people you spend the most time with. If that’s true, it explains what makes Oxford so distinct. The teaching is excellent, but the academic and curricular differences between any top university are likely marginal. What truly separates Oxford is selection. The admissions process concentrates intense, ambitious people in one place: almost everyone has some deep passion, side project, or sense of purpose. You are surrounded by students who expect a lot from themselves – and, implicitly, from you.

This intensity seeps into daily life, amplified by Oxford’s physical and social structure. Dining halls and their long tables regularly seat you by people you don’t know. New connections and conversations strike up easily. This dynamic is replicated everywhere: society socials, lectures, and college bars. Networking becomes an everyday experience. You occasionally become aware that you might be talking to the next prime minister, Stephen Hawking, or Nigella Lawson.

Inevitably, talks drift towards future plans – not because everyone is soullessly ambitious, but because when everyone around you is building something, standing still feels like falling behind.

Of course, this has costs. You start measuring yourself against friends, and pressure accumulates. But, to use the cliché, diamonds are formed under pressure. Competition incentivises innovation and improvement. You see what is possible earlier, you learn faster, and your standards rise.

I hated my friend’s screenshots, but they worked. They forced me to confront how passive I’d been about my own future. I joined more committees, updated my CV, and, reluctantly, downloaded LinkedIn. I discovered exciting opportunities I would never have considered otherwise. I’m no hardcore careerist, but proximity to ambition is motivating.

This isn’t to deny that this culture can be toxic. If your self-worth depends entirely on employability, something has gone wrong. But not all pressure is poison. High-pressure environments have always produced excellence alongside stress. We accept this in sports and music; why not careers?

Internships are also undervalued as learning tools in themselves. It’s not mere résumé-padding, but a test run to gather information about your own preferences and abilities before the consequences become dire. Discovering at 19 that you would absolutely despise investment banking is far better than discovering that at 25 with rent to pay and no alternatives.

The logic is temporal: work now reduces panic later. We accept this principle everywhere else: we revise before exams, not after results. Yet we treat internships as unnecessary stress rather than what they really are: an insurance against future panic. Thinking seriously about the future can provide vision and purpose. Insulating ourselves from the outside world doesn’t preserve some purer intellectual life; we just delay an inevitable confrontation with reality.


Finally, we should ​​interrogate the moral tone of some anti-hustle critiques. Wanting a fulfilling, well-paid, meaningful career is not shallow. For many students, it’s not optional. Dismissing concern about employment as trivial is often a position made comfortable by safety nets, family connections, and wealth. It is quietly elitist, echoing an era where jobs didn’t matter, and university was just a playground for the aristocracy before they returned to their family estates.

Internship culture deserves critique, but also recognition. The problem is pursuing an abstract goal without understanding what success means for you. Instead, acknowledge pressure but don’t let careers become totalising. At a place like Oxford, competition is both a by-product and driver of excellence and personal growth. We pretend students shouldn’t care too much about their futures, while quietly rewarding those who do.

If my friend is reading this, though: please stop sending me screenshots of your spreadsheet.

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