Follow-up on the Oxbridge admissions debate makes the very helpful point that the statistics have identified a potential issue, not the cause of it.
The issue is that
Admission to Oxbridge of BME British students is lower than admission of white British students. Admission of Black Caribbean British students is especially low.
The reason for this is not yet clear from the published data. What a great time to set in train a proper investigation of the levers in play. Better advice might get BME students to apply for less-well subscribed courses, for example.
My anecdata: I applied to a highly-oversubscribed college and didn’t get in. My second choice was for a less popular college that had a large number of students studying my subject. I did get in to Balliol, one of the first colleges to accept BME students, to some ridicule.
I have, somewhere, a paragraph from a copy of Punch from the 1880s, entitled “Means of Seeking Redress”, involving a fabulous description of the Royal Commission process; similar descriptions of enquiries can be found in everything from Jardine v Jardine, through the introduction to <iThe Hunting of the Snark to the Microcosmographia Academica (Cornwell’s little magnum opus on exactly how nothing is done in Oxbridge).
In 1984-6, our beloved University examined itself on why it wasn’t, overall, getting as many state school and BME undergraduates as Hertford College was, and, having discovered why, promptly banned the Hertford Process, which had been designed and inaugurated by the late, great Dr. Neil Tanner and colleagues.
We know why the problem exists and we choose to do the wrong things about it because somne people just don’t want to change. Sadly, as a mere D. Phil., I have no vote in congregation. You do!