The University of Oxford has announced its new Access and Participation Plan (APP) which aims to reduce gaps in educational attainment between differently privileged students and to reduce barriers to entry for undergraduate students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The APP will operate from 2025 to 2029 and aims, in part, to “expand the range of summative assessment available to departments”, giving departments the scope to move beyond traditional exam formats. The expansion of assessment options has received backlash in the national media, with former Prime Minister and Oxford alumnus Liz Truss calling the reforms “nonsense”.
Speculation in The Telegraph alleges that this ‘expansion’ will entail less rigorous exams or coursework instead of collections. However, aside from focusing on inclusivity and the provision of reasonable adjustments, it is unclear from the initial report what assessment reform will actually amount to.
Aside from examination provisions, the university will spend £12.9m on programmes providing transitional support to incoming undergraduate students. This is in addition to the £3.3m spent on programmes designed specifically for black and other racially minoritised students.
The university will also continue to fund sector-leading access programmes, such as UNIQ, which offers application support and residential places to disadvantaged school pupils from under-represented backgrounds at Oxford.
The APP pays a particular focus to black, socio-economically disadvantaged, and disabled students. As part of these measures, the university hopes to guarantee that 94% of students from black, disabled, and free-school-meal backgrounds will receive a 2:1 or above. The plan also aims to increase the proportion of undergraduate entrants who received free school meals to 10.7%. In the UK, a child can be offered free school meals if their parents are recipients of various income supports, depending on their local council.
At Oxford, 81% of black students achieved at least a 2:1 in their degree compared to 95% of white students in 2021. The report acknowledges that “Black students are significantly less likely to be awarded a good degree than their white counterparts.” It suggests possible reasons for this could be an “intersection with socio-economic disadvantage” and also a “lack of ethnic diversity among University staff”, “under-representation in curricula and teaching”, and “racism”.
Universities are required to provide access and participation plans by the Office for Students (OfS), as stipulated by the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 and the Equality Act 2010. These plans must be approved by the OfS in order for universities to increase tuition fees in line with the government’s tuition fee cap of £9,535.
Compared to other UK universities, Oxford performs well in completion rates and attainment gaps between various student groups. However, access remains a problem with only 7.9% of Oxford entrants having received free school meals compared to the national average of 18.6% across UK higher education institutes.
A university spokesperson told Cherwell that: “In the coming years we will continue our access and outreach work to increase the number of students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds admitted to Oxford, and will put in place additional measures as part of our ongoing programme of on course support with the aim of supporting specific student cohorts to achieve good degree outcomes.”
On access and participation arrangements at Oxford, one JCR President told Cherwell: “The financial support offered for disadvantaged students, especially to fund work experience abroad, has transformed my university experience for the better.
“There is no doubt that Oxford should admit the most capable applicants regardless of background, but the root of the issue is inspiring such students to apply in the first place. I’m especially glad to see Oxford recognising this and targeting it directly with schemes like UNIQ.”
The Student Union told Cherwell: “Having played an active role in the development of the APP last year, we are pleased that the SU’s submission has been incorporated into the University’s plan, and we welcome the University’s ongoing work to improve access.
“Historically, like other universities, Oxford has not always met its APP targets. The SU has been clear that our priority should not just be around access, but enabling the success of all students whilst studying. We will continue to encourage and work alongside the University to ensure sufficient reflection takes place in order to meet future targets.”
The University of Oxford has announced new plans to support ‘town and gown’ relations within the local community in an initiative that aims to “support transformative social and economic change locally.”
The new programme, entitled ‘Beyond Town and Gown’, outlines plans which aim to “turn the page on that town and gown separation” and “work towards a more inclusive Oxford”. The University says that their approach will support local engagement through “championing, connecting, and convening”. This involves developing existing community initiatives, making the University more accessible to locals, and bringing people together to collaborate on solutions to local problems.
Key projects include partnerships with schools, such as the College-Primary Twinning Project, which pairs local primary schools with Oxford colleges, and gives them access to college facilities and opportunities to partake in extracurricular activities and tutoring, on college sites, as well as in their own schools.
The plan also includes the expansion of various cultural programmes that the University is already involved in, including long-running outreach efforts that involve opening up Oxford’s gardens, libraries, and museums, which host various educational and cultural events for local residents. The University has also supported community organisations through small grants, collaboration with local schools, and has worked closely with Oxford City Football Club.
The University has also been recognised as a University of Sanctuary, providing scholarships and support for refugees. The University is currently working on a project with Asylum Welcome to create a Refugee-Led Research Hub in East Oxford, which will offer opportunities for sanctuary seekers in Oxford.
