Tag: Oxford

  • Higher education postcard: Keble College, Oxford

    Higher education postcard: Keble College, Oxford

    Greetings from Oxford!

    Let me start with an uncontroversial statement: the nineteenth century was very different to the current century. As L P Hartley had it, “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

    One thing going on in that century was a reform movement within Anglicanism. The Tractarians, also known as the Oxford Movement (so called because it was centred upon Oxford) was a group of Anglicans who sought to move the Church of England closer to Roman Catholicism on some matters (yes, I know this is very simplified version). Among the leading figures – alongside John Henry Newman, now St John Newman – was John Keble.

    But religious controversy wasn’t the only thing on Oxford’s mind. Substantial reform of the university was under way, with changes to governance, a reduction of influence of the church, and a recognition of the need to widen access, to use the modern term. One avenue being explored was the creation of a new, more affordable, college. The committee working on this included Professor Pusey, a fellow Tractarian. He showed the plans to Keble, who was very much in favour. And then Keble died.

    His friends discussed what to do in tribute, and decided, as you do, that founding the college which Pusey had been discussing was the right thing. And so an appeal was launched, funds were raised, and the project progressed.

    It’s worth noting that this was a new model for Oxbridge colleges: previously colleges were endowed by a rich patron – monarch, noble, church – but this was Victorian crowdfunding in action. And it was a model which possibly influenced the fundraising models for the new universities and colleges which followed soon after. For example, Bangor, the public subscription for which raised £12,000.

    The college opened to new students in 1870. It hasn’t been without its critics – St John’s students formed a society to dismantle Keble which has, to date, been ineffective in its aims. Its distinctive buildings have been the source of much comment. They’ve been called “a dinosaur in a fair isle sweater” (which, to be fair, is a sight most of us would pay to see.) Apocryphally, a French visitor is reputed to have said “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la gare?” (I think the station is in fact about half a league away).

    The college really did seek to make life economical for its students. Its buildings contained student rooms on corridors rather than via staircases, which was, apparently, a saving. I guess staircases contained suites rather than single rooms? I am honestly not sure what to make of this claim. I’ve also seen it claimed that the corridors made it easier for visitors to be supervised, which seems more plausible.

    Another saving came in 1871, when Keble issued its own stamps, allowing students to send mail – only within Oxford, presumably – via the college porters. This was copied at a few other Oxford and Cambridge colleges, until in 1885 the Post Office decided that this infringed on its monopoly and insisted that the service cease.

    Keble is now one of the larger of the Oxford colleges, with about 1000 students all told. Famous alumni include Ed Balls, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and celebrity self-searcher on Twitter. Another is Imran Khan, who has been both a wonderful cricketer and a Prime Minister of Pakistan. Howzat for a career?

    Here’s a jigsaw of the card. It was posted on 29 September 1914 to a Mrs Wood in Southampton.

    As best as I can tell, the card reads:

    Dear M + F [Mother and Father?], Arrived quite safe at Oxford. I am enjoying our long [????]. We proceed to Basingstoke [?] tomorrow. Will write a letter as soon as we reach Portsmouth. Will

    And in inserts “This is the College where we are staying (what)” and “We don’t remember the old place”.

    I am tempted to think that the card was sent as Will Wood stayed overnight as part of a military detachment on their way to Portsmouth for the continent, but I haven’t got anything other than the date of the card and one reading of its content to back that up. “C” Company of the No. 4 Officer Cadet Battalion was hosted at Keble College during the First World War, but the college’s archives hold no records of this before 1916. So I suspect speculation is all we have here.

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  • HEPI / Kaplan 2025 Soft-Power Index: Harvard and Oxford top the tree

    HEPI / Kaplan 2025 Soft-Power Index: Harvard and Oxford top the tree

    • The HEPI / Kaplan Soft-Power Index looks at the number of very senior world leaders (monarchs, presidents and prime ministers) who studied at a higher level in another country.
    • Countries that have educated a significant proportion of the world’s most senior leaders are thought to benefit from a boost to their ‘soft power’.
    • The results for the leading two countries, the US and the UK, are broadly comparable to those for recent years but other countries, like France and Germany, fare worse than in past years while Russia and India have improved their position.
    • For the first time, the results are being published according to the institution that world leaders studied at. Harvard University and the University of Oxford lead the pack, with Sandhurst, the University of Cambridge, the LSE and the University of Manchester making up the rest of the top 6.

    When launching the Soft Power Council in early 2025, the UK’s then Foreign Secretary, the Rt Hon. David Lammy MP, said, ‘Soft power is fundamental to the UK’s impact and reputation around the world. I am often struck by the enormous love and respect which our music, sport, education and institutions generate on every continent.’ The HEPI / Kaplan Soft-Power Index offers one way to measure the extent of this soft power.

    In 2025, the United States remains comfortably in first place, as their higher education institutions have educated 66 senior world leaders, which is only slightly lower than the US total for 2024 (68). The UK remains in a comfortable second place, having educated 59 world leaders. France performs less well than in the past but stays in third place, with 23 leaders.

    The Index is based on a snapshot of world leaders for early August 2025. Changes since then are not reflected in the data. The Index should not be regarded as the only way to measure soft power and should be used alongside other sources of information.

    Since the Soft-Power Index was launched in 2017, 81 (42%) of the countries in the world have had at least one very senior leader educated at a higher level in the UK. The Index is regularly quoted by UK Government Ministers – for example, last year’s results featured in this week’s Post-16 Education and Skills white paper.

    World leaders educated in countries other than their own

    For the first time this year, the results are also being published according to the institution that the leaders attended, with Harvard (15) and Oxford (12) topping the tree.

    Harvard alone has educated more senior world leaders than all higher education institutions in Russia (13). Harvard has also educated more senior world leaders than Italy (5), Spain (5) and Germany (4) combined.

