Style at Oxford is an ecstatically productive study in collective nouns. A stable of Ralph Lauren logos, a locus of nylon Longchamps, an orchard of Apple products. It is wholly socially acceptable to sport a cricket jumper in the club, voi in full Scottish ceremonial dress, and pair a Fendi Baguette with your Halloween costume. (I think we should stop being so accepting).
How do you spot an Oxford student? Look for AirPods and library glasses, eyes branded with dark circles and lips glossed with Rhode. The merch is always college (apart from Blues kit, uni-wide is for tourists), or alumni stash (note the boarding school baseball caps). After all, are you even wearing a coat if it doesn’t allow strangers to guess your full name, current living location and (most importantly) university? A college puffer is a walking economy of personal information and academic prestige, and a double-barrelled name fits quite happily into the five character allowance for initials.
The original fear that you must wear business formal to your Oxford interview – “Mum, is my shirt collar clearly visible on the Teams call?” – is not necessarily so misguided. Everyone is always in some variant of smart casual. In Michaelmas, long wool coats creep out and pavements swarm with the yellow stitching of lace-up Docs. People accessorise here, with a plague of that one particular stripy scarf. Canvas totes from The Covered Market or Blackwell’s advertise the personality traits of eating food and being able to read, whilst the London massive support local businesses with The Notting Hill shopping bag.
Ball attire is standard black tie, whilst formals are accessorised with the sartorial translation of your Prelims grade: either a scholars gown or a (tactfully named) commoners gown. Crew dates, on the other hand, normally entail dressing as a thotty elf/thotty deer/respectable professional from Magic Mike and wandering the streets of Oxford whilst passers-by remark in loud voices: “It’s not Halloween anymore, is it?”
Sub fusc, like many things at Oxford, has a Latin etymology and is not as rigidly enforced as the website’s gleeful use of bold font would have you believe. The LinkedIn profile photo of choice shows a prim velvet ribbon bow, teeny-tiny miniskirt, and gigantesque Docs (removed under wobbly Exam Schools’ tables during Prelims papers). And the endurance of a student prepared to sit a three-hour exam in 6 inch platform stilettos is admirable.
Yet clothes also serve as a class marker. Here the most likely balaclava is a cashmere shroud, tweed is horrifyingly unironic and your Rad Cam seat neighbour is using her Goyard tote (a silent epidemic of one grand printed canvas) as a makeshift pillow. Hoodies are normally Carhartt drip and trackies are Blueblood. Getting dressed becomes an exercise in keeping up appearances. The whimsy of going to the library like an aestheticized Dickensian orphan – oh, my satchel and hand-knitted mittens! – is exhausting. Perhaps style at Oxford is ultimately about learning how not to let the mask slip.
Oxford’s state-school admissions fall short despite outreach attempts
The University of Oxford undoubtedly has a reputation of elitism and yet more recently a focus has been placed on improving access and inclusion. This outreach feels more necessary than ever, especially when considering the University’s 67.6% proportion of students from state schools, which falls starkly short of the 93% of the UK population educated within this sector.
This investigation into representation of state-school students at Oxford University delves into the numbers and figures, exposing the reality of declining numbers and ineffective outreach schemes.
Graph one, Graph two
The University’s official admissions reports from the last five years paint a picture of progress and positivity, emphasising how the gap between private schools and state schools is narrowing. And to some extent it’s true. As graph one shows, in 2023 1,236 more state-school students applied than in 2019, increasing the proportion of state-school applicants by 5.3% over the last four years. On the other hand, private-school students have declined by a similar proportion with just over 600 less applications in 2023 than in 2019.
This trend can also be seen in admissions and from 2019 to 2023, the proportion of private-school students admitted fell by 5.3%, while the proportion of state-school students admitted into Oxford rose by 4.8% (graph two).
The University emphasises how their attempts to improve access have been successful throughout the report, drawing conclusions such as “the proportion of UK students admitted from the independent sector has decreased between 2019 and 2023.” Similarly, the report also says that state-school students represent “between 46.5% and 79.6% …for Oxford’s 25 largest courses,” a more generous statistic than the University’s overall intake of state-school students, which has not yet risen above 70%.
The issue of 2019-2020
Graph three
Yet this progress is not as impressive as the statistics initially imply. The five-year time range used to track state school and private school access to Oxford University is a pretty standard one. And yet it is slightly problematic due to the outlier admissions year of 2019 to 2020.
The 2019 to 2020 application cycle marked a record year for state school admissions into Oxford with 21% of 9,411 applicants receiving offers (graph two). This contrasted the year before, wherein 500 less state school students applied, and 113 less offers were made to state school students. The unprecedented numbers of state-school admissions reached in 2020 have not been consistently matched in the following years. Indeed, since 2020 the gap between private school and state school access to Oxford has only grown bigger.
The data from the years post-2019 indicate stagnation far more than progress and the representation of state-school students at the University has been on the decline for the last four years. By 2022, the amount of offers given to state-school students had already fallen by 8.5% since 2020 and in 2023, 275 less state-school students were admitted to Oxford than in 2020.
The hidden facts
While the University’s admissions reports provide all the data on students from state schools and private schools, it is not made clear that the proportion of state-school students applying to Oxford University is consistently higher than the proportion of state-school students who are admitted, as shown in graph three. Furthermore, the proportional difference between the numbers of state-school students at both stages has risen by 4.2% since 2020, suggesting that this trend is only worsening.
Despite the numbers of students applying to Oxford from state schools only increasing, climbing to a record of 10,150 applications in 2023 (graph one), there has been no meaningful increase in the numbers admitted. While state-school students are increasingly encouraged to apply, the University’s admissions have in no real way yet matched this change.
In contrast, graph three also shows over the last five years there has always been a higher proportion of private-school students being admitted than the proportion of private-school students at the applications stage. The amount of this increase has also only grown since 2019.
It seems as if in recent years, Oxford’s progress in accessibility has stumbled into a period of increasing inertia. Improvements made in 2020 have been followed not by a meaningful change in the University’s demographics, but by a backslide into underrepresentation of state-educated students.
The schools
But it is not just the University’s own statistics that can provide insight into the representation of state-school students at Oxford University. The Spectator recently published a list of the top 80 schools that receive the most offers from Oxford University and Cambridge University. The data gathered from the 2023 UCAS application cycle shows how the proportion of high-performing schools is fairly evenly split between the private and state sector. Out of the 80 schools, 29 are independent schools and the remaining 51 are state-funded schools.
This would suggest that, if anything, state-school students have better chances of getting into Oxford University. However, within the 51 state schools on this list, there is still much stratification, with 29 being grammar schools and 17 sixth-form colleges. While all state schools are characterised by their lack of tuition fees, some are also fully or partially academically selective and others simply educate students post-16. Grammar schools and sixth form colleges tend to outperform comprehensive state-schools, achieving better A-level grades. Additionally, sixth-form colleges tend to be able to provide more extensive resources than comprehensive schools and grammar schools are noted to often disproportionately represent middle-class students. For example, in 2021 to 2022, 5.7% of pupils at grammar schools were eligible for free school meals compared to 22% in an average comprehensive school.
While comprehensive schools are still funded by the state, they are not selective and so accept all students regardless of academic performance and regardless of age. On this list of the top schools for Oxbridge admissions, only five, or 6.3% are comprehensive state schools.
The reasons
Another trend that Oxford University’s admissions reports reveal is that every year for the last five years, state-school students have been less likely to be admitted after receiving an offer than private-school students. In the 2023 admissions cycle, for example, 85.9% of offer-holders from state-school students were admitted contrasted by the 92.8% success rate of students from private schools. Furthermore, in 2020 the success rate of state-school students was 95.8% meaning it has fallen by nearly 10% in the last four years.
While it is impossible to say for all cases, one can assume that the vast majority of offer-holders who were not then admitted failed to achieve their required grades. Oxford University cannot, of course, be solely blamed for this. After all, it is true that private schools tend to perform better on examinations than state schools and in 2024 this performance gap reached its largest since 2018 with almost half of private-school students achieving As or above contrasted with only 22.3% of students at comprehensive schools.