University Local and Global Engagement Officer, Professor Alexander Betts, told Cherwell: “After 800 years of town-gown divide, we know that this will take time and we are at the start of a journey. We are committed to working collaboratively with the city, the county, and the local community to shape a brighter future for people across the region. We will do that by contributing to sustainable economic growth, sharing the university’s facilities and expertise with local residents, and building enduring relationships with the local community.”
The ‘town and gown’ relationship has been historically divided, with conflicts between students and townspeople dating back to the 13th century. Today, the separation continues as the university’s growth and demand for student accommodation “sometimes strain local infrastructure” according to the University’s report. Recently, plans for the redevelopment of a Magdalen College accommodation block by the Cowley roundabout and the construction of a new research lab in Headington were the target of many objections and complaints from local residents, and are at the fore of these tensions.
Caitie Foley reacts to Rishi Sunak’s return to Oxford at the Blavatnik School of Government.
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‘If you’re curious as to how and why cows, nuclear reactors, tricycles, peperami, and old people doing yoga all fit into one play…come and see The Children! It is funny, frightening, and emotional.’ Divya’s response sums up why exactly Cherwell sat down with the team behind Fennec Fox Productions’ recent rendition of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children. The production team of Joshua Robey, Emma Scanlon and Divya Kaliappan helped us to unravel the ‘hidden mysteries’ behind a play centred on themes of climate change and nuclear disaster, while cast members Alice Macey-Dare and Nathaniel Wintraub demonstrated just how they brought this ‘beautifully rich character drama’ to life.
Cherwell: As the play is a bit more niche, please give our readers a brief summary of the plot.
Josh: A nuclear accident (similar to the 2011 Fukushima disaster) has devastated part of the Suffolk coast. Making camp in a borrowed cottage on the edge of the exclusion zone, retired nuclear engineers Hazel and Robin are getting by with unstable electricity, dodgy plumbing, and a gnawing sense of distance growing between them. The unexpected arrival of Rose, a colleague from 40 years earlier, prompts a devastating reckoning for all of the characters. There’s a lot of hidden secrets that Kirkwood finds brilliant ways of revealing throughout the play.
Cherwell: What inspired you to work on The Children and how long have you been thinking about this production?
Josh: I’ve wanted to direct a production of The Children for a few years now. I read it about five years ago and subsequently wrote my master’s dissertation on it along with Kirkwood’s other plays. What’s so intriguing and unusual about it is that it is a play about the climate crisis, but it takes a completely different direction to most other shows about the issue. It’s not solving the problem politically like Steve Waters’ The Contingency Plan or Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s Kyoto, nor is it a piece of lecture theatre trying to inform its audience of the facts like 2071 (Duncan Macmillan and Chris Rapley) or A Play For the Living in a Time of Extinction (Miranda Rose Hall). It’s about some technically skilled but also very ordinary people confronting the moral logic of the world around them. It’s a play about how we sit with moral discomfort and turn that into positive action, a theme I’m really drawn to in drama.
Divya: I had already read and watched The Children before applying for the Assistant Director role. The main inspiration came from the idea of working with actors to build up the incredibly complex characters of Hazel, Robin, and Rose – it’s one thing reading a play but watching the characters come to life is really quite special! Helping them to portray old people was a challenge and new for me, and they certainly have a lot of hidden layers.
Emma: I was wrapping up working on a big cast, Early Modern production when I saw the ad on the OUDS portal and was really excited about the idea of working on a small, contemporary show. I read the play and was really captured by Kirkwood’s manner of writing dialogue – the little misunderstandings, odd comments, interruptions, and jokes we make as we talk are so beautifully written so as to be both comical and fun and also devastatingly real. The heavy moments are never weighed down because the voices of the characters are so human and natural that the play – almost entirely dialogue – flows completely.
Alice: As an actor the idea of being in The Children really appealed to me. The opportunity to act such subtle characters whose feelings and motivations are slowly unfurled through their seemingly innocuous interactions seemed wonderfully challenging. Also playing an old person is fun.
Chewell: How have you portrayed the characters in this play? Have you taken any ‘new spins’ on them?
Josh: Kirkwood writes incredibly nuanced characters with such great sensitivity in this play, so a lot of the process has been really digging into the characters as they appear on the page, reconciling their wonderfully human inconsistencies. For example, Hazel is this fantastically generous and caring character who also has a defensive streak of selfishness that emerges sharply at times. Often it’s what seem to be the contradictions that point to the real essence of a character, and finding those with this team has been a delight.