    Key findings

    • The strong performance of the United States represents the country’s second best ever total (equal with 2022 but slightly down on 2024).
    • In terms of absolute score, the United Kingdom matches the best it has done since the Index began in 2017 (59), equalising the record that was also hit in 2019 and 2021.
    • France fares worse than in the past, with a big drop-off of 17 since 2019 from 40 to 23, but retains third place.
    • Russia posts its best performance, with 13 world leaders educated there, beating its previous high of 11 in 2022.
    • Australia (9, +2) remains in fifth place, while Switzerland is in sixth place (7, +1).
    • India scores its best ever performance. In 2022, only two serving very senior leaders had been educated to a higher level in India; in 2025, five had been – this is the same total as for Spain and also Italy.
    • Germany drops out of the top 10 for the first time, having educated just four serving world leaders, the same number as Canada, Germany, Morocco, the Netherlands and South Africa – and the same number as for the LSE alone.
    • The higher education institution that has educated the most current world leaders while they were international students is Harvard University (15), closely followed by the University of Oxford (13).
    • Five of the six best-performing institutions are situated in the UK, meaning world leaders educated in the UK tend to have been concentrated in a smaller number of institutions. While Harvard is the only US institution to have educated more than three serving world leaders, the UK has five institutions that have educated more than three: Oxford (13); Sandhurst (8); Manchester (6); Cambridge (5); and the LSE (4).

    Institutions attended by very senior world leaders

    Ranking Higher education institution Number of world leaders
    1 Harvard 15
    2 Oxford 12
    3 Sandhurst 8
    4 Manchester 6
    5 Cambridge 5
    6 LSE 4
    7= Boston 3
    7= Bristol 3
    7= George Washington 3
    7= New York 3
    7= Pennsylvania 3
    7= UCL 3
    7= US Army Command and Staff College 3

    The 15 world leaders educated at Harvard are: i) the Prime Minister of Bhutan (Tshering Tobgay); ii) the President of Botswana (Duma Boko); iii) the Prime Minister of Canada (Mark Carney); iv) the King of Denmark (Frederik X); v) the President of Ecuador (Daniel Noboa); vi) the Prime Minister of Greece (Kyriakos Mitsotakis); vii) the Prime Minister of Israel (Benjamin Netanyahu); viii) the Prime Minister of Jordan (Jafar Hassan); ix) the Prime Minister of Lebanon (Nawaf Salam); x) the Prime Minister of Luxembourg (Luc Frieden); xi) the President of Moldova (Maia Sandu); xii) the Chief Minister of Sierra Leone (David Moinina Sengeh); xiii) the President of Singapore (Tharman Shanmugaratnam); xiv) the Prime Minister of Singapore (Lawrence Wong); and xv) the Prime Minister of South Korea (Kim Min-seok).

    The 12 world leaders educated at the University of Oxford are: i) the King of Belgium (Philippe); ii) the King of Bhutan (Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck); iii) the Prime Minister of Canada (Mark Carney); iv) the President of East Timor (José Ramos-Horta); v) the Prime Minister of Hungary (Viktor Orbán); vi) the Emperor of Japan (Naruhito); vii) the King of Jordan (Abdullah II); viii) the President of Montenegro (Jakov Milatović); ix) the King of Norway (Harald V); x) the Sultan and Prime Minister of Oman (Haitham bin Tariq); xi) the President of the Philippines (Bongbong Marcos); and xii) the Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands (Jeremiah Manele). 

    Nick Hillman OBE, the Director of HEPI, said:

    International students bring enormous benefits to the UK. They all spend money while they are here and some then contribute to the UK labour market after studying. The diplomatic benefits are less well understood even though they can be equally important. In 2025, over a quarter of the countries around the world have a very senior leader educated in the UK, which amounts to tremendous soft power.

    The current UK Government have established a Soft Power Council and promised a new education exports strategy. These are welcome, but they are counterbalanced by the incoming levy on international students, huge dollops of negative rhetoric and excessive visa costs.

    Recent new obstacles standing in the way of people wanting to study in Australia, Canada and the United States provide an opportunity for the UK to steal a march on our main competitors. We are at risk of squandering this opportunity.

    Linda Cowan, Managing Director of Kaplan International Pathways, said:

    It is fantastic to see how many of our best known universities are educating foreign leaders. This year’s list also highlights the growing diversity and range of institutions contributing to the UK’s soft power, including Cranfield, Leicester, Liverpool and Westminster.

    Another trend to watch is the expansion of transnational campuses of British universities abroad, such as in India and the UAE. These initiatives have the potential to further enhance the UK’s soft power by extending the reach of our higher education sector beyond students coming to the UK – a development to watch going forward.

    Professor Irene Tracey, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, said:

    That so many world leaders have studied at Oxford speaks to the transformative power of education — to shape ideas, deepen understanding, and inspire service on the global stage.

    Professor Duncan Ivison, the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester, said:

    If soft power is fundamental to the UK’s impact and reputation around the world, then so too are the UK’s outstanding universities.

    The HEPI / Kaplan Soft-Power Index makes clear just how important international students are to the UK’s global influence – both now and into the future. Extraordinary future leaders get their start at many of our universities and retain a deep affection for our country long after. And yet the Government is, at the same time, putting up obstacles to welcoming future international students to the UK with a proposed international levy, higher visa costs and reducing the graduate visa route.

    We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to make the UK the global destination for the best and the brightest in the world given what is happening elsewhere – and especially in the US and Canada. Let’s not blow it.

    The 59 leaders educated in the UK lead 55 countries (as a small number of places – Bahrain, Luxembourg, Namibia and the United Arab Emirates have two very senior leaders educated in the UK). Changes affecting the UK list for 2025 are outlined in the table below. They include:

    • The Rt Hon. Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada since early 2025, studied Economics at the University of Oxford.
    • Taye Atske Selassie, the President of Ethiopia since late 2024, studied International Relations and Strategic Studies at Lancaster University.
    • The President, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, and Prime Minister, Elijah Ngurare, of Namibia, who have both been in post since early 2025, studied in the UK – the Namibian President studied at Glasgow Caledonian University as well as Keele University and the Prime Minister studied at University of Dundee.
    • The Prime Minister of Rwanda since July 2025, Justin Nsengiyumva, studied Economics at the University of Leicester. 
    • The Prime Minister of Sri Lanka since autumn 2024, Harini Amarasuriya, studied Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh.

    Click here to download a table showing all the countries with at least one senior leader educated in the UK for the whole period from 2017 to 2025.