However, the reasons why more private school students end up in top-performing universities, such as Oxford University, run a lot deeper than exam results. The resource disparities between the private and state sectors cannot be understated. In the last decade alone, the gap between private school fees and state school spending per pupil has more than doubled.
Private schools also tend to be able to better support their students with university applications. At Westminster School, who received the most Oxbridge admissions in 2023 jointly with Hills Road Sixth Form College, for example, students receive mentoring and preparation classes. A former student at the school told Cherwell how this was “absolutely invaluable for giving me confidence.” Similarly, St Paul’s School, which placed fourth on The Spectator’s list, employs eleven specialist UK university advisers to help students make decisions about their A level and university choices.
The Campaign for State Education told Cherwell some reasons private schools are better equipped to send pupils to Oxford University is because “they have many, many decades of experience in preparing students to apply to these universities… (and) many of them are likely to have personal connections to Oxbridge colleges.”
Therefore the gap between private schools and state schools is a highly complex issue and while one institution, such as Oxford University, cannot be expected to solely resolve it, they certainly should take all the steps they can to increase the University’s accessibility. And this has not yet been achieved. Oxford University still lags behind the national average number of state-school students by over 20% and in 2021 was the seventh lowest proportion out of the 24 Russell Group universities.
Outreach
But what is Oxford University doing to level the playing field? Outreach is a relatively new but important tool that Oxford among many other universities employs to encourage and support students from underrepresented backgrounds.
It was only in the 2010s that Oxford introduced structured outreach programmes. The UNIQ programme, a summer residential and one of the University’s flagship access programmes, was introduced at the beginning of the decade. It is now one of many initiatives run by the University. Oxford colleges also carry out their own outreach.
Cherwell received FOI responses from seven colleges – the Queen’s College, St Hilda’s College, St Edmund Hall, New College, Exeter College, Keble College, and St John’s College. This data shows that, as expected, state schools are the main target of their outreach programmes.
Outreach is definitely becoming more and more prominent and widespread and there is no argument that this is not a positive change. Yet in the last five years, there has only been a minor increase in applications from state-school students (graph one) and virtually no difference in the number of students from state schools who are admitted (graph two).
It might just be too early to tell. Most outreach programmes were first initiated between 2010 and 2020 and while perhaps this is not enough time to truly know, there is no evidence of positive change yet. It may not be fair to say that outreach has no effect but its success is yet to be mirrored in the University’s applications and admissions.
College disparities
Oxford University’s college system also adds greater complexity and the proportion of state-school students differs greatly from college to college. Mansfield College holds the highest number of state-school students with a proportion of 93.7%, which is in line with the number of students in state schools throughout the UK. However, this amount is 37 percentage points higher than the proportion of state-school students at Pembroke College.
The Campaign for State Education identified the college system specifically as a problem. They told Cherwell: “In the short term, the best thing to do would be to stop allowing colleges to control their own admissions. In both universities (Oxford and Cambridge) the proportion of state/privately educated students varies enormously from college to college and this clearly reflects the exercise of quite different admissions.”
Location, Location, Location
However, the picture painted by admissions statistics to Oxford University is not that simple. It is not just school type alone that affects access to Oxford but so does school location and in all areas, the same few locations are consistently overrepresented while the rest are nearly always at a disadvantage.
Oxford University’s admissions reports from the last three years show that London and the South East are favoured. Making up around 14% of the total UK population, the proportion of students from the South East who apply and are admitted to Oxford is nearly double that.
Contrastingly, the 11% of the UK population in the North West is not equally represented in the 8% of Oxford applicants and admittees. Students from Yorkshire and the Humber are also underrepresented and they make up only 5% of applications and admissions, despite this region accounting for 8% of the population.
Furthermore, when looking at The Spectator’s top schools for students who go onto Oxford and Cambridge University, this bias is also present. London and the South East are again the most popular with 38 out of the top 50 schools falling in these regions and all but two of the top 20. Only one school from the North East, Greenhead College, has made the top 50.
Therefore, this clear regional preference to London and the South East must surely have an impact on Oxford’s outreach attempts. The University’s regional outreach programme, Oxford for UK, describes how they aim “to help more local students from backgrounds which are currently underrepresented to make successful applications to Oxford.” This programme assigns different Oxford colleges a region for them to specifically target with their outreach programmes.
The statistics undeniably highlight the North East as an underrepresented area with the lowest number of applicants to the University coming from this region. Oxford for UK has assigned it links to three colleges: Christ Church College, St Anne’s College, and Trinity College. This is roughly the same number of colleges linked to Yorkshire and the Humber, the East Midlands, the West Midlands, the North West, Wales, the South West, and the East of England.
The bias towards London and the South East is also shown by the latter region being designated seven colleges to expand access in this already overrepresented area. Eleven colleges have links to specific boroughs within London, a subdivision made for no other area in the UK.
Madeleine Holt, founder of the Meet the Parents project, which encourages all families to support their local comprehensives, and a trustee of the think tank Private Education Policy Forum (PEPF), described the reasons for this regional bias as “affluence and selection”, explaining how these regions “have some highly selective sixth forms that have greater contact time than the average, and focus very heavily on getting top grades.”
The amount specific regions are interacted with by colleges does not correlate with their applications to Oxford University. The FOI responses from the seven colleges shows that the South West is targeted by outreach programmes two times as much as their students apply to Oxford (graph four).
Holt also stressed this problem, telling Cherwell: “I am concerned that colleges may be getting the numbers up by taking a disproportionate number of state school students from grammar schools or from highly selective sixth forms where they have built up a strong relationship over the years.”
Graph four represents the number of schools targeted by the seven colleges in each region and it shows that regional bias is stronger than a college’s designated outreach area. The schools involved in outreach are predominantly from London and the South East, while the North East as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland are far less affected. Indeed, regardless of designated links to the region, almost every college interacts with schools from London as a large proportion.
While this is not true for all colleges, outreach from St Edmund Hall, whose link region is the East Midlands, reached schools from that area over 80% of the time. However, this is not always the case and New College, whose link region is Wales, only interacted with Welsh schools less than 30% of the time.
What now?
It is clear that private-school bias is undeniably still a great issue at Oxford University. State school students continue to be underrepresented in one of the UK’s top academic institutions. The work of outreach programmes and initiatives are yet to have definite consequences on progress.
The Campaign for State Education told Cherwell: “the English private school system concentrates massive resources on the education of already privileged children and effectively undermines the education of 93.5% of our children…The best thing to do with it would be to abolish it.”
The University of Oxford said in response: “Oxford remains committed to ensuring that our undergraduate student body reflects the diversity of the UK and that we continue to attract students with the highest academic potential, from all backgrounds. The past few years have been challenging, with students, particularly those from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, continuing to feel the impact of Covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis. We continue to build on and expand our access and outreach activities and our new Access and Participation Plan will provide a renewed focus in attracting and supporting students who are currently under-represented at Oxford.”
Oxford University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey, has spent a total of £47,564.97 on expenses since her appointment in January 2023, Cherwell can reveal. The majority of these expense claims cover flights in an apparent contradiction of Oxford University’s own sustainability policies.
A Freedom of Information request showed that most of these expenses pertained to travel, with claims for over £25,000 spent on flights, £12,000 on rail and car transportation, as well as over £5,000 on hotel stays. Additionally, £1,350 was spent on the purchase of “gifts”. These costs are considered part of the Vice-Chancellor’s responsibilities and in addition to her baseline salary of £423,407.
Some of the Vice-Chancellor’s air travel appears in tension with the University’s travel policy, which was implemented in August 2022 as part of its wider Environmental Sustainability Strategy to achieve net zero carbon by 2035. The travel policy requires an “additional approval process” for premium economy or business class air travel.
Tracey’s largest expense claims were made for a series of business class flights to the USA. These began in April 2023, when Tracey claimed £5,456 for flights there, and again in July of that year, when £7,210 was claimed for the same journey. The largest claim was made in June 2024 for flights between London and New York, which cost £8,817.
