Monday, April 11, 2011

David Cameron, Oxford & Race

Oxford University has hit back at the prime minister after he said only one black UK student began a course there in 2009 and called it "disgraceful".
The university said David Cameron had been "incorrect and highly misleading", and that at least 26 black British undergraduates started that year.
Mr Cameron was answering questions about the effect of raised tuition fees on poorer students.
Downing Street said the figure of one black Caribbean student was accurate.
You have to feel for Oxford University, this is like trying to argue with a 5 year old. Why not simply admit he was mistaken instead of transparently shifting the goalposts to defend a different assertion to the one which was actually made?

It shows that David Cameron is on most things except public spending, not particularly conservative and his basic assumptions are similar to those of David Lammy- whose figures he was using:

- Cherry pick a number that shows a racial disparity.
- Make no effort to investigate why it exists.
- Blame an institution with, no real evidence.

The sad thing is he is accusing real people of doing something vile, in order to win votes even though even a cursory look at the figures shows that Oxbridge has no real case to answer. Of the 30000+ candidates who receive 3 As at A-Level (which is generally the minimum for the two universities in question), around 300 are black. In other words around 1% of eligible British candidates are black which is pretty much reflected in the actual ethnic make up of Oxford and Cambridge.

5 comments:

JuliaM said...

"It shows that David Cameron is on most things except public spending, not particularly conservative..."

Even on public spending, he's not particularly conservative, having left it up to government departments councils how they cut their staffing.

With the inevitable result that they cut front-line services while shoring up their backroom empires.

Anonymous said...

Even on public spending, he's not particularly conservative, having left it up to government departments councils how they cut their staffing.

Well it depends on whether you think delegating authority is more in line with conservative principles than micro managing to make sure they eliminate the roles conservative's disapprove of.

For example, I think that the Baker reforms of education creating a national curriculum undermined local autonomy and made it easier for (a) the educational establishment and (b) the returning local government, to do real harm. That he did it to restore traditional teaching methods was ultimately irrelevant.

Conservatives do not believe that they hold the key to successful central planning. They believe the people affected should have decisions taken as locally as possible. Local decisions have two benefits: the mistakes are eliminated sooner; multiple solutions are more likely to come up with better ideas than a centrally directed one size fits all.

Anonymous said...

Of the 30000+ candidates who receive 3 As at A-Level (which is generally the minimum for the two universities in question), around 300 are black. In other words around 1% of eligible British candidates are black which is pretty much reflected in the actual ethnic make up of Oxford and Cambridge.

The problem is egalitarians believe that inequality of outcome is prima facie evidence of discrimination. So the fact that the ratio black youths to A-Levels is far lower than the white equivalent is proof. They should get approx 10% of the places because that is the relative size in the population.

Ross said...

Julia- I'm inclined to agree with the first Anon- the alternative is micromanaging council budgets which is unworkable.

Sarah AB said...

I agree that the criticisms were unjustified. As someone who works at a post 92 I had thought the Government was picking on us rather - but it seems they just have it in for universities generally!