    The 66 world leaders from 58 countries educated in the United States head the following countries:

    Bahrain (2); Bangladesh; Belgium; Belize; Bhutan (2); Botswana; Bulgaria; Cambodia; Canada; Costa Rica; Denmark; Dominica; Dominican Republic; East Timor; Ecuador; Egypt; Finland; Greece; Guinea-Bissau; Guyana; Haiti (2); Iceland (2); Ireland; Israel (2); Ivory Coast; Jordan (2); Kuwait; Latvia; Lebanon; Liberia; Luxembourg; Malawi; Malaysia; Marshall Islands; Micronesia; Moldova; Monaco; Montenegro; Namibia; Nigeria; Palau; Palestine; Panama; Paraguay; Philippines; Rwanda; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Sierra Leone (2); Singapore (2); Slovenia; Somalia; South Korea; Spain; Sudan; Switzerland; Togo; Tonga; and Vatican City.

    Notes for Editors

    1. Leaders are defined as heads of state and heads of government (monarchs, presidents and prime ministers). Countries often have more than one (such as a president or monarch and a prime minister).

    2. Countries are included if they are members of, or observers at, the United Nations, currently numbering 195 places. Palestine is therefore included but Northern Cyprus, for example, is not.

    3. The HEPI / Kaplan Soft-Power Index is a measure of tertiary education. This is defined broadly but distance learning and transnational education are excluded for the soft-power benefits are thought to be less.

    4. Leaders change throughout the year, so we provide a snapshot for August 2025. For example, the fieldwork was undertaken prior to the recent change of leadership in Thailand.

    5. Each country is treated equally and we do not claim each individual result provides good evidence of positive soft power. No one is excluded on moral grounds. 

    6. Some people are educated in more than one other country and they can therefore count towards the totals for more than one country.

    7. While we use multiple sources to obtain information, the educational background of some national leaders is opaque. HEPI welcomes feedback that would enable us to build up a more complete picture.

    8. When new information comes to light, we update the figures. So there are some slight differences in the figures provided here for earlier years compared with what we have published in the past. For example, in the preparation of the 2025 numbers, we found new information that reduced the recent past total for the US (as we discovered two leaders were distance learners rather than in-person learners).

    9. King Charles III’s higher education was delivered in the UK (at the University of Cambridge), the country where he was born and lives, and he is head of state of other countries in part by virtue of his position in the UK. So we have opted to exclude this information. This matches how we treat the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, who is one of the heads of state (Co-Prince) of Andorra.

    10. The University of the West Indies (UWI) serves 18 countries and territories in the Caribbean. Attempting to unpick the place of study for those world leaders who studied at the UWI is beyond the scope of this study. Therefore, we have assumed that each one studied in their home nation. This is the same practice as followed in earlier years.

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  • What the saga of Oxford Business College tells us about regulation and franchising

    What the saga of Oxford Business College tells us about regulation and franchising

    One of the basic expectations of a system of regulation is consistency.

    It shouldn’t matter how prestigious you are, how rich you are, or how long you’ve been operating: if you are active in a regulated market then the same rules should apply to all.

    Regulatory overreach can happen when there is public outrage over elements of what is happening in that particular market. The pressure a government feels to “do something” can override processes and requirements – attempting to reach the “right” (political or PR) answer rather than the “correct” (according to the rules) one.

    So when courses at Oxford Business College were de-designated by the Secretary of State for Education, there’s more to the tale than a provider where legitimate questions had been raised about the student experience getting just desserts. It is a cautionary tale, involving a fascinating high-court judgment and some interesting arguments about the limits of ministerial power, of what happens when political will gets ahead of regulatory processes.

    Business matters

    A splash in The Sunday Times back in the spring concerned the quality of franchised provision from – as it turned out – four Office for Students registered providers taught at Oxford Business College. The story came alongside tough language from Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson:

    I know people across this country, across the world, feel a fierce pride for our universities. I do too. That’s why I am so outraged by these reports, and why I am acting so swiftly and so strongly today to put this right.

    And she was in no way alone in feeling that way. Let’s remind ourselves, the allegations made in The Sunday Times were dreadful. Four million pounds in fraudulent loans. Fake students, and students with no apparent interest in studying. Non-existent entry criteria. And, as we shall see, that’s not even as bad as the allegations got.

    De-designation – removing the eligibility of students at a provider to apply for SLC fee or maintenance loans – is one of the few levers government has to address “low quality” provision at an unregistered provider. Designation comes automatically when a course is franchised from a registered provider: a loophole in the regulatory framework that has caused concern over a number of years. Technically an awarding provider is responsible for maintaining academic quality and standards for its students studying elsewhere.

    The Office for Students didn’t have any regulatory jurisdiction other than pursuing the awarding institutions. OBC had, in fact, tried to register with OfS – withdrawing the application in the teeth of the media firestorm at the end of March.

    So everything depended on the Department for Education overturning precedent.

    Ministering

    It is “one of the biggest financial scandals universities have faced.” That’s what Bridget Phillipson said when presented with The Sunday Times’ findings. She announced that the Public Sector Fraud Authority would coordinate immediate action, and promised to empower the Office for Students to act in such cases.

    In fact, OBC was already under investigation by the Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA) and had been since 2024. DfE had been notified by the Student Loans Company about trends in the data and other information that might indicate fraud at various points between November 2023 and February 2024 – notifications that we now know were summarised as a report detailing the concerns which was sent to DfE in January 2024. The eventual High Court judgement (the details of which we will get to shortly) outlined just a few of these allegations, which I take from from the court documents:

    • Students enrolled in the Business Management BA (Hons) course did not have basic English language skills.
    • Less than 50 per cent of students enrolled in the London campus participate, and the remainder instead pay staff to record them as in attendance.
    • Students have had bank details altered or new bank accounts opened in their name, to which their maintenance payments were redirected.
    • Staff are encouraging fraud through fake documents sent to SLC, fake diplomas, and fake references. Staff are charging students to draft their UCAS applications and personal statements. Senior staff are aware of this and are uninterested.
    • Students attending OBC do not live in the country. In one instance, a dead student was kept on the attendance list.
    • Students were receiving threats from agents demanding money and, if the students complained, their complaints were often dealt with by those same agents threatening the students.
    • Remote utilities were being used for English language tests where computers were controlled remotely to respond to the questions on behalf of prospective students.
    • At the Nottingham campus, employees and others were demanding money from students for assignments and to mark their attendance to avoid being kicked off their course.