With specific reference to these flights, the University press office elaborated: “Long haul flights are taken in business class – not in first class. The Vice-Chancellor has declined other expenses to which she is entitled.” Yet this would still appear to contradict the case-specific “approval process” stipulated in the University’s travel policy.
Domestic flights from London to Glasgow and Edinburgh, made in May 2023 and May 2024 respectively, are also in tension with another stipulation of the University’s travel policy, which refers to the use of domestic flights within the UK for business travel as “not permitted”.
The policy specifies that “rail should be used for all domestic journeys under seven hours”, and does not include Scotland on its list of domestic exceptions. The headline data provided by the University in response to Cherwell’s FOI only referred to “ground transportation”, failing to distinguish train and private car journeys.
The Vice-Chancellor has also claimed thousands of pounds on hotel accommodation around the world, including a hotel stay in August 2023 worth over £1,600 in the USA, and accommodation in Mumbai totalling to £1,700 in December 2023.
An investigation by the i newspaper into expenses incurred by university vice-chancellors nationally reported that the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) clocked up the highest expense bill, with its Vice-Chancellors claiming over £80,000 over the past two years.
By comparison, Tracey’s expense claims are markedly lower than LSE’s and also those of her predecessor, former Vice-Chancellor Prof Louise Richardson. In 2023, the University paid out record compensation of over £1 million to Vice-Chancellors Tracey and Richardson, notably including a payout for Richardson equivalent to a year’s salary “in lieu of sabbatical”.
The University of Oxford said in response: “Oxford University is ranked as the world’s strongest university for its teaching, research and impact. Additionally, it generates billions annually for the UK economy.
“To support this achievement, the Vice-Chancellor builds global research and education partnerships, secures donations funds from supporters around the world and helps recruit the outstanding academics and students who are vital to Oxford’s success.
“The Vice-Chancellor’s work in keeping the University as a world leader is continual, involving large-scale engagement with current and potential academic partners, funders and donors, and extensive worldwide travel. As such, these expenses have all been incurred legitimately in the cause of keeping Oxford at the forefront of the worldwide advancement of learning and research.”
Tom Egerton has worked with Sir Anthony Seldon on The Conservative Effect 2010-24: 14 Wasted Years?, The Impossible Office? The History of the British Prime Minister and Johnson at 10: The Inside Story. He is also the founder and editor of ‘The Political Inquiry’, a Substack providing independent political analysis and promoting new voices in politics.
Cherwell: Tell us a bit about your early life; what memories stand out to you, especially in relation to how your later career developed?
Egerton: When did I know what I wanted to go into? At the GCSE level, there’s nothing really on politics. There’s very little. Your whole interaction with the study of politics, with the practice of politics is tangential to other subjects, or what’s actually happening in the real world, or maybe family or friend connections, right? The big thing for me was, through history, I discovered politics, and I think that’s quite regular for a lot of lot of people; but also that shapes how you look at politics, if you discover it through a passion for history, through looking at the past, that really shapes how you see the world, how you see politics, what type of politics you want to go into and your views fundamentally.
Cherwell:And then you took those two together, and went on to study History and Politics at Warwick. How did your experience there shape you?
Egerton: Warwick’s an interesting place, right? Because it’s a very respected uni, but it’s quite a new uni. I think it’s aged very well, and they’re innovating there quite a lot. I think you need to do that if you don’t have the rich history and tradition of other unis, you have to forge it. I think that’s what they’re doing well. The History department has got a very radical history, but it’s still a very fascinating history. I think a lot of the professors there are top of their game for a lot of research. Their economics department is obviously very famous, especially because of their business school. Their politics and philosophy is pioneering in places as well. There’s a good humanities and social sciences bracket there at Warwick. E.P. Thompson was professor there and set up the History department. So it has this lineage there, but it’s kind of in conflict with itself. I don’t want to say too much on it, but because they utilise a lot of money from the Big Five investment firms and lots of insurance companies through their business school. I mean, it’s happening at all unis, but this one specifically, the conflict of a progressive, maybe anti-capitalist humanities side versus a whole department’s spending based on it.
Cherwell: Was it while you were at Warwick that you first met Sir Anthony Seldon?
Egerton: I think I met him before, but I properly met him at Warwick when I was Academic Officer for the Politics Society. I wanted him down for a talk because he wrote a book called The Impossible Office, and I thought it was a very good book. He comes down, and I host an event with him over a few hours, and it goes down really well, hundreds of people attend. I got him doing uni media and local media there as well, which was so gracious with his time, and then from then on, we kind of hit it off over the next six, eight months, texting, calling each other; he shows me bits of work, I give comments. Our relationship kind of built from there, working wise.
Cherwell:And then from there, you moved on to work with him on Johnson at 10.
Egerton: So that was the first time I worked for him. He basically just needed a researcher that he could trust and that he thought was good enough. I was very lucky to be given that opportunity by him. I came on as chief researcher for that project, under Anthony and his co-author, Raymond Newell, who is also extremely impressive guy; he’s in his mid-20s, and has already done two masters and a degree. Very impressive. He’s now at Hanbury Strategy. Definitely one to look out for. He’d also co authored May at 10 before, so he retained that team, and us three work together on that, and it went really, really well. Ended up, I think, being one of his most successful books, numerically, as well as quality and reviews. That was a fascinating process which took about a year, both on the ground in Westminster and working from home and meeting up as a team. Great, great experience.
Cherwell:And that’s how you laid the groundwork for The Conservative Effect, which is the one that came out most recently.
Egerton: Before that, I co-authored the second edition of The Impossible Office, because that needed a lot of updating. They already had three authors, and I came on as a fourth to update most of the recent Prime Ministers, and also do a lot of editing and corrections. That came out a bit after Johnson at 10, and then off the back of that, we had The Conservative Effect sketched out for a while, because it was more ‘can we get the people, can we get the timing right’? Because you have to plan these things at least a year and a half in advance. You just have to see what the government’s doing, because there was a big question mark over Sunak for six months, not whether he could actually win an election, but at least be more successful. Then you can’t really be sure on conclusions you’re starting to write about the book.
Cherwell:If it ended up being a Conservative win, the book would look a bit incomplete.
Egerton: Exactly. Well, it helped that it was probably the easiest election to predict a long time. Even a year before, when we were really kick starting the project, I don’t think it was a given. In mid-2023, I think, everyone thought the Conservatives would probably lose. But by how much? Will it be a hung parliament? And looking at how Labour’s vote share actually was in the end, you know that actually, weirdly could have happened.
Even if they’d won, I think the conclusions in that book would have stood up. What wouldn’t have stood up is our framing around that. But I think that’s why me and Anthony took our time with it and made sure we had some firm footing on it, because also, you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got space for everyone in the book. If you’ve got top academics, you can’t be going around making silly conclusions or ones that won’t hold up.
Cherwell:You wrote a chapter in the book on external shocks; what was that experience like?
Egerton: It was an interesting chapter to write, because it was a summary chapter, rather than breaking new ground in a specific area. I was having to coalesce six shocks, which were all a bit disparate and to be honest, complex to explain in itself. It was challenging to do as a historical project. But I think it was important because not many historical books, especially contemporary history, realise the idea of shocks and how they categorise and explain the historical record, and how future revisionism relies on those shocks. For every governing period since World War Two, but even before then, external crises absolutely shape the governing record, because it’s all about the agency that a government has. There’s no point judging a prime minister or a government fairly if you’re not going to look at what wicket they’re playing on.
The chapter wasn’t designed to kind of explain away the failures of the last 14 years, but to give an insight into the external shocks. It’s important to emphasise, because I can see already that some people were taking the wrong conclusions from what I was saying, because obviously they didn’t read it properly. But the point is, is you can still be fair on what happened, but only by showing what happened can you give a more authoritative account on the failures.