Nate: The play is about three characters in their sixties but there is such a tangible youthfulness to them that it has felt effortless to infuse our own young adult sensibilities into our performances. There’s an added dimension to this play, which is largely about aging, when the actors are young, and it’s been so interesting to think about how we refocus our life as we get older, which is so evident in the text. I think it’s so important that the crew decided not to visually age the characters too much, and instead let the youthful image on stage play out as more of an internal conception of what Rose, Robin, and Hazel ‘look’ like.
Emma: Nothing especially radical but definitely very personal. With a relatively small crew and a very small cast, it’s been great in rehearsal to really get to discuss motivations, intentions, reactions – even things that don’t happen on stage, like the general shape of Robin and Hazel’s marriage or what the moments right before the first line looked like. The cast have been really great at getting into the space of their characters and understanding how they think, and I feel that’s resulted in a unique and, well, personal depiction of all three.
Cherwell: Is interesting costuming and lighting central to this play? How did you play about with ‘setting the scene’?
Josh: All of the characters in the play are in their mid-to-late sixties, so capturing that with a student cast has meant costume is hugely important. Our costume designer Hannah Walton has done a great job capturing this. From early on, we decided we didn’t want to age up the actors in any intrusive ways, and we have kept reminding ourselves throughout that these characters are all young at heart and not that advanced in years, certainly not in how they see themselves. Therefore, we’ve chosen costumes that fit with their demographic while retaining a youthful edge.
The lighting is a vital component in the play and has been since the play was first pitched. Since the nuclear disaster, there have been rolling power cuts, so the lighting is almost all designed to mirror the natural light. We’ve set it in real time starting at 7:30pm on a late-summer evening, so the sunset is conjured through slow, hopefully imperceptible shifts in lighting taking us from daylight to the warm glow of sunset, to the darkening dusk. I’m so excited to see the lighting (from lighting designer Matty Ara) in the space.
Emma: Lighting is absolutely paramount! The show takes place during an August sunset in real time, so you get a sense of the day really slipping away and the night settling in as the play progresses. Costuming is important, to set the right vibe for three people in their sixties being played by students, but we also did some really fun work getting our wonderful cast to act and move like sixty-odd year olds. Lots of chair work and fine-tuning leg crossing or leaning – a lot of things I’d never thought about before but really came to life in the show. Courtesy of our wonderful movement director (also called Emma!).
Cherwell: What scene do you think really encapsulates the essence of the play and why?
Nate: A spoiler-prone question! I’ll answer it by saying there’s a beautiful parallel in the opening and closing parts of the play respectively, where Hazel and Rose briefly speak about their scientific field, nuclear physics, and the inter-scientist mystery of what goes on in other fields. There’s a moment at the end that sort of harkens back to that discussion but also what it is to really be “retired” and the responsibility you have to the things you’ve spent your life on. Made me tear up in rehearsal today!
Emma: Without spoiling anything too special, there’s a beautiful scene where the characters reminisce over a party they went to back when they were all young and working together at the nuclear power station. The scene is such a beautiful break from the tension of the play – it’s not an escape, but it really lays out why and how these people have cared about each other for so long despite all of their difficulties.
Josh: Without spoiling anything, for me, the essence of the play comes in two moments towards the end. One is a beautiful monologue from Robin about cows which I won’t spoil, and another is a speech Rose makes about the kind of person she wanted to be. That speech ends in my favourite line of the play – a moment both incredibly generous and yet wistful for a life not lived. Both moments encapsulate the play’s theme of knowing morally what is right, but the real difficulty of doing the right thing practically and emotionally.
Cherwell: Why should audiences come to see The Children?
Josh: The Children is hilarious and utterly moving. It’s a great chance to see a contemporary play in Oxford, and one that subtly relates to our lives and decisions. It speaks to the climate crisis in a way you’ll likely never have seen before, the actors are truly superb, and you’ll be thinking about the cow speech for weeks to come! I know I will.
Alice: Genuinely one of the most shocking and powerful pieces of theatre I have ever seen let alone been a part of! The characters themselves are incredibly rich in depth giving The Children an emotional impact that cannot be understated.
Nate: I love a piece of tightly written theatre and The Children is about as tight as it gets. It’s been a joy to get to work with this extraordinary text and watch my scene partners decode its density and power. Such a gift to be a part of this production!
Divya: If you’re curious as to how and why cows, nuclear reactors, tricycles, pepperami, and old people doing yoga all fit into one play…come and see The Children! It is funny, frightening, and emotional.
Emma: It’s such an incredible text and I’m so amazed by how beautifully it’s come together – I was nearly in tears just watching one of the rehearsals of some of the more poignant moments – but also it’s a really fresh exploration of our responsibility to each other, especially in the context of the climate crisis. Often those conversations can feel preachy or impossibly bleak, but Kirkwood’s approach leaves so much space for who we are and, especially, what we want in the context of a great environmental (in this case, nuclear) disaster.