    At the instigation of DfE, and with the cooperation of OBC, GIAA started its investigation on 19 September 2024, continuing to request information from and correspond with the college until 17 January 2025. An “interim report” detailing emerging findings went to DfE on 17 December 2024; the final report arrived on 30 January 2025. The final report made numerous recommendations about OBC processes and policies, but did not recommend de-designation. That recommendation came in a ministerial submission, prepared by civil servants, dated 18 March 2025.

    Process story

    OBC didn’t get sight of these reports until 20 March 2025, after the decisions were made. It got summaries of both the interim and final reports in a letter from DfE notifying it that Phillipson was “minded to” de-designate. The documentation tells us that GIAA reported that OBC had:

    • recruited students without the required experience and qualifications to successfully complete their courses
    • failed to ensure students met the English language proficiency as set out in OBC and lead provider policies
    • failed to ensure attendance is managed effectively
    • failed to withdraw or suspend students that fell below the required thresholds for performance and/or engagement;
    • failed to provide evidence that immigration documents, where required, are being adequately verified.

    The college had 14 days to respond to the summary and provide factual comment for consideration, during which period The Sunday Times published its story. OBC asked DfE for the underlying material that informed the findings and the subsequent decision, and for an extension (it didn’t get all the material, but it got a further five days) – and it submitted 68 pages of argument and evidence to DfE, on 7 April 2025. Another departmental ministerial submission (on 16 April 2025) recommended that the Secretary of State confirm the decision to de-designate.

    According to the OBC legal team, these emerging findings were not backed up by the full GIAA reports, and there were concerns about the way a small student sample had been used to generalise across an entire college. Most concerningly, the reports as eventually shared with the college did not support de-designation (though they supported a number of other concerns about OBC and its admission process). This was supported by a note from GIAA regarding OBC’s submission, which – although conceding that aspects of the report could have been expressed more clearly – concluded:

    The majority of the issues raised relate to interpretation rather than factual accuracy. Crucially, we are satisfied that none of the concerns identified have a material impact on our findings, conclusions or overall assessment.

    Phillipson’s decision to de-designate was sent to the college on 17 April 2025, and it was published as a Written Ministerial Statement. Importantly, in her letter, she noted that:

    The Secretary of State’s decisions have not been made solely on the basis of whether or not fraud has been detected. She has also addressed the issue of whether, on the balance of probabilities, the College has delivered these courses, particularly as regards the recruitment of students and the management of attendance, in such a way that gives her adequate assurance that the substantial amounts of public money it has received in respect of student fees, via its partners, have been managed to the standards she is entitled to expect.

    Appeal

    Oxford Business College appealed the Secretary of State’s decision. Four grounds of challenge were pursued with:

    • Ground 3: the Secretary of State had stepped beyond her powers in prohibiting OBC from receiving public funds from providing new franchised courses in the future.
    • Ground 1: the decision was procedurally unfair, with key materials used by the Secretary of State in making the decision not provided to the college, and the college never being told the criteria it was being assessed against
    • Ground 4: By de-designating courses, DfE breached OBCs rights under Article 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights (to peaceful enjoyment of its possessions – in this case the courses themselves)
    • Ground 7: The decision by the Secretary of State had breached the public sector equality duty

    Of these, ground 3 was not determined, as the Secretary of State had clarified that no decision had been taken regarding future courses delivered by OBC. Ground 4 was deemed to be a “controversial” point of law regarding whether a course and its designation status could be a “possession” under ECHR, but could be proceeded with at a later date. Ground 7 was not decided.

    Ground 1 succeeded. The court found that OBC had been subject to an unfair process, where:

    OBC was prejudiced in its ability to understand and respond to the matters of the subject of investigation, including as to the appropriate sanction, and to understand the reasons for the decision.

    Judgement

    OBC itself, or the lawyers it engaged, have perhaps unwisely decided to put the judgement into the public domain – it has yet to be formally published. I say unwisely, because it also puts the initial allegations into the public domain and does not detail any meaningful rebuttal from the college – though The Telegraph has reported that the college now plans to sue the Secretary of State for “tens of millions of pounds.”

    The win, such as it is, was entirely procedural. The Secretary of State should have shared more detail of the findings of the GIAA investigation (at both “emerging” and “final” stages) in order that the college could make its own investigations and dispute any points of fact.

    Much of the judgement deals with the criteria by which a sample of 200 students were selected – OBC was not made aware that this was a sample comprising those “giving the greatest cause for suspicion” rather than a random sample, and the inability of OBC to identify students whose circumstances or behaviour were mentioned in the report. These were omissions, but nowhere is it argued by OBC that these were not real students with real experiences.

    Where allegations are made that students might be being threatened by agents and institutional staff, it is perhaps understandable that identifying details might be redacted – though DfE cited the “”pressure resulting from the attenuated timetable following the order for expedition, the evidence having been filed within 11 days of that order” for difficulties faced in redacting the report properly. On this point, DfE noted that OBC, using the materials provided, “had been able to make detailed representations running to 68 pages, which it had described as ‘comprehensive’ and which had been duly considered by the Secretary of State”.

    The Secretary of State, in evidence, rolled back from the idea that she could automatically de-designate future courses without specific reason, but this does not change the decisions she has made about the five existing courses delivered in partnership. Neither does it change the fact that OBC, having had five courses forcibly de-designated, and seen the specifics of the allegations underpinning this exceptional decision put into the public domain without any meaningful rebuttal, may struggle to find willing academic partners.

    The other chink of legal light came with an argument that a contract (or subcontract) could be deemed a “possession” under certain circumstances, and that article one section one of the European Convention on Human Rights permits the free enjoyment of possessions. The judgement admits that there could be grounds for debate here, but that debate has not yet happened.

    Rules

    Whatever your feelings about OBC, or franchising in general, the way in which DfE appears to have used a carefully redacted and summarised report to remove an institution from the sector is concerning. If the rules of the market permit behaviour that ministers do not like, then these rules need to be re-written. DfE can’t just regulate based on what it thinks the rules should be.