Cherwell:You also founded and edit ‘The Political Inquiry’. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Egerton: ‘The Political Inquiry’ was an area to showcase some of my repertoire of early political writing and strategic thought, but it’s also a place that I’m now utilising to promote up and coming politicos, writers, strategists and historians who don’t break through into the legacy media easily, or can’t do because of connections or whatever. And it actually is a place to foster new, exciting potential, and different thoughts that don’t get the light of day, from a range of political ideologies.
Cherwell: How did you come up with the idea of it?
Egerton: I wanted a place to write. If you go to any legacy media and their commissioning editors, what you’re given can be quite constricting. If you’re early in your career, you can’t always have the space to write about what you want to write about, where your skill set is. I think giving the space for that is an absolutely vital thing if you want to develop political talent and also break through.
It’s not like I publish everything. I’m not restrictive, but I’m not going to publish any old stuff. I think some digital media that focuses on younger writers does. Not uni stuff, by the way; this is more like professional ones that don’t realise that you’ve got to have an editorial line. But if the editorial line is open enough, it can still work. But it can’t be completely open.
I think now that I’ve edited The Conservative Effect on a professional, academic level, you realise you cannot force a top-down opinion on someone unless you you’ve got a editorial line to begin with. If your very premise is that you haven’t got one, you can’t do it. So I understand where all the big legacy media newspapers come from, because they do have lines and they are mostly clear about it. But if you’re going to commit to not having one, you’ve got to be clear about it.
Cherwell:It’s probably a good sign of your editorial and academic objectivity that I haven’t been able to gauge what are your politics are.
Egerton: I’d say centre-left is probably a good wishy-washy way of describing it.
Cherwell:A Starmerite?
Egerton: No, not really Starmer. As you’ll see on ‘The Political Inquiry’ and in this chapter I just wrote, I’ve got question marks over Starmer. Less from an ideological point of view, because I think the perennial issue with the left is they focus on ideology as the be-all and end-all. Actually, sometimes if people focused on delivery and strategy a bit more, much more ideological left-wing goals would get achieved in government. But because there’s less focus on that and more focus on ideological battles from both wings of the party under the ideological spectrum, not much gets done.
Cherwell: In all the work you’ve done, who would you say is the modern writer who has influenced you the most?
Egerton: I think this is weird because I lean left, but definitely Dominic Sandbrook, of The Rest is History podcast. He wrote a five-part series on British political history ranging from the 50s to the mid 80s. They are really interesting attempts to bring political and social cultural history together, and then display it in a more accessible modern context. I say accessible; the books are 800 pages, but by accessible, I mean summarizing the academic groups and thoughts of these historical periods and presenting them in an interesting way. I don’t agree with a lot of his conclusions, but I think it is a fantastic introduction to political history, and also the history of this country. It comes from a standpoint that many people disagree with, but I think it’s good to read something you disagree with, to find ways to better it. That’s the fundamental point of history, really.
If I did a project in the future, he wouldn’t like it because there’s not enough anecdotes in it, or social history. But hopefully in the future, my writing will be more broad based in terms of history, rather than just the analytical, high politics, economic side of things, which can dominate analysis too much.
Cherwell: Speaking of next projects, what are your aspirations for the future?
Egerton: From now, just simply more writing, more reading, more research, realising that your career is never made in the first 10 years. It’s about what you do as a young person to develop and finding something you love. If you just keep developing and putting yourself out there for opportunities, you’ll get something, especially if you really like the thing you’re going for. That means you’ll have something over anyone else who’s more experienced, if you have more passion for it. People in politics see that. I think a lot of people in the industry of politics or history, they see things as daunting. They shouldn’t. Most people don’t know half as much as you probably know, and they use their positions to kind of protect what they have. It’s all about young people breaking through at the end of the day, that’s what generates new ideas and makes the industry so interesting and creative at times. And without that, it would be dead. So for anyone reading, go and do that, just go and put yourself out there for whatever, and put the effort in.
I’ve got a book in the works on Labour’s governing political strategy, loosely titled ‘Victory to Delivery’, which I might turn into a doctoral thesis. I think the biggest issue for left wing governments in this country is how you transfer what are sometimes questionable manifestos or indecipherable mandates into governing policy and governing strategy that actually works and stands the test of time. I think people like Miliband etc. have thought about that a lot, and you’ll see him trying to build policies that last a long time and build consensus. I think it’s an area of thought on that needs a lot more research, because there’s barely anything. I mean, Michael Barber is the only person I can think that has a really impactful study on it; he set up the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit under Blair, and wrote about delivering in government. I’d like to work on something like that from a historical perspective, with a bit more of a political edge.
The Conservative Effect 2010-24: 14 Wasted Years? is published by Cambridge University Press, and is available now. Cherwell reviewed the book in July 2024.
Hidden costs: The influence of donors on academic priorities at Oxford
Tucked away on a nondescript side street in North Oxford is Oxford University’s Dickson Poon China Centre, home to the Bodleian KB Chen China Centre Library. The £21 million facility is funded by some of China’s wealthiest individuals, from Dickson Poon, a Hong Kong billionaire businessman, to Daisy Ho, the daughter of a Macau-based billionaire who made his fortune from monopolising the Macau gambling industry. This is just one out of over 20 other buildings, scholarships, projects, and faculty positions in Oxford, named after and funded by Chinese individuals and organisations.
Over the last seven years, the University of Oxford has received up to £99 million from Chinese individuals and organisations. The majority of such donations are uncontroversial and the source country does not automatically make any funding problematic; several Chinese entities help financially support research projects, students, and museum exhibitions.
However, some of these donations stem from more contentious sources including companies facing sanctions from different countries and individuals involved in the Chinese government. This investigation explores the extent of China-linked money at Oxford University and its impact on research agendas, free speech, student welfare, and national security.
Analysing data acquired through Freedom of Information requests from the last seven years as well as from academic reports the full picture of Chinese funding at the University is exposed. Funding from Hong Kong-based companies and individuals are also covered in this investigation due to their links with China.
Threat of espionage
It is first important to consider why certain donations from China-linked entities can be problematic. In April of this year, the MI5 warned 24 universities, including Oxford University, about the possibility of espionage by foreign states targeting their research in a briefing to the universities’ vice-chancellors. MI5 did not name countries that it feared may attempt to gain information, but last year it also issued a warning which focused on China.
Following the MI5 announcement, the government introduced new measures, including increasing the transparency of research funding and government funding for universities to improve internal security. Researchers and university staff coming to the UK from certain countries, including China, must also now pass security clearing when applying for academic visas.
Academic freedom
Former head of the National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin, stated in April that British security services were concerned about the targeting of university staff to influence research, and argued that scholarships awarded by China or China-affiliated organisations are often suspected of exerting such influence.
UK-China Transparency (UKCT), a think tank, found evidence based on official translated documents that programmes co-governed by the CCP, such as China Scholarship programmes and Confucius Institutes, may pose a threat to academic freedoms. According to UKCT, these programs involve “discrimination, restrictions on freedom of speech, obligations on Chinese university members to inform on their peers whilst in the UK, and other elements inimical to academic freedom and the protection of free expression.”
Sam Dunning, director of UKCT, told Cherwell there was an “ever-present threat of CCP action against individuals, which hangs over thousands of Chinese students at Oxford, as well as academics and even administrative staff from China.”
He stressed that the CCP’s influence on universities does not just prove problematic for freedom of speech but, more specifically, that “it is the force that prevents freedom of speech and academic freedom for tens of thousands of students and academics in the UK – those from or with family in China.”
A scholarship awarded by the Chinese Scholarship Council – an organisation run by the Chinese Ministry of Education – provides full funding and a maintenance loan to up to 20 mainland Chinese students per year studying for a DPhil in Oxford University.
According to UKCT, to receive this scholarship, students must undergo a rigorous review of their political ideology and be assigned to two guarantors, usually family members. Additionally, if granted a scholarship by the Chinese Scholarship Council, scholars are required to “support the leadership of the Communist Party of China”, “love the motherland”, “maintain a sense of responsibility to serve Sam Dunning, director of UKCT, told Cherwell that there was an “ever-prthe country”, and “have a correct worldview, a correct outlook on life, and correct values.”