Fennec Fox Productions’ The Children is being performed from 4th – 8th February 2025 at the Oxford Playhouse.
Tickets are available here: https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/events/the-childern
The University of Oxford proposal to develop a new three-storey lab in Headington has been labelled “selfish and short-sighted” by Headington Heritage regarding its environmental impact. The new three-story labs building is proposed to be part of Oxford University’s Old Road Campus in Headington, including a substation building, cycle storage building, and associated landscaping.
The Old Road Campus is a University of Oxford site in Headington dedicated to biomedical research and includes buildings such as the Nuffield Department of Medicine Research, the Big Data Institute, and other lab buildings and for research on childcare, tropical diseases, and rheumatology.
Highfields Residents Association (HRA) and Headington Heritage have objected to the plans, fearing that building works will disturb residents and that the height of the labs building may “impinge visually on the residents” and cause light pollution. Fears of traffic build-up and flooding in the area have also been raised.
Headington Heritage told Cherwell that “the endless expansion of facilities with no mitigation and addition of staff is selfish and shortsighted, and environmentally unfriendly to the extreme.” It holds the University and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUHT) responsible for “a traffic and housing nightmare” and “environmental damage” because they are using land for “car parking” rather than “to provide housing and alleviate the housing crisis.”
In 2013, the campus had planning permission granted for 48,000sqm of research floorspace over five building plots with a car park with space for 459 cars. The scheme’s planning and consultation statement said: “The application clearly demonstrates that the quantum of development is in accordance with the previously approved details, and consistent with national and local planning policies, as well as other material considerations.”
The HRA have said that they welcome the project to facilitate and consider creating a labs building to house a research centre for pandemic sciences, but they are concerned about the effects it may have on the quality of local residential living conditions.
I live on-site at Jesus College where I share a kitchen with four other postgraduates: an archaeologist, a classicist, and two historians. In the practice of making our ‘flat’ familial we hold Sunday potlucks: meals where each guest contributes a dish. Conversation covers the usual topics: classes, career aspirations, politics, supervisors. We bemoan the state of the world: looming climate disaster, Donald Trump’s inauguration in the US, neoliberalism’s intellectual hegemony, all appearing engaged citizens. Yet, a striking cognitive dissonance ensconces each dinner. As the conversation arrives at what fills our days now, and what will occupy our future — 80,000 hours of work — any social conscience evaporates.
The archaeologist studies Egyptian ruins, the classicist Byzantine literature, the historians 18th century Spanish archives. Their time between their undergraduate and postgraduate degrees? Archival research, diving at a maritime archaeology site, ‘pondering,’ working at a café in Seville. Their plans for the future: unsure, teaching English in Europe, academia, travelling. As the philosopher and policy MPhil, I query, expectedly but gently: “Why? What drives your intellectual interests and career plans?” Their answers, simple, clear: “I like it.”
I’m certainly no masochist. I believe we should like our work. But I also believe that intellectual self-indulgence and disregard for social utility — abundant at Oxford — are killing social progress.
In The Destruction of Six Million, Hannah Arendt responded to two questions: (1) whether silence around Hitler’s atrocities and the rise of neo-Nazism had roots in European humanism; and (2) the source of helplessness shown by Jewish masses and leadership during the Holocaust. She wrote, “The world did not keep silent; but apart from not keeping silent, the world did nothing,” and “…Tadeusz Borowski, the Polish poet, had this to say in his report on his own stay in Auschwitz: “Never before was hope stronger than man, and never before did hope result in so much evil as in this camp… That is why we die in the gas oven.”
Arendt’s essay notes a glaring gap between rhetoric and action: public denunciations became routine but were only symbolic. Despite extensive discourse on crimes against humanity there was limited progress in holding offenders accountable. In Germany, while the public expressed guilt over past atrocities, lenient sentences for Nazi criminals persisted and former Nazis occupied prominent positions.
Now, my grasp of history isn’t so weak that I consider Arendt’s time synonymous with our own. But there are parallels. Roughly two billion people – one quarter of humanity – live in conflict-affected countries, with the highest conflicts ever recorded in 2023. Ethnic cleansing is occurring in the Zamzam camp in Darfur. Progress towards Zero Hunger by 2030 has stalled; the world will not reach even low hunger levels until 2160. Technological totalitarianism looms and autocracies outnumber democracies, 74 to 63. Elections in 25 countries have grown less free and 39 countries are tightening restrictions on press and free expression.