    The college issued a statement on 25 August, three days after the judgement was published – it claims to be engaging with “partner institutions” (named as Buckinghamshire New University, University of West London, Ravensbourne University London, and New College Durham – though all four had already ended their partnerships with the remaining students being “taught out”) about the future of the students affected by the designation decision – many had already transferred to other courses at other providers.

    In fact, the judgement tells us that of 5,000 students registered at OBC on 17 April 2025, around 4,700 had either withdrawn or transferred out of OBC to be taught out. We also learn that 1,500 new students, who had planned to start an OBC-delivered course after 2025, would no longer be doing so. Four lead providers had given notice to terminate franchise agreements between April 2024 and May of 2025. Franchise discussions with another provider – Southampton Solent University – underway shortly before the decision to de-designate, had ended.

    OBC currently offers one course itself (no partnership offers are listed) – a foundation programme covering academic skills and English language including specialisms in law, engineering, and business – which is designed to prepare students for the first year of an undergraduate degree course. It is not clear what award this course leads to, or how it is regulated. It is also expensive – a 6 month version (requiring IELTS 5.5 or above) costs an eyewatering £17,500. And there is no information as to how students might enroll on this course.

    OBC’s statement about the court case indicates that it “rigorously adheres to all regulatory requirements”, but it is not clear which (if any) regulator has jurisdiction over the one course it currently advertises.

    If there are concerns about the quality of teaching, or about academic standards, in any provider in receipt of public funds they clearly need to be addressed – and this is as true for Oxford Business College as it is for the University of Oxford. This should start with a clear plan for quality assurance (ideally one that reflects the current concerns of students) and a watertight process that can be used both to drive compliance and take action against those who don’t measure up. Ministerial legal innovation, it seems, doesn’t quite cut it.

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  • Higher education postcard: Lincoln College, Oxford

    Higher education postcard: Lincoln College, Oxford

    It’s late fourteenth century England, and a religious reform movement known as Lollardy was on the rise.

    The incomparable Sellar and Yeatman had it thus:

    During this reign the memorable preacher Wyclif collected together a curious set of men known as the Lollards or Dullards, because they insisted on walking about with their tongues hanging out and because they were so stupid that they could not do the Bible in Latin and demanded that everyone should be allowed to use an English translation. They were thus heretics and were accordingly unpopular with the top men in the Church who were very good at Latin and who liked to see some Dullards burnt before every meal.

    The Encyclopaedia Britannica will give you more detail if you need to know. Importantly, remember that John Wyclif is not the same person as Wyclef Jean.

    Anyway, Lollardy was considered a problem by the church, and in 1427 Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, founded a college in Oxford as, apparently, “a little college of true students of theology who would defend the mysteries of Scripture against those ignorant laymen who profaned with swinish snouts its most holy pearls.”

    Benefactions in 1436 and 1437 enabled the nascent college to establish a physical base in Oxford, with a chapel, a library, a hall, a kitchen, rooms and, in 1465, rooms for the college’s master. In 1478, a second Royal Charter was granted, at the prompting of Thomas Rotherham, Bishop of Lincoln and later Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of York, who was the college’s visitor. (We’ll cover the role of the visitor another time, when I have the right postcard!)

    By this stage we’ve got in place the necessities of a college, and a few more elements – leasing the Mitre Inn, gaining a coat of arms – followed in the next hundred years. And the college continued to add buildings and the like, in the way that medieval Oxford colleges did. The interesting parts of our story now are people.

    Let’s fast forward to 1726, when John Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln. Discussions within the college set the scene for the establishment of Methodism. Having started as a college to counter heretical beliefs, the college had now enabled a significant branch of non-conformist Christianity to be born.

    In 1882 the first Jewish fellow of an Oxford college was elected at Lincoln. This followed the Universities Tests Act, passed in 1871, which removed religious barriers to participation in university life at Oxford, Cambridge and Durham. The fellow in question was Samuel Alexander, who later became a professor at Owens College, Manchester, and whose work focused, as best as I can tell, on questions of the nature of space and time. He’d have answered Zeno’s paradox, I suspect, by denying the reality of incrementally smaller units of time. But I may be wrong!

    In 1925 Theodor Seuss Geisel enrolled as a graduate student at Lincoln, having completed undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College, USA. We know him better as Dr Seuss. He didn’t, it seems, complete his postgraduate work. Maybe he’d have been a better writer if he had, maybe not – who knows?

    In 1952 another notable writer began his studies at Lincoln. This was David Cornwall, who is similarly better known by his pen-name: John le Carré. Cornwall graduated in 1956; it is thought that he was working for MI5 while at the college, and he certainly became an intelligence agent afterwards, continuing until 1964, when the fall-out from Kim Philby’s spectacular betrayal of many British agents means that he left the secret service. Fortunately for him, his writing enabled him to make an alternative living.

    Other notable Lincoln names include Rishi Sunak, former PM; Edward Thomas, WW1 poet; and physician John Radcliffe, after whom many Oxford buildings, including the hospital, the camera and the observatory, were named.

    Women were admitted to Lincoln for the first time in 1979.

    Lincoln College’s full name – reserved for Sunday best – is the College of the Blessed Mary and All Saints, Lincoln. It’s only called that by the monarch and by the university when it has been naughty, I imagine. The college has a very good page on its history – including some shot films – here. There’s more than I could reference in this piece.

    The card itself was unposted but has a message written on the back.

    Dear Mr Smithies, Great pleasure to talk to you – thanks for your kind offer of support.

    And as usual, here’s a jigsaw of the card – enjoy!

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  • Don’t believe the hype: the Government and state school admissions to Oxford University

    Don’t believe the hype: the Government and state school admissions to Oxford University

    • HEPI Director, Nick Hillman, looks at the latest row on admissions to the University of Oxford.

    In a speech on Friday, the Minister for Skills, Baroness Smith, strongly chastised her alma mater, the University of Oxford, for taking a third of their entrants from the 6% of kids that go to private schools.

    In a section of the speech entitled ‘Challenging Oxford’, we were told the situation is ‘absurd’, ‘arcane’ and ‘can’t continue’:

    Oxford recently released their state school admissions data for 2024.