Due to these restrictions, there have been calls for top UK universities to reject such scholarships. Russell Group universities declined, expressing fear that doing so would harm foreign relations. A spokesperson for the University of Oxford told the Daily Express, “We take the security of our academic work seriously, and work closely with the appropriate government bodies and legislation.”
Amnesty International UK said earlier this year that Chinese students in Europe, the UK and North America are ‘intimidated, harassed and silenced by the Chinese authorities as part of a sinister pattern of transnational repression.’
Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, said, “The Government and UK universities need to understand the dangerous realities Chinese students face from China’s transnational repression.” The University of Oxford did not reply to Amnesty’s comment request.
The University seems to understand these dangers, and undergraduates studying politics are warned about saving content relating to China on their computers.
Furthermore, those taking the ‘Politics in China’ paper are required to sign a legal document acknowledging that they understand the risks involved due to Chinese extraterritorial national security legislation.
The scale of funding in Oxford
Figure one
From 2017 to 2024, China-affiliated individuals and organisations have given the University of Oxford a total of between £57 million and £99 million. This total consists of £42 million to £58 million in research funding and between £15 million and £41 million in donations and gifts.
The large range of amounts given is due to the University’s choice to provide bracketed figures. This means that for most donations, they do not state the specific amount but give a minimum and maximum amount that it falls between.
A report into the strategic dependence of UK universities on China, published by think tank Civitas, noted that data in this format tend to contain “extreme divergences” and, in any case, do not provide a clear image of the actual magnitude of money involved.
The 2019 to 2020 financial year saw the peak amount of Chinese funding, according to the maximum bracket estimate. This is also when there was the largest disparity between the possible lowest and highest amounts with the maximum estimate (£38 million) being double the lowest estimate (£19 million).
According to Civitas, between £5.7 million and £6.6 million was given to Oxford from Chinese military companies sanctioned by the US and companies either linked or widely suspected of being linked with the Chinese military from 2017 to 2022. This constituted around 15% of all money from Chinese entities to the university.
Academic institutions
Figure two
It’s often obvious to Oxford students where the funds go – they only need to pay attention to the titles of buildings, positions, and faculties around them. But much less is known about the people and institutions behind these names.
The three major categories of China-linked donors to the University of Oxford are academic institutions, businesses, and individuals (figure two). As mentioned, the vast majority of these donors are honest and reputable sources, choosing to donate their funds to the University for the same reasons as donors from all other countries.
Academic institutions, such as Chinese universities, have been the most common type of China-linked donor to the University of Oxford and they make up 58% to 68% of all donations and research funding originating from China since 2017.
Figure three
Moreover, the two largest individual donors over the past seven years are both academic institutions, with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) taking the top position and giving £28 million to £37 million during this time period (figure three). The institute’s single largest donation was £13 million, given in the year 2020 to 2021. The donations were directed to the CAMS Oxford Institute at the Nuffield Department of Medicine.
ShanghaiTech University was the second-largest donor, having given between £5 million and £9.9 million since 2017. Their donations to Oxford aim at “establish[ing] cooperative relationships” between the two universities. First-year students at ShanghaiTech are required to perform one week’s worth of military training. The Guardian recently described how “the growing emphasis on military training for civilians reflects a heightened nationalism in today’s China under Xi”
Sichuan University, the eight-largest donor, gave £1.8 million between 2017 to 2024 and has been designated as ‘Very High Risk’ by a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) due to its links to the Chinese military. Freedom of Information requests revealed its donations have been directed toward biomedical research. The ASPI report notes the institution’s close relationship with the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), China’s primary nuclear warhead research facility.
Business donors
In 2020 to 2024, business donations were the second-largest category of donor, accounting for 22% to 28% of donations (figure two). This represents an increase of 10 to 17 percentage points since the period 2017 to 2020. Three of the most prominent businesses to donate to Oxford University are Tencent, Huawei, and Baidu.
Among other technological products, Tencent operates WeChat, and the conglomerate has been accused of significantly aiding the Chinese authorities’ suppression of civil freedoms through the intense regulation of the use of their products. Tencent has been approved as an “appropriate donor” by an independent university committee that vets donors and has made several donations to computer science research.
Article 7 of the Chinese National Security Law requires companies such as Tencent to cooperate with the government on matters deemed relevant to “national intelligence”, which can include censorship and data sharing. Private enterprises with more than three Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members are also required to have an in-firm branch of the party. According to the East Asia Forum, “the private sector is still seen as a frontier for party-building” and more specifically, Company Law in China requires that these in-firm party units carry out the activities of the CCP.
Huawei, a Chinese multinational technology company, is also subject to this rule. Since 2017, the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer has donated between £500,000 and £1.2 million to Oxford University. Huawei has faced a wave of sanctions from several states, including Germany, Japan, the USA, and Australia, for its links to the Chinese military; evidence that its technology was being used in the mass surveillance of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang detention camps; and accusations of intellectual property infringement.
The UK has blocked Huawei as a vendor of 5G networks due to perceived cyber security and espionage risks. Huawei denies all allegations of misconduct. The University’s records on rejected donations since 2017 reveals it has recently refused to accept funds from Huawei. The University states this is due to them wanting “to pause negotiations concerning any new projects and as such not accept funding for new projects.”
Between 2017 to 2024, Baidu, a Chinese technology company specialising in internet services, contributed between £100,000 and £250,000 in research funding to Oxford University to support technological research, including 3D machine perception for autonomous driving cars. Baidu’s search engine censors certain content, blocking results for Xi Jingping as well as for Vladimir Putin, according to recent research from the Citizen Lab.
Individual donors
Individuals are the third largest category of donor, although their corresponding proportion has decreased from 15% to 26% in 2017 to 2020 to 3% to 4% in 2020-2024 (figure two). However, these donors still provide significant amounts of funding to the University.
Jesus College’s Cheng Yu Tung Building was partially funded by a £15 million donation from Hong Kong property developer Henry Cheng Kar-shun. Cheng Kar-shun owns a highly prominent business empire and is Chairman of New World Development, which the Financial Times recently reported as increasingly reliant on the mainland China market.
Cheng Kar-shun was a member of the twelfth Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a political advisory body in China, composed of individuals from different fields, including business and academia. It exists to advise government bodies on political and social issues. The CPPCC has no real legislative power, but is subject to the direction of the CCP. Regarding Cheng Kar-shun’s donation, Jesus College told Cherwell: “The College named the building after the Cheng family in gratitude for their generosity. The donation was not conditional.”
The biggest individual donor, and third biggest donor overall to Oxford University since 2017, is Yang Huiyan, Vice-Chairwoman of Country Garden, one of the largest private real estate developers in China. Before the recent Chinese property crisis, Yang was the richest woman in Asia and is married to Chen Chong, the son of a senior provincial official. An article by Forbes noted that over 90% of China’s 1,000 richest individuals are members of the CCP.
China Oxford Scholarship Fund
A large proportion of donations from Chinese entities also go towards supporting scholarships. This includes the China Oxford Scholarship Fund (COSF), which supports students from China, Hong Kong, and Macau in their postgraduate studies at Oxford, with scholarships awarded to students who show academic excellence, financial need and a “commitment to contributing to the development of China.”
Johnny Hon, Hong Kong businessman and founder of conglomerate the Global Group, is a prominent donor to this scholarship. As with Cheng Kar-Shun, Hon is a member of the CPPCC. Moreover, according to The Times, Hon is a former chairman of the Kim Il Sung-Kim Jong Il Foundation, which seeks to promote the state ideology of North Korea, known as Juche.
Lord Christopher Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong and the outgoing Chancellor of Oxford University, is described by the Fund as a longtime supporter. This June, he invited COSF scholars to his home for a garden party in honour of his retirement.
What about Oxford?
