18 July 2007
the elephant in the room
[A rather revealing insight into the mechanisms of class in academia, via email]
My colleagues and I recently had a meeting to decide which of our applicants for postgraduate work should be given various bursaries at out disposal. One candidate had a 2.1 in PPE from Oxford, while all the others had firsts, but were unfortunate not to have Oxford as their alma mater. Colleague A advanced the following, er, argument: ‘We should certainly award one of our bursaries to the Oxford chap, for a 2.1 from Oxford is like a first from anywhere else’. This was met with a chorus of slaps to the forehead, as if the elephant in the room had been revealed by the removal of a lampshade from its head. After some initial moments of shock, I responded: ‘Let us assume you are right on the respective worth of Oxford and non-Oxford degrees. That is no argument in favour of the Oxford chap, for we have only established that, at best, he is level with everyone else. You require another assumption, such as: all else being equal, we should give a bursary to someone from Oxford over anyone else.’ Colleague B interjected: ‘Yes, that was A's argument.’ Me: ‘No. Assuming A's empirical claim is true, all the candidates are on a par, for we have only raised up the Oxford chap, we haven’t lowered the others, who all did as well as they could do. Perhaps we should consider the claim that a first from any university that isn’t Oxford is worth a 2.1 from Oxford.’ Seriously, it took me five minutes to explain the point, and even then not everyone seemed to appreciate its protean depths. Reason wept.
My colleagues and I recently had a meeting to decide which of our applicants for postgraduate work should be given various bursaries at out disposal. One candidate had a 2.1 in PPE from Oxford, while all the others had firsts, but were unfortunate not to have Oxford as their alma mater. Colleague A advanced the following, er, argument: ‘We should certainly award one of our bursaries to the Oxford chap, for a 2.1 from Oxford is like a first from anywhere else’. This was met with a chorus of slaps to the forehead, as if the elephant in the room had been revealed by the removal of a lampshade from its head. After some initial moments of shock, I responded: ‘Let us assume you are right on the respective worth of Oxford and non-Oxford degrees. That is no argument in favour of the Oxford chap, for we have only established that, at best, he is level with everyone else. You require another assumption, such as: all else being equal, we should give a bursary to someone from Oxford over anyone else.’ Colleague B interjected: ‘Yes, that was A's argument.’ Me: ‘No. Assuming A's empirical claim is true, all the candidates are on a par, for we have only raised up the Oxford chap, we haven’t lowered the others, who all did as well as they could do. Perhaps we should consider the claim that a first from any university that isn’t Oxford is worth a 2.1 from Oxford.’ Seriously, it took me five minutes to explain the point, and even then not everyone seemed to appreciate its protean depths. Reason wept.