And so, the conversations which flow from my kitchen every Sunday at 7 PM are redundant. Arendt would scoff at our moral posturing — we express dismay and hope, again and again, without doing anything. Worse, we’ve constructed an artificial endorsement of virtue which justifies our dedication to pursuits that contribute little to the issues humanity faces. This is supported by empirical research on moral licensing — past “morality” licenses future immorality. Our Sunday dinners, then, are a dangerous ritual of self-excusal.
Arendt’s alternative to hope is natality. Influenced by Augustine’s view of creation as a political act, Arendt associates freedom and responsibility with the capacity for action that natality provides. Hope is something we wish for; natality is something we do. Natality challenges us to transform the world through direct engagement. Arendt holds that our immortality is found not in the afterlife but in the actions we take; we leave behind only what we accomplished for society.
Those who access a world-class education have a special imperative to act. Our education offers the networks, capital, and critical thinking to affect change; we are overwhelmed with fellowships, funding, speakers, legitimacy. We are also often the people who in our personal statements, vying for oversubscribed spots, wrote prosaic visions of using our education to shape a better world. It is telling that once our ticket was secured, these waned.
Though Stanford had its own problems — independent thought evaporating when private equity and FANG recruiters occupied White Plaza — there I found peers who believed the point of a university education was to try to contribute something. From my class alone, from students across disciplines, Terradot is assisting carbon capture; Grove AI is powering clinical trials; Farmlink is tackling food insecurity. Even the plethora of tech bros can articulate a case for eventual impact: take Microsoft’s $3 billion AI training investment in India which will ameliorate poverty or Google’s AI Accelerator where non-profits will scale generative AI tools to reach 30 million beneficiaries.
I am not asking my Oxford peers to abandon what they like or love, or intending to fuel scepticism towards humanities education. I’m simply encouraging my peers to explore how the skills they’ve developed can contribute to society. To, at the very least, consider social utility alongside intellectual self-indulgence. The world needs their ideas and efforts.
Moral agnosticism — the wilful refusal to contribute to the collective — is not morally neutral. While intellectual freedom does and should exist, it cannot remain above scrutiny. Neglecting the collective good is not benign. To absolve such choices is to legitimise complicity in an unjust status quo — it’s time my peers faced the music.
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A sunny day at the Boat Race, and the air is thick with shouts of “God damn bloody Oxford” — Cambridge’s rather lame equivalent of “shoe the tabs”. I’m with my girlfriend’s friends from ‘The Other Place’, and Oxford’s dismal performance on the Thames has caused much mirth, most of it at my expense.
A long-distance relationship, which started after UCAS but before uni, set me and my girlfriend on firmly different sides of the Oxbridge divide. Should a similar thing ever happen to you (or you’re just curious), consider this your survival guide to making the most of the situation, with all its perks and pitfalls.
Firstly, prepare for the fact that despite being very similar, the two universities and their respective towns don’t like having much to do with one another. No direct train or bus (except four hours long and via Bedford) means a whistle-stop tour of London’s major termini and an unhealthy dose of the Hammersmith and City line. Add to this the journey being inexplicably 15 quid cheaper in one direction, coupled with the mighty institution that is the rail replacement bus, and you have a perfect transport storm.
It’s all worth it once you’ve completed the odyssey, of course. Having a partner at Cambridge means double the pretty quads, double the formal dinner opportunities, and double the self-righteousness. Given we’re both worked into the ground by our tutors (sorry, supervisors), it’s easy to be on the same page about work-life balance. ‘Library dates’ become a fixture as their libraries are far more lax about entry than ours — admittedly because they’re quite ugly. I’ve also managed to ask a question in a Cambridge anthropology lecture despite having no knowledge of the discipline, nor actually the right to be in the building. An Oxbridge relationship offers extra academic motivation, as they give Cantab freshers something that resembles our scholar’s gowns without even needing a first.
Socially, it’s probably a dead heat as to which city has the worst clubbing scene, and whether ‘entz’ beats ‘ents’ (the tabs’ less snappy abbreviation). Exploring both cities at least gives you a wider sample to choose from, although Oxford post-club food is far superior to Cambridge’s. Where Cambridge does win is with the ‘backs’, as the river flows through more of the colleges than at Oxford. They do their best to ruin this though by somehow being even snottier about guests than the Christ Church porters.
A big advantage as an Oxbridge couple is that the term dates generally coincide, barring the fact that Cambridge terms bizarrely start on a Tuesday. This is helpful for planning ahead, especially if you’re also long-distance outside of term like we are. Given the trials of the work and social calendar at both universities, planning and clear communication become a cornerstone. As does an overfamiliarity with Jack’s (an ice cream parlour every Cam student is obsessed with), alternating Valentine’s and anniversary formals, and constant teasing that every street in Cambridge looks like Cornmarket.