    And the results were poor.

    66.2% – the lowest entry rate since 2019.

    I want to be clear, speaking at an Oxford college today, that this is unacceptable.

    The university must do better.

    The independent sector educates around 6% of school children in the UK.

    But they make-up 33.8% of Oxford entrants.

    Do you really think you’re finding the cream of the crop, if a third of your students come from 6% of the population?

    It’s absurd.

    Arcane, even.

    And it can’t continue.

    It’s because I care about Oxford and I understand the difference that it can make to people’s lives that I’m challenging you to do better.  But it certainly isn’t only Oxford that has much further to go in ensuring access.

    This language reminded me of the Laura Spence affair, which produced so much heat and so little light in the Blair / Brown years and which may even have set back sensible conversations on broadening access to selective higher education.

    I wrote in a blog over the weekend that the Government are at risk of forgetting the benefit of education for education’s sake. That represents a political hole that Ministers should do everything to avoid as it could come to define them. Ill-thought through attacks on the most elite universities for their finely-grained admissions decisions represent a similar hole best avoided. Just imagine if the Minister had set out plans to tackle a really big access problem, like boys’ educational underachievement, instead. The Trump/Harvard spat is something any progressive government should seek to avoid, not copy.

    The latest chastisement is poorly formed for at least three specific reasons: the 6% is wrong in this context; the 33.8% number does not tell us what people tend to think it does; and Oxford’s current position of not closely monitoring the state/independent split is actually in line with the regulator’s guidance.

    1. 6% represents only half the proportion (12%) of school leavers educated at independent schools. In other words, the 6% number is a snapshot for the proportion of all young people in private schools right now; it tells us nothing about those at the end of their schooling and on the cusp of higher education.
    2. The 33.8% number is unhelpful because 20%+ of Oxford’s new undergraduates hail from overseas and they are entirely ignored in the calculation. If you include the (over) one in five Oxford undergraduate entrants educated overseas, the proportion of Oxford’s intake that is made up of UK private school kids falls from from something like one-third to more like one-quarter. This matters in part because the number of international students at Oxford has grown, meaning there are fewer places for home students of all backgrounds. In 2024, Oxford admitted 100 more undergraduate students than in 2006, but there were 250 more international students – and consequently fewer Brits. We seem to be obsessed with the backgrounds of home students and, because we want their money, entirely uninterested in the backgrounds of international students.
    3. The Office for Students dislikes the state/private metric. This is because of the differences within these two categories: in other words, there are high-performing state schools and less high-performing independent schools. Last year, when the University of Cambridge said they planned to move away from a simplistic state/independent school target, John Blake, the Director of Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students, confirmed to the BBC, ‘we do not require a target on the proportion of pupils from state schools entering a particular university.’ So universities have typically shied away from this measure in recent times. If Ministers think it is a key metric after all and if they really do wish to condemn individual institutions for their state/independent split, it would have made sense to have had a conversation with the Office for Students and to have encouraged them to put out new guidance first. At the moment, the Minister and the regulator are saying different things on an important issue of high media attention.

    Are independently educated pupils overrepresented at Oxbridge? Quite possibly, but the Minister’s stick/schtick, while at one with the Government’s wider negative approach to independent schools, seems a sub-optimal way to engineer a conversation on the issue. Perhaps Whitehall wanted a headline more than it wanted to get under the skin of the issue?

    we do not require a target on the proportion of pupils from state schools entering a particular university

    John Blake, Director for Fair access and participation

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  • Higher education postcard: New College, Oxford

    Higher education postcard: New College, Oxford

    Greetings from Oxford!

    As I write this blog, the spring statement is two days away, and I have no idea (although I can make a guess!) how Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ statement has gone down with people. Reeves studied for her first degree at New College Oxford, and so that’s where we’re going today.

    This being Oxford, New College is obviously a very old college. It was founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester. Formally – that is, when it’s in trouble with its mum – it’s called The College of St Mary of Winchester in Oxford. But even in 1379 this caused confusion. There was already another college dedicated to St Mary – the one snappily titled The Provost and Scholars of the House of the Blessed Mary the Virgin in Oxford, commonly called Oriel College, of the Foundation of Edward the Second of famous memory, sometime King of England.

    And so it became known as New College. Which name it retains to this day, despite (at the time of writing) there being thirty colleges of the university which are, by any reckoning, newer.

    Anyway, enough cavilling. The college was founded, and it had a name which at the time seemed reasonable. It’s founder, William of Wykeham, was a man of substance: as well as being Bishop of Winchester, he was Lord Chancellor to both King Edward III and Richard II. And he became thereby a rich man: by speculating on tax revenues, by income from the many church livings he had, and by the expropriation of the property of French religious houses looted during the Hundred Years’ War.

    He used these riches in part to fund education, and in the late 1370s was busy not only establishing an Oxford college, but also establishing Winchester School. (He’s the reason why Winchester old boys are called Wykehamists. I say old boys advisedly – Winchester School started admitting girls in 2022, so soon former pupils will be a more accurate description.)

    New College’s charter and statutes made it unusual. Admission was restricted to pupils from Winchester College – it formed a closed system. It also included provision for undergraduate students, one of the first at Oxford to do so. (And no, I’m not sure how you got to be a graduate student if you hadn’t been admitted somewhere to be an undergraduate first. My guess is that the medieval understandings of these terms is different to mine today.)

    The senior fellows (masters and above) taught the junior fellows (undergraduates). In this arrangement you can see the start of Oxford’s tutorial system; you can also see the practice of research students teaching undergraduate classes, which is common across the UK today, especially in research-focused universities.

    New College was also the first of the Oxford colleges to be built around a quadrangle, meaning that everything the fellows needed – places to sleep, eat, read and pray – were inside the college walls.

    The statutes and the physical constraints of the buildings kept New College small. The college’s history identifies two notable periods in the next few centuries. The first was the period of religious strife during the Tudor dynasty’s reign. New College was a hotbed of Catholic fervour, and its fellows staunch supporters of Queen Mary. And when Mary died, to be succeeded by the very protestant Elizabeth, many of its scholars fled to mainland Europe.