Oxford is far from being the only university that has such engagements with China and, comparatively, since it is more financially independent than other universities, it is not as reliant on particular donors. In 2022 to 2023, only 5.6% of the University’s income was from international fees, compared to a UK average of 23%. Despite this, the University continues to accept millions of pounds from Chinese entities every year.
Across the UK, universities received £125 million to £156 million from Chinese entities during the period 2017 to 2023. Of this sum, £36 million to £51 million was from Chinese entities subject to US sanctions or connected to the Chinese military. This constituted 30% to 33% of the total amount of money received, compared to Oxford’s 15%.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Patten spoke about UK universities’ dependence on China, warning that Chinese authorities may pressure academics to avoid certain topics and that students’ behaviour is being reported on. However, Patten also stressed that universities should not treat their large Chinese student bodies differently to others out of “fear of being ticked off by the Chinese government.”
Johnny Hon said in response: “When I established the Johnny Hon China Scholarship, I said: ‘Much may change in the next ten years but the need for mutual understanding, and the opportunities it can open up, can only grow.’
“I still hold that view. The scholarship was focused on law, politics and international relations and aimed to increase understanding of western, and particularly UK, perspectives on these important subjects.
“I find it somewhat sad that anyone might seem to impugn the motives and integrity of more than 20% of the world’s population in such a sweeping fashion. If there are specific instances or accusations of such nature, then the onus should be on the accuser to present the necessary proof.”
The University of Oxford said in response: “All Oxford University research and teaching is academically driven, with the ultimate aim of enhancing openly available scholarship and knowledge. Funders have no influence over how Oxford academics carry out their research, or on our teaching and robust policies on academic freedom. All donors are subject to our policies on the acceptance of gifts, and all significant donors and funders must be approved by the University’s Committee to Review Donations and Research Funding, which is a robust, independent system taking legal, ethical and reputational issues into consideration. We take the security of our academic work seriously, and work closely with the appropriate Government bodies and legislation. Much of our overseas collaborative research addresses global challenges such as climate change and major health problems where international involvement is important in delivering globally relevant solutions.”
John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, working within the already violent genre of the revenge tragedy, has to be one of the most controversial pieces of Jacobean drama. The play very openly tackles incest, features graphic violence (including a heart on stage) and domestic abuse, and contains explicit sexual references. Quiet moments are few and far between; it is a drama of extremes.
All this to say that this is a piece of theatre that poses significant challenges to any director wanting to approach it. Fortunately, Peach Productions’ take on ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore lives up to what is demanded by the source material. Director Yasmin Nachif had a clear vision for Ford’s revenge tragedy and her passion and creativity shines through. Her mark on the text is obvious from the opening, which features an added movement scene. Characters walk in and out of the immersive space of the Michael Pilch Studio to music, foreshadowing the complex web of interpersonal relations that the protagonists will quickly find themselves suffocating in.
Revenge tragedy is, by its very nature, highly dramatic. Nachif decided to counter the obvious drama of the plot with a stage that is stripped to the minimum, allowing the actors to fill the space instead; for the entire first half of the play, only a stool is present on stage.
The actors are dressed in a circus-like manner with jester costumes, all black get-ups, corsets and caged underskirts – absolutely remarkable costume design from Ella Chitt – topped off with clownish makeup. This adds immensely to the metatheatrical elements of the text and the obvious implications of life as performance. It also allowed the crew to get creative with props. One of the main challenges facing Nachif was how to depict the copious amounts of onstage violence, on a student drama budget, without making it seem comical. The solution is ingenious. Instead of swords, they used paint brushes, so that rather than being stabbed, actors get swabbed with red paint. This is an immensely creative choice, which once again fits in perfectly with themes of the theatricality of life.
The play has multiple scenes of extremely graphic violence where a heart is ripped out of a body and eyes are gouged out of someone’s face, as well as implied sex. Nachif replaces these with movement pieces that, in conjunction with Michelle Ng’s lighting design, prove very effective. In a scene where a character dies, a balloon pops causing a reaction of surprise in the audience that I would argue was greater than if blood had started pouring out of the actor’s body.
If there are any criticisms to be made to the production, it is that the acting does sometimes veer slightly into the histrionic – with perhaps too much screaming – but then again, with this kind of source material it is hard to steer entirely clear of melodrama. Catherine Claire shines in the role of Annabella, delivering an extremely nuanced and vulnerable performance. Susie Weidmann also delivers a deliciously unreadable Vasques, balancing his many masks with moments of genuine emotion. The supporting cast are amazing. Jem Hunter was an audience favourite, gaining many laughs with his constant somersaulting and physically comedic approach to the role of Bergetto. Killian King’s Donado also perfectly complements Hunter’s erratic Bergetto. King is quietly hilarious, looking like he is in the deep depths of depression every time his nephew opens his mouth. Oli Spooner, Caeli Colgan and Hattie as Florio, Hippolyta and Putana also deliver great performances.
All in all, this is a great production which deserves to be seen (if only because it features two copies of Cherwell as props)!
The University of Oxford has continued to offer a scholarship in conjunction with the Chinese Ministry of Education, which requires recipients to “support the leadership of the Communist Party of China” and “love the motherland”, as other universities around the world have cut ties.
The scholarship, run by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) funds up to 20 Chinese students per year in DPhil programmes at the University. In 2023, the CSC awarded approximately 646 placements across 26 British universities.
Globally, CSC scholarships have come under scrutiny, with multiple universities in the USA and Europe breaking off relations with the programme. The University of North Texas abruptly ended their relationship with the Scholarship Council in 2020, requiring affected students to return home immediately. Negative sentiment towards the programme further intensified in 2023, when a number of European universities across Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands severed ties with the programme.
Following Cherwell’s recent investigation into Oxford University’s financial relationship with China-linked institutions, the CSC scholarships stand out for their discrepancy with the University’s commitment to safeguard the freedom of speech of its students.
China Scholarship Council and Oxford University
Costs of China Scholarship Council-University of Oxford Scholarships are shared between the University of Oxford and the Chinese Ministry of Education via the China Scholarship Council. The two institutions jointly cover 100% of scholarship recipients’ course fees, living expenses of at least £19,237 for up to 3.5 years of study, and one return flight from China to the UK.
The award is available to students in full-time Doctorate in Philosophy (DPhil) programmes at the University, who are also residents and nationals of the People’s Republic of China. Students must first secure an unconditional offer from Oxford University before undergoing the selection process of the CSC, who determine scholarship recipients.
CSC Criteria and freedom of speech
“Basic requirements for applicants,” as defined by the Chinese Ministry of Education include that they must “support the leadership of the Communist Party of China”, “love the motherland”, and “hold correct world views and stances”.
It is unclear how these requirements are assessed, however, Article one of the current guidelines sets out to “thoroughly implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”
In describing the “selection method”, the guidelines further outline that the applicant’s “nominating unit” must “strictly assess” the applicant’s political ideology and submit an evaluation to the CSC. Nominating units include most universities in mainland China, government ministries, and provincial governments. Listed among them are six of the‘Seven Sons of National Defence – a set of Chinese universities with suspected heavy ties to the People’s Liberation Army.
The University of Oxford does not have involvement in the vetting and selection process after a student’s admission to the University.
Beyond the initial selection process, the CSC may continue to enforce its requirements throughout the duration of the scholarship through secret contracts, originally uncovered by a Swedish newspaper in January 2023. The contracts stipulate that recipients must nominate two guarantors, usually close relatives, who are bound to repay the whole scholarship, plus additional financial penalties, if the recipient breaches the terms of the agreement. Breaches include prematurely ending one’s studies, failing to return to China after the study period, and, more broadly, “engaging in acts that damage the national interest”.
Under the University’s recently approved Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech, it affirms that “freedom of speech and academic freedom are central tenets of university life and must be robustly protected.” Likewise, the provisions of the UK’s Education Act of 1986 imposes the duty to “ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers.”
A spokesperson for the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) in Germany, who cut ties with the programme in 2023, stated: “Under these contracts CSC scholarship holders will be unable to fully exercise their academic freedom and freedom of expression as stipulated under German Basic Law”, and determined the scholarships were “antithetical with [their] kind of values of academic freedom.”