The points of comparison are endless, and my life is so much richer for dating across the divide. You can, of course, even see her version of this article featured in Cherwell’s rival, the Cambridge paper Varsity. My only qualm is that everyone thinks we’re hopelessly privileged as an ‘Oxbridge couple’, that this was always going to happen, when in fact we’ve somehow fallen into this strange, lovely world that I have to sometimes blink several times to check is real. I can’t claim that we’ve eliminated the Oxbridge rivalry, because quite the opposite is true: the differences have been absorbed into our relationship. If that sounds like fun, do date across the divide — I’d highly recommend.
A bag, Birkinified: clad in charms, keychains and ribbons, a young woman flaunts her newly on-trend Prada tote in front of the camera, zooming in on each kitschy, personal addition. Newly outfitted in the fripperies of individuality, the bag’s adornments act much like a luggage tag at the airport – functionally distinctive, but also a possible creative extension of self. THIS IS ME, it seems to say, AND I AM FABULOUS!
In this case, the Prada bag is captured on TikTok, the wonderful and wearying workshop of all trends today. The Birkinification craze derives from the ‘trinkifying’ trend where people (primarily young women) personalize their bags in the manner of fashion icon Jane Birkin. Swinging 1960s It-girl, singer and actress, the tale of Birkin’s eponymous bag is entrenched in fashion history: on a flight to London in 1981, she unknowingly found herself sat beside the Hermès executive and visionary Jean-Louis Dumas. When her belongings spilled out of her bag upon putting it in an overhead compartment, he declared that he would make her a new one. Strolling up later to Hermès to collect her custom-made order, Birkin was then asked if she would give her name to the bag in return for an annual fee, which she donates to charity. Hence, the world’s arguably most famous (and unarguably most expensive) bag was born.
Birkin’s Birkin is always smattered with stickers, charms and tags. However, the joyous thing about Birkinification is that you don’t need the probably-more-than-£100,000 Hermès to emulate the look. Of course, there are high-end iterations (as seen on the Miu Miu SS24 runway) but, as Fiorelli designer Nia Davis has stated, any bag will do. As long as the manner of decoration resonates with that of Birkin – chaotic, fun, personal – then anyone can get in on Birkinification.
Yet in this sense the trend undermines itself: anyone who wants to try Birkinification does, decorating their bag in a way that is supposed to conjure their own individuality, but in the end merely confines them to the herd-mentality nature of a trend. Supposedly, the adornments create a distinct shorthand of trinkets that evoke your personality alone – but how can this be so when the way of expressing it is a template? Whilst striving for individual distinction, you are also modelling yourself on Birkin’s originality, thereby consigning yourself to a group in which no individual besides Birkin is relevant. This is even more emphatic when Birkinification becomes subject to any TikTok core currently residing in coreville. ‘Coquettecore’ and ‘balletcore’ have both inflicted themselves on Birkinification, meaning that, in reality, the unique personal objects which adorn these bags turn out to all be the same. Lace, pink ribbon and pearl chains… who can see where the trends stop and the individual begins?
Birkinification may masquerade behind the premise of individuality, but – all the above being said – it is certainly good fun. To decorate and make the bag your own: there is something endearingly childish about it,. having somewhat strayed from Birkin’s style as the inspiration source, Birkinification shows how trends are themselves subject to trends, and how fashion icons are eclipsed by the fashions they pioneer. At the end of it all, you might lose your individuality to the trend – but hopefully you’ll still know which bag is yours.
Internship pressure is intense in Oxford, but it’s not felt uniformly – demand is concentrated in a few select sectors which have been favoured by structural economic changes. Whilst some people love their weeks in the office, for many it’s just an endless stepping stone to the next thing.
With the sky outside already dark, the blue and white of the Oxford Careers Service lights up my room. I click on the box of another company’s advert, the name some grand stew of corporate words, the logo a rich green background with Times New Roman overlaid. A company description packed with superlatives, words like ‘dynamic’ and ‘delivery’, and some fluff about caring for employees and the future.
Lastly, requirements. So far so good: analytic mind, strong work ethic, willingness to explore new areas – I’d flatter myself with having most of them, or at least the ability to pretend I do. But then: “This job is only for those completing a Master’s in natural or computer science.” Of course. Right at the end, this handy tidbit of information is easy to miss, delaying the inevitable disappointment. Or maybe it was in the job description, but my bleary eyes didn’t notice.