    In the civil war, Oxford was a significant place – the base of the King’s parliament for much of the war, it was also put under siege. The royalist defence of the city was, in part, organised by the then warden (head) of the college, Robert Pinke, who was acting vice chancellor at the time. When Oxford was threatened by parliamentarian forces, he went to parley with their commanders. One of whom, William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, was a New College man himself. But that didn’t stop him sending Pinke to London where he was arrested and held for a while. Alumni relations must have been tricky for a while after that.

    After the civil war, demand for higher education slowly grew, as the political settlement took hold, as the power of the monarch was slowly constrained by parliament, and as a middle class began to emerge. But New College was constrained by its statutes: it could only have 70 fellows, and they had to be Winchester College students. This meant that it went from being one of the larger colleges to being one of its smallest.

    Statute and ordinance changes in 1857 and 1883 did much to modernise the college. The requirement to be a Winchester school pupil was removed; the limit to the college’s size also. In 1868 fellows were permitted to marry, and the college introduced (with Balliol) the idea of intercollegiate lectures. The college grew, admitting more students, so that by 1900 nearly 300 undergraduates were registered.

    The 1900s also brought a couple of notable wardens. The first was William Archibald Spooner, for whom spoonerisms were named. Spooner, it is held, was prone to making amusing slips in his speech, such as asking “tell me, was it you or your brother who was killed in the war?” A particular meaning is swapping the first sounds of nearby words (“you have hissed my mystery lectures”). Dictionaries of quotations are full of spoonerisms. And, once you recognise that New College becomes cue, knowledge, it is possible to have some sympathy with the Reverend Spooner. The pen-portrait on the college website is certainly very fond of him, with good reason, I would say.

    The second notable warden was H A L Fisher. Fisher was President of the Board of Education in David Lloyd George’s wartime cabinet, from 1916 to 1922. He introduced legislation to require compulsory education for all children up to the age of 14, and also introduced enhanced pension arrangements for teachers. The Teachers’ Pension Scheme, rates for which currently cause headaches for more than a few university vice chancellors, is part of Fisher’s legacy. He retied from politics to take up the post of warden of New College, succeeding Spooner. Fisher died in 1940.

    There’s a fascinating, and slightly ghoulish, postscript to Fisher’s life. In 1943, as part of a wartime deception, British intelligence dressed up a corpse as a British marine, carrying apparently secret documents. Documents written to deceive. The body was left to wash ashore near Spain, the documents were shared by the then fascist Spanish government with nazi Germany. And the documents, which related to the site of allied landings in southern Europe, seem to have been believed. To make the deception more credible, the fictitious marine had to be dressed appropriately, and in wartime London good quality clothing was hard to find. And so Fisher’s woollen underwear was used.

    New College has an impressive list of alumni. As well as Rachel Reeves, the list includes politicians Tony Benn, Gyles Brandreth, and Hugh Gaitskell; academics Harold Laski and J B S Haldane; Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks; public intellectuals Neil MacGregor and Lucy Worsley. And, as the K-Tel hits compilation adverts used to say, many, many more.

    And here, as usual, is a jigsaw of the postcard for you.

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  • Higher education postcard: Oxford Brookes University

    Higher education postcard: Oxford Brookes University

    Greetings from Oxford!

    As reported in the Oxford Times, on 21 March 1865 – which by my count is very nearly 160 years ago – a meeting was held in Oxford. This led to the establishment of the Oxford School of Art, which opened its doors to students on 22 May that year.

    The initial curriculum included freehand drawing, shading in chalk, perspective and model drawing, figure drawing and anatomy, and painting in oil and watercolour. There were separate classes for men, women, and children under 15. Men and children paid two shillings a month (with discounts for larger periods paid up front); women paid four shillings per month. It isn’t clear to me why the fees were different, but as L P Hartley says, “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

    The school was initially housed on the ground floor of the Taylor Institute, a library for European languages within the University of Oxford. In 1868 or 1870 (sources differ) a school of science was added. But trouble was brewing. John Ruskin, who had recently been appointed as the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the university, did not approve of the way drawing was taught at the Oxford School of Art, and established the Ruskin School of Drawing to address this. The Ruskin School needed space, and so the School of Art and Science was moved to the basement of the Taylor Institute. The Ruskin School of Drawing is now, by the way, the Ruskin School of Art, and is the University of Oxford’s department of fine art. This tells you who won that argument in the long run!

    The move to the basement proved short lived. In 1888 chemistry labs in the Wesleyan school, Witney, were used by the school of science. In 1891 the school was taken over by the city council, following legislative changes enabling local authorities to fund education and to act as trustees, and was renamed the Oxford City Technical School. And in 1894 a new site, at St Ebbe’s in Oxford, was acquired for the school.

    The new site enabled growth in activities – so rapid that in 1899 the government Department of Art and Science declared it inadequate. Needless to say, the school remained on that site for another fifty years, albeit it also occupied other sites across the city.

    We now need to fast forward to 1928 and introduce a new character: John Henry Brookes.

    Brookes had trained as a silversmith, and was a part-time teacher of sculpture at the school. In 1928 he was appointed vice principal of the school of art (the schools of art and science were technically separate organisations); and in 1934 when the schools of art and science were formally merged to form the Schools of Technology, Art and Commerce, Brookes was appointed its first principal, and was to remain in that post until 1956.

    A pressing issue was accommodation, and in 1949 a 25 acre site in Headington was secured for the school. Planning permission was not granted until 1952, having been initially rejected in 1950, and it wasn’t until 1955 that the foundation stone for the new suite was laid. In 1952 a new name was also given: the school became the College of Technology, Art and Commerce. The Headington site was not formally opened until 1963, fourteen years after the site was acquired.

    In 1956 Brookes retired. His impact on the institution was clearly great. The college was once again renamed as the Oxford College of Technology; this and Brookes’ retirement were not, I believe, related events.

    In 1970 the college became Oxford Polytechnic and, in line with national policy which encouraged the amalgamation of smaller specialist colleges into more generalist institutions, it started to expand by incorporation. First came the Lady Spencer-Churchill College – this had been an emergency teacher training college, established in 1947. The Oxford School of Nursing joined in 1988; and in 1992 the Dorset House School of Occupational Therapy also joined the polytechnic. And also in 1992, the polytechnic became a university.