What now for Oxford?
The University’s wider relationship with China-linked institutions may be revised even beyond this specific scholarship after the upcoming Chancellor’s election. Former Chancellor, Lord Christopher Patten, previously cautioned that “we actually have to do our part so that we don’t [see] the erosion of our values in higher education,” regarding the risks faced by Chinese students.
Current candidates to the chancellorship have expressed markedly different views of the future of Oxford’s continuing relationship with Chinese institutions. Regardless, the possible implications of the CSC scholarship on current Oxford University students must not be neglected and the University’s next steps are currently under significant attention.
The University of Oxford said in response: “Oxford welcomes applications for postgraduate study from students around the world through a highly competitive admissions process – any successful offer to study is made entirely independently of scholarship awarding bodies.
“All Oxford University research and teaching is academically driven, with the ultimate aim of enhancing openly available scholarship and knowledge. We take the security of our academic work seriously, and work closely with the appropriate Government bodies and legislation. The University is fully compliant with the government’s Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS) that requires research students from some nations to apply for an ATAS certificate if their research is in certain sensitive subjects.”
(Appendix) Cherwell Translation of Relevant Guidelines
“Chapter 1 – General Provisions”:
“Article 1: Thoroughly implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, provide talent support for the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist country, cultivate and reserve talent for accelerating the construction of an important global centre of talent and a highland of innovation, and build a platform for cultural exchange between China and foreign countries for building a community with a shared future for mankind.”
“Chapter 4 – Application Conditions”:
“Article 7: Basic requirements for applicants
1. Applicants must support the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, love the motherland, be of good character, abide by laws and regulations, have a sense of responsibility for serving the country, society and the people, and hold correct worldviews, life stances and values.”
“Chapter 5 – Selection Method”:
“Article 11 The nominating unit shall review the application materials and has the right to reject any application that is untrue, inconsistent or does not meet the requirements. The nominating unit shall also strictly assess the applicant’s political ideology, teacher ethics (or conduct and academic style), and provide an evaluation of these in the unit recommendation field on the main application form.”
Statute XI and student life: The evolving role of Oxford’s Proctors
The Proctors are one of the oldest and most fundamental parts of the University of Oxford and yet perhaps also the most obscure. Students don’t encounter the Proctors very often; and if they do, it is typically when receiving their coveted degree or a considerably less desirable summary of penalties for misconduct. There have been Proctors in Oxford since the thirteenth century, but unlike most institutions of the day, they continue to play a crucial role in the running of the University now and their activities have a direct impact on current student lives.
The Proctor’s Office is devised as a body independent of the Vice-Chancellor, tasked with upholding the University’s statutes. It is headed by a Senior and Junior Proctor and an Assessor on non-renewable yearly terms, meaning that every Hilary the position is newly filled with a different individual. Typically these are academics and not senior University administrators, who are elected by each college every thirteen years on an ongoing rota.
Cherwell has reviewed data from the past ten years of Proctor’s Reports to gain an insight into the workings of the Proctor’s Office within the distinct collegiate structure of the University.Our findings reveal that not only do Proctors continue to be heavily involved with many crucial aspects of student life but this impact is growing greater. While instances of sexual misconduct and harassment are increasing, the Proctor’s Office is still predominantly trained to deal with minor academic-related breaches.
As an institution, the Proctor attempts to provide centralised disciplinary action in the context of the extreme decentralisation fostered by the college system. In response, the office either relies on inefficient and inconsistent procedural methods or moves to centralise their processes to a potentially problematic point.
The following figures are derived from data in Proctor’s Reports published in the University Gazette, which provide data related to the Proctor’s Office’s annual activities. There is no standard format for these reports and some data may not be directly comparable across all 10 years. Proctorial years restart every Hilary Term.
Cherwell was informed that the most recent Proctor’s Report, which covers the proctorial year of 2023-24, is scheduled for publication sometime in Michaelmas Term 2024 despite Statute XI requiring that these reports be made at the end of every Hilary term.
Statute XI
Figure one
In recent months, Statute XI has become the subject of extensive discussions within the University administration and across the student community after the University Council sought its revision in May of this year. The contents of Statute XI outline the University-wide rules and laws, defining the limits of acceptable conduct for students and other members of the University.
The investigation of both non-sexual harassment and sexual harassment occupies the bulk of the Proctor’s Office disciplinary casework on non-academic misconduct, following “engaging in any dishonest behaviour in relation to the University” and “engaging in offensive, violent or threatening behaviour or language”.
Across all seven years, the Proctor’s Office has reported an average of 5.6 cases of non-sexual harassment and 5.3cases of sexual harassment, compared with an average of just 6.6 cases not classed as “harassment”.
Generally, the class of offence reported every year is not entirely consistent, for instance, a case of “disruption of University activities” only appears in the latest report from 2022-23. The type of breaches reported less than once a year on average include: “possession of drugs”; “breach of library regulations”; “engaging in action which is likely to cause injury or impair safety”.
This inconsistency may be partly explained by the rare incidence of these offences, yet it also suggests changes in the Proctor’s Office’s approach to the investigation of these breaches. Indeed, the decline of reported cases of “engaging in offensive, violent or threatening behaviour or language” may be correlated with the rise in cases reported as “non-sexual harassment”, however, this is remains ambiguious.
Regarding their jurisdiction for investigating breaches of Statute XI, the current Senior Proctor, Thomas Addock, told Cherwell: “In general, the Proctors deal with things in a University context, for example, University exams or allegations of misconduct between students at different colleges. If something happens within a college then the college will deal with it.” This jurisdiction on the margins of the collegiate system is not unique to the handling of student discipline and it defines the position of the Proctor’s Office within University life: they exist in the gaps between the colleges.
From harassment to plagiarism
Figure two
Over the past five years, the Proctor’s Office has reported an average of 73 cases of academic misconduct, compared to an average of 18 breaches of the code of discipline.
The most common form of academic misconduct is reported to be “plagiarism”. For context, in 2022-23 “plagiarism” made up 67%of the total instances of academic misconduct, and 70% in 2013-2014.
The largest proportion of the Proctor’s Office’s overall disciplinary caseload over four different proctorial years is concerned with “academic misconduct” (grey) rather than breaches of the code of discipline under Statute XI (red) (Figure two). These figures were calculated with the sum of total cases reported as “student academic misconduct” and “student non-academic misconduct” for every year. These exclude any additional cases that were listed as “legacy” or “ongoing” and it does not distinguish between those reported as “upheld” or “not upheld.”
The Proctor’s Office’s approach to resolving instances of academic misconduct appears especially inconsistent across this ten year period. The recourse to refer these cases to the Academic Conduct Panel is only reported in the period between 2016-17 and 2019-20, after this point it appears unused.
Every year some cases are referred to the Student Disciplinary Panel (SDP), yet an average of 2.8 cases were referred to the SDP in the five most recent years of reports compared to an average of 6.8five years prior. Moreover, 2019-2020 stands out as the only year in which some cases are reported to have been resolved through ‘Proctor’s Decision’.
Additionally, in spite of the wide diversity of the Proctor’s caseload, the institution continues to partly rely on the judgement of the two acting Proctors for the majority of disciplinary cases, appeals, and complaints. In this regard, the Senior Proctor explained: “the Proctors are supported by an experienced team who do the hard work of investigations. They gather the relevant information on which the Proctors make the final decision.” In case of serious breaches, “the Proctors will look at the evidence and decide whether to refer the matter to the Student Disciplinary Panel.” This implies that despite the yearly turnaround in the head positions of the Proctor’s Office, it relies on an established staff of caseworkers.
Complaints and appeals
Figure three
To further contextualise this range in the work of the Proctor’s Office, it’s important to note that figure two does not contemplate the significant amounts of academic appeals they receive every year. For 2022-23, the Proctors reported the receipt of a total of 124 academic appeals in addition to 84 reported instances of academic misconduct.