Internships in Oxford
Not everyone is this inept at finding something to do with their free time. Thousands of students in Oxford each year take up opportunities at a huge range of different firms, bodies, and organisations. Of course, the stereotype of rich kids interning at their parents’ firms still persists. Many students describe feeling pressured to get some kind of work experience, and cite the importance of connections and networks in getting desirable jobs. One person told me that it feels like everyone “knows what they want to do” and that “if you don’t know what you’re doing, you feel like you’re behind everyone”.
One way in which Oxford students try to break into the jobs market is through the Oxford University Careers Service. They offer both micro- (a week long) and full internships exclusively to Oxford students, as well as running a range of workshops and talks throughout the year. Micro-internships are a popular way of getting experience: you’re “just competing against other Oxford students, so it’s easier to get in”, as one put it. However, for some of the positions advertised, competition can be fierce. In the 2023-24 year, the most competitive sectors for summer internships were Media and Journalism, with over 50 applicants per place, followed by Banking with 33, and Consultancy at 25 (Figure 1).
The large majority of these applicants are undergraduates, with just over 30% of the undergraduate body applying to summer and micro-internships. The highly competitive nature of some of the positions, compared to other sectors with virtually no applicants, suggests that lots of the applications are a segment of the student body fighting over the same few positions.
One potential reason for this is a lack of awareness amongst many students. One second-year student complained that the Careers Service “doesn’t make an effort to interact with students” and suggested that if you don’t know where to look it can be difficult to find opportunities. Another recurring idea is the Catch-22 of experience: lacking enough experience to get positions, which are the very positions that give you the experience you need.
This means that once you get into second year without having done anything in your first, it can feel like the world is against you. Others profit from positive feedback loops, hoovering up a whole array of impressive experiences. This is where claims of nepotism become partially pertinent – those with a foot in the door get ahead and stay ahead. However, opportunities like those provided by the Careers Service offer alternative ways of getting connections and starting these loops.
Pressure to apply
Even amongst the frenetic schedules that most of us have here during term, students still spend a lot of time thinking about and applying for these internships. Applying for a range of different positions, with the multiple rounds of testing and interviews that this entails, is not a minor time commitment. Those who are ruthlessly focused on getting jobs will often spend every spare second trying in some way to get ahead, whether that’s applying, networking, researching companies, or building skills. For others, the applications go on the back burner, allowing time for other things, but often at the expense of peace of mind: at least in applying you have the feeling of productivity. A more relaxed student admitted that: “I should put more time into it than I do.”
Is it Oxford in particular that induces stressful feelings about the need to apply? Despite being one of the best universities in the world (and obviously the best in the country), some students felt ill-prepared to go outside the ivory tower: “we don’t even cook our own food and we barely work in groups”, argued one. Oxford’s reputation as a centre of elites and old boys clubs doesn’t help: virtually everyone I spoke to mentioned worries about internships being doled out to family friends, rather than being judged on merit. One person worried about “the amount of nepotism and networking involved in many private-sector jobs”, and saw work experience as a way to enhance their own connections.
The degree that you’re studying also seems to make a difference. Whilst some subjects, like Law and Engineering, have clear job paths, others suffer from worse reputations. An English student told me that work experience “feels especially important for the humanities and degrees that are generally valued less in the jobs market” and saw their internships as a way to “stand out”. The data on Careers Service summer internships shows that Social Science students are overrepresented in their number of applicants, whilst most other divisions apply proportionately (Figure 3). Many people – myself included – are yet to figure out what they actually want to do with themselves in a few years time. This makes choosing where to apply even harder – but even more pressing, as it’s the best way to explore possibilities.
Time well spent?
According to the Careers Service website, everyone loves their internships. But in reality experiences are more mixed. A few people found micro-internships really enjoyable, working on exciting programs and meeting engaging people. More often, reality failed to live up to expectations. One suffered from “a lack of guidance” and found the workload “a bit overwhelming at times”. Others had almost nothing to do, working only an hour or two a day. Even where this happened, though, many reapplied for mowe the next term, suggesting that the gain in ostensible work experience is more important than actually improving skills or learning.
Whilst formal programs in big corporations are often highly structured and planned, lots of the organisations that hire micro-interns are small and lack the resources or knowledge to keep a student busy for a week. Sometimes, however, it’s the students who make the experiences differ from expectations. One admitted that during their micro-internship she was “travelling quite a lot” and ended up doing the work “on the plane and on the bus up and down mountains”. This ended in an online presentation being done in a noisy cafe where the audience couldn’t hear what she was saying. To complicate things further, due an organising mistake she was advertised as being a DPhil student, despite being a poor second-year.