    Oxford Brookes University was the chosen name, in honour of John Henry Brookes. A few of the polytechnics had chosen names to commemorate local people – for example, Liverpool John Moores, Lanchester Polytechnic in Coventry – but I think Oxford Brookes is the only one named for a former principal. If you know different, please do say!

    In 1993 the university acquired Headington Hill Hall, formerly owned by Robert Maxwell, enabling an expansion of the Headington site. And in 2000 Westminster College, a methodist teacher training college, merged with the university.

    Being a university sharing a city with the University of Oxford can’t be easy: comparisons will mostly be tiresome. But here’s a surprising one: Oxford Brookes is arguably the best university in the UK at which to row (as in, propel a boat by oars, not argue) – see, for example, this report on the Henley regatta, 2023. Bet you didn’t know that!

    And here’s a jigsaw of the postcard, which I found more challenging than I expected.

    Happy 160th birthday, Oxford Brookes University!

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  • Higher education postcard: Christ Church, Oxford

    Higher education postcard: Christ Church, Oxford

    We’re well into advent, so it seems apposite to look at Christmas and, in the context of higher education postcards, a college named after its eponymous protagonist.

    We’ll start in 1002, which is well before there was a university at Oxford, let alone a college. King Æethelred had ordered a massacre of Danes within his kingdom, which took place on 13 November, St Brice’s day. Amidst the massacring, St Frideswide’s nunnery was destroyed (with, presumably, woeful consequences for the nuns). As a result of the massacre of the Danes – which Æethelred had apparently been advised would be an effective pre-emptive strike – the Danes, led by Sweyn Forkbeard, went on a bit of a rampage. This, by the way, was why Æethelred was the unrede – not “unready” but “badly advised”.

    Anyway, back to the main story. Æethelred had St Frideswide rebuilt as a priory, and under Henry I this became an Augustinian foundation. Which rubbed along with the people of Oxford until in 1524 it was suppressed, by Cardinal Wolsey. He used the proceeds from the suppression of other priories, including Wallingford Priory, to repurpose the priory’s buildings and establish Cardinal College.

    Which you may never have heard of, at least until now. And that’s because Wolsey had a spectacular fall from grace. Having failed to secure a divorce for psychopathic king Henry VIII, he was cast from the inner court. In 1530, ill with dysentery, he died in Nottingham as he was returning to London to face trial for treason.

    Now Henry was not the sort of king to let bygones be bygones. He suppressed Cardinal College in 1531, and the following year re-founded it. As King Henry VIII’s College. He wasn’t a modest man.

    And in 1546 he was a much richer man. Using the Protestant reformation as cover for personal aggrandisement, he broke from Rome, founded the Church of England with himself as its head (like I said, he wasn’t a modest man), and moved from dissolving priories to dissolving monasteries – far richer pickings. This enabled him to re-found King Henry VIII’s College as Christ Church College, and simultaneously made the priory church into the cathedral of the Church of England diocese of Oxford. The college’s full formal name reflects all of this: the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford of the Foundation of King Henry the Eighth.

    The buildings started by Wolsey were completed, and added to. Christoper Wren designed the Tom Tower, the one on the card. This holds the Great Tom bell, which is rung 101 times every night at 9pm Oxford time (yes, of course it has its own time zone), or about five minutes past 9pm Greenwich Mean Time.

    Let’s fast forward to 1642. Supporters of Parliament were at war with supporters of the king; armies had been raised. A pitched battle had been fought at Edgehill; it was indecisive, enabling the king – Charles I, or Charles as he was known at the time – to continue his march on London. Realising London could not be taken by force, Charles retreated to Oxford, and made his base there. (In the meantime, parliamentarian forces had arrested the university’s vice chancellor, John Prideaux, an event which must, even today, give hope to people across higher education.)

    Charles set up shop in Christ Church. He used the deanery as his royal apartments, and the college’s great hall became the meeting place for the parliament. (Parliament had not been dissolved before the outbreak of the war. Charles summoned it to Oxford. Most of the Lords attended, and about a third of the Commons. It met from January to April 1644 and again from October 1644 to March 1645. What did it do? We don’t really know, as its records were burnt in 1646 before parliamentary forces retook the city.)

    Christ Church’s alumni include thirteen British Prime Ministers, although one of the them, William Pulteney, first Earl of Bath, held office for two (2) days only, and whether he actually ever was Prime Minister is now disputed by historians. The parliamentary history records that after his two-day prime ministership he “spent the rest of his life in retirement, consoling himself with the pleasures of avarice, to which he had always been notoriously, indeed scandalously, addicted.”

    Alumni also include many politicians of ministerial rank (for example, Nigel Lawson, David Willetts, Chris Skidmore); monarchs (including Edward VII, although he transferred to Trinity Cambridge); scientists (such as Robert Hooke, Martin Ryle); a whole gaggle of top-drawer philosophers (such as John Locke, Freddie Ayer, Daniel Dennett, John Rawls, and a personal favourite, Gilbert Ryle); literary figures including Lewis Carroll, W H Auden, and John Ruskin; and, perhaps best of all, both Flanders and Swann.

    There are a few additional points to cover before I wrap up this account.

    Firstly, an epic disagreement between the former dean of Christ Church and the college. This long statement by the college sets out one side of the issue.

    Secondly, what a wonderful set of buildings! They’ve inspired the buildings of the University of Galway, and have also, apparently, featured in the Harry Potter films, although as your correspondent has never seen any of these we have to take this on trust.

    And finally, Christ Church’s arms: these are Cardinal Wolsey’s arms; properly described they are Sable, on a cross engrailed argent, between four leopards’ faces azure a lion passant gules; on a chief or between two Cornish choughs proper a rose gules barbed vert and seeded or. And its always good to see a chough, whether from Cornwall or anywhere else.

    Here’s a jigsaw of the postcard, to give you a bit of festive diversion; and a bonus jigsaw of the college kitchen, which is a bit harder, should you need an excuse to spend more time secluded with your computer over the festive season.

    And that’s it for 2024’s higher education postcards. I’ll be back in January with more; in the meantime, a very merry Christmas to you all.

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