Figure three displays the percentage of students’ complaints and academic appeals upheld by the Proctor’s Office across the proctorial years of 2016-17 to 2022-23. These figures exclude the cases that have been shown as “ongoing” or “legacy” in the Proctor’s Reports.
As shown by figure three, there are some further inconsistencies in the proportion of complaints and appeals upheld by the Proctor’s Office throughout this period. There is no clear trend in the data until 2019-2020, when they plateau slightly. Indeed, in 2017-2018, 28% of cases were upheld contrasted by 8% the year after. Yet in the last three years, the proportion of upheld complaints and appeals has been steady.
In November 2017, there was a change in the University regulations, which introduced a three-step process – an informal first stage, a formal second stage and a review stage – for the handling of student complaints and appeals. This meant that a larger proportion of the majority of complaints were resolved without direct intervention from the Proctor’s Office. The introduction of this change may explain the evident variation in the percentage of cases upheld between 2016-17 and 2019-20. Implementation of an informal first stage of resolution demonstrates a desire for a partial decentralisation of this process.
There is no detail given in the most recent reports about the nature of student complaints, although some earlier reports cite reasons relating to “maladministration”, “discrimination”, and “teaching and supervision”. In contrast, academic appeals are explained to be largely “against decisions from Examiners” or otherwise related to “examinations” and “research student candidatures”.
Amendment controversy The controversial amendment to Statute XI was first published in the University Gazette with an announcement of a legislative proposal from the University Council . Among the proposed changes, the Council sought to add a more detailed definition of “sexual misconduct” into the code of discipline.
A note accompanying this proposal explained that the changes were based on a decision of the University’s Education Committee to “widen the Proctor’s jurisdiction to investigate more cases of serious misconduct. As more of these often complex cases are now being reported, a range of legislative and procedural improvements are necessary to prepare for further increases that we expect to receive.”
Presently, it outlines that the offence broadly consists of “any behaviour of a sexual nature which takes place without consent where the individual alleged to have carried out the misconduct has no reasonable belief in consent”. The proposal included a further definition of both “consent” and what constitutes “sexual activity”.
Despite the fact that the Proctor’s Reports typically utilize the term “sexual harassment” and that this offense occupies a significant proportion of the Proctor’s caseload of non-academic misconduct, (figure two) there is no explicit definition of this term under Statute XI. Likewise, a clear distinction between what is termed “harassment” and what is referred to as “engaging in offensive, violent, or threatening behaviour” is not made explicit. This percentage shows no clear trend until 2019-2020, when a consistency seems to be established. Indeed, in 2017-2018, 28% of cases were upheld contrasted by 8% the year after. Yet in the last three years, the proportion of upheld complaints and appeals has been steady.
Furthermore, in light of the claim that “more of these often complex cases [serious misconduct] are now being reported” used to partly justify the original revisions to Statute XI, it appears that the proportion of cases of non-academic misconduct dealt with by the Proctor’s Office is not increasing in any significant (figure two). Yet, the average reported cases of non-academic breaches for the past five proctorial years, that are currently available, is 91, noticeably higher than the five years before that when it was 63.
Other amendments aim to change clauses related to student discipline more broadly: including a new requirement to “promptly inform the Proctors in writing if they have been arrested by the police and released under investigation (…) or if any of the foregoing appears likely to occur, and whether in the UK or abroad.” This and similar changes were criticised as “illiberal and antidemocratic” by an open letter circulated shortly after the announcement of the Council’s proposal. Before Congregation could meet on the 11th of June, the Council’s original proposal was withdrawn and the meeting cancelled.
Recently, Congregation met again on the 15th of October, and passed a resolution to form a “working group” for revising all proposed changes to Statute XI. This initiative was proposed by members of Congregation, and was formulated in response to the withdrawal of the original proposal. As such, this group will be made up of “relevant university officials, a student appointed by the Student Union, and five members of Congregation”. Importantly, it also seeks to “consult widely with members of academic staff … and students.”
Collegiate gaps
The Proctor’s Office is caught between the grey areas of Oxford’s collegiate system. It is torn between the changing needs of students and the demands of the central University administration, both of which require this institution to continuously adapt and evolve. This is no easy task.
The wide-reaching and diverse range of activities that this role demands can lead to further ambiguities, over stretched-resources, and possibly even foster suspicion on the part of the student community. In this vein, David Kirk, former Junior Proctor, concluded his demission speech by encouraging “the institution to think about ways to enhance the perceived legitimacy of the ways it handles both student and staff conduct. I encourage the institution to put even further thought into prevention.”
Oxford University Press named “brain rot” as its Word of the Year today after over 37,000 people voted from a shortlist of six. An earlier Cherwell Instagram poll with 783 responses – much smaller in sample size but perhaps more representative of Oxford students – also voted “brain rot” as the clear winner with 45%.
“Brain rot” (noun): Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterised as likely to lead to such deterioration.
OUP experts saw a 230% increase in frequency of the word between 2023 and 2024, initially gaining traction on TikTok and now entering mainstream use to reflect both the cause and effect of over-consuming low-quality online content. It is strongly associated with certain types of content including Skibidi Toilet video series and “only in Ohio” memes.
The word traces back to 1854 in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, in which he narrates his simple lifestyle in the woods and criticises societal devaluation of complex ideas. Thoreau wrote: “While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”
“Words” nominated by language experts at OUP need not necessarily be a single word. Rather, they may be phrases or even emojis, as in 2015 when “face with tears of joy” took the title. The OWOTY should reflect the world over the last 12 months, encapsulating a moment or trend of cultural significance. Notably, no word was chosen in 2020, as OUP deemed it impossible to sum up the unprecedented year in a single word.
Voting is currently ongoing on the OUP website, and will close on Thursday 28th November. The winner will then be declared on 2nd December, after a final analysis of votes, corpus data, and public commentary. Ultimately, OUP produces a report on the OWOTY, which includes information such as differing definitions, etymology, variations in spelling, word frequency, and cultural impact.
The following words made this year’s shortlist:
“Demure”
Adjective: Of a person: reserved or restrained in appearance or behaviour. Of clothing: not showy, ostentatious, or overly revealing.
“Dynamic pricing”
Noun: The practice of varying the price for a product or service to reflect changing market conditions; in particular, the charging of a higher price at a time of greater demand.
“Lore”
Noun: A body of (supposed) facts, background information, and anecdotes relating to someone or something, regarded as knowledge required for full understanding or informed discussion of the subject in question.
“Romantasy”
Noun: A genre of fiction combining elements of romantic fiction and fantasy, typically featuring themes of magic, the supernatural, or adventure alongside a central romantic storyline.
“Slop”
Noun: Art, writing, or other content generated using artificial intelligence, shared and distributed online in an indiscriminate or intrusive way, and characterised as being of low quality, inauthentic, or inaccurate.
2024 marks the third year that OUP has opened up the OWOTY to a public vote. In the first 2022 vote, 340,000 people chose “goblin mode” as the runaway winner with 93% of the vote, beating “metaverse” and ‘“IStandWith”. Last year, the winning word was “rizz”, edging out “swiftie” and “situationship”.
Anita Okunde running for the #Unify slate has been elected Union President for Trinity Term 2024 with 564 first preferences, by a margin of 44 votes over Siddhant Nagrath. She will be the first Black woman to hold the office.
The #Elevate slate swept the officer roles. Anya Trofimova will be Librarian-elect with 660 first preferences. Rosalie Chapman will be Treasurer-elect with 646 first preferences. Raza Nazar was elected Secretary with 590 first preferences.
The following candidates were elected to the Standing Committee, from highest to lowest order of votes: Veer Sangha, Katherine Yang, Oliver JL, Jennifer Yang, Hamza Hussain, Prajwal Pandey.
Secretary’s committee, or order of votes, will comprise of: Brayden Lee, Arwa Elrayess, Samy Medjdoub, Matthew Chiu, Adam Ballman, Akshay Pendyala, Catherine Xu, Victor Marroquin-Merino, Yeji Kim, Toki Hong, and Faizan Ijaz.
