The relentless levelling of British universities continues. The latest sign is a report from Oxford where the university is getting ready to crack down on colleges that make their students work too hard. Some of them apparently have to write as many as three essays a week and most work at least 40 hours a week, some longer, which is apparently twice as much as places like Northumbria University.
Many commentators have mocked the poor fragile students who cannot cope with with a fifty hour week. After all, that is nothing to what they can expect if they start legal, medical or research careers.
Something else that is a bit disturbing is that Oxford students apparently need so much time to do that amount of work. One would expect the admissions system at Oxford to select academically capable students who can do as little work as those at Northumbria and still perform much better. If Oxford students can only stay ahead by working so hard doesn't this mean that Oxford is failing to find the most intelligent students and has to make do with diligent mediocrities instead?
The villain of the piece is probably the abolition of the essay based Oxford entrance exam in 1995 (Cambridge abolished theirs in 1986) which threw the burden of selection onto A level grades and interviews. The subsequent wholesale inflation of A level grades has meant that an undue importance is now given to interviews which have been shown repeatedly to be of limited value as a selection tool, particularly at places like Oxbridge where the interviewers have sometimes been biased and eccentric.
So Oxford and Cambridge are now planning to reintroduce written admission tests. They had better do it quickly if they want their graduates to compete with the Gaokao-hardened students from the East.
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