Another person told me that being an international student can make the work much harder, as a result of incompatible time zones and different expectations. That students are willing to disrupt carefully-planned holidays and important sleep schedules to do their internship speaks to the intensity of pressure to get ahead.
Working preferences
It’s not that students will take absolutely anything, though. The most popular sectors for students applying for summer internships show how dominant skilled service jobs are in the UK economy. Especially for students at elite universities, highly specialised and technical jobs are hoped to offer both intellectual stimulation and graduate premiums. They include tech, development, think tanks, academia, science, consultancy, and marketing. Government & public services and tech are also very over-subscribed. Relatively fewer applicants for law and insurance suggests that companies in these areas have well-established programs which students apply to outside of the Careers Service.
Location also matters, however. The great majority of applications for internships through the Careers Service are for those in the UK, with Europe and North America next most popular, despite many placements also being offered in Asia, as well as Africa, South America and the Middle East. Internship programmes come with a range of different provisions and support, ranging from virtually everything paid for to nothing. The most competitive region is North America, with 24 applications per internship offered, reflecting a relative lack of supply; Asia has the lowest ratio of applications to internships offered, despite boasting the greatest number of places advertised out of all regions.
Structural changes
Oxford is not unique in the kinds of work which its students want to do, and the intensity of job competition. Changes in the destinations of graduates from elite educational institutions show a marked shift towards particular industries and occupations over the last 50 years. This can largely be explained by structural economic changes, including the growing specialisation and digitalisation of economies, the dominance of services in the West, and increased costs of living.
To take an extreme case, consider the US. An article in The Economisthighlights that whilst in the 1970s one in 20 Harvard graduates went into finance or consulting jobs, that increased to one in four in the 90s, and now an astounding half of Harvard graduates take jobs in finance, consulting, or technology. Given the prevalence and popularity of finance and consulting societies in Oxford, it seems that we’re not far behind.
One important change is the ‘hollowing out’ of traditionally middle-class jobs: employment in jobs with middle-of-the-road salaries has fallen significantly in the UK, whilst low- and high-paying jobs have both seen significant increases. Graduates from top universities have profited from technological changes which suit their skill sets, giving them access to very well-paid professional jobs. Yet those without degrees or with qualifications from less prestigious institutions have been forced into low-paying service jobs, due to offshoring of traditional sources of decent wages.
Starting salaries in investment banking and other finance jobs easily get into six figures, more than most can hope to get to in a lifetime. Desire for these high wages explains the vast number of people wanting to get into these sectors, and the brutal competition for work in places like Jane Street. And pay in the UK is practically nothing compared to what you can hope to get in the US: big companies on the other side of the Atlantic effortlessly hoover up Oxbridge graduates, with the differences in earnings between US and UK graduates now estimated to be 27%.
Furthermore, the number of adults with degrees has increased by 30 percentage points since the 90s, amplifying trends of job polarisation, where jobs become concentrated in high- and low-paying areas. The decline in sources of employment that don’t require a high degree of specialisation or prior experience, combined with large increases in the proportion of graduates, has made the need to get that internship all the more urgent. The UK has been particularly affected by this expansion: only in London has the number of high-wage jobs kept up with the increase of highly-skilled workers, and the graduate premium (earnings relative to non-graduates) has fallen nationwide. In contrast, in the US the graduate premium has increased even more, as a huge supply of skilled jobs meets the demand. This, combined with other factors, such as astronomical housing prices, means that students face a dizzying set of challenges in living and working after graduation.
Where do we go from here?
Reflections on the future can focus the mind about what you’re doing now and drive the discovery of opportunities that might otherwise be missed. But anxiety and worries about not doing enough can be unproductive and immobilising. As one person I spoke to put it, there’s a lot of “unnecessary fear” and every moment is “not make or break”. Another mentioned the “guilt of missing out”: a perennial FOMO and unflattering comparisons with others. There’s a balance to be struck between future consideration and current enjoyment, but for too many people this balance is impossible to find. This is understandable, of course: changes in student demand reflects deep worries about the future of many industries, especially given developments in Artificial Intelligence and other technologies.
Many young people are starting to think about their futures earlier than ever, sometimes absurdly so. The amount of LinkedIn requests I’ve had from students in their first year of sixth form (or before) who proudly proclaim that they are ‘looking to be insurers’ or already have work experience at all of the Big Four is astounding, and in many ways admirable. Planning ahead is sensible, important – even exciting. And thinking about choosing jobs in which one can stay financially afloat is a privilege that many cannot even access, and for which we should be grateful. But it shouldn’t come at the expense of everything else: friends, family, projects, academic study all matter – and are the things which give you reason to keep going.
