Fairer for All: Towards a centralised model of admissions and access at Oxford and Cambridge
Why centralising admissions at Oxford and Cambridge would be ‘fairer for all’.
A new report published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) calls for undergraduate admissions and access work at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to be centralised, arguing this would improve fairness, transparency and efficiency.
The report, Fairer for All: Towards a Centralised Model of Admissions and Access at Oxford and Cambridge (HEPI Debate Paper 47) by Charlotte Armstrong, finds the current collegiate system – while valuable for the student experience – creates significant barriers for applicants, teachers and schools navigating the admissions process.
The report reveals stark disparities in access and widening participation funding between colleges. Freedom of Information request data show the highest-spending colleges allocate 12 times more to widening participation and outreach than the lowest-budgeting colleges, with some colleges allocating less money than others, despite having larger endowments.
According to the report, these differences contribute to an uneven national landscape of support for prospective applicants and risk disadvantaging some students with the greatest potential, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds
Key findings:
- Huge variation in outreach funding: The highest-spending colleges allocate around 12 times more to access and widening participation than the lowest-spending colleges, leading to uneven support across the country.
- Inconsistent admissions processes: At the University of Cambridge, grade entry requirements, interview formats and offer levels vary between colleges, meaning applicants can face different outcomes depending on where they apply.
- A complex and opaque system: The collegiate structure makes it difficult for applicants and teachers to understand and navigate the admissions process, particularly in schools with limited capacity.
- Fragmented outreach provision: Access work is split across colleges, leading to duplication in some geographical areas and gaps in others.
- Poor institutional coordination: College outreach activity is not beholden to institutional Access and Participation Plans but instead operates on a trust-based system.
The report concludes that these features risk disadvantaging capable applicants – especially those without access to detailed guidance on navigating the system.
To address these challenges, the report recommends a phased programme of reform. It first calls for greater standardisation of admissions practices across colleges – removing the current inconsistencies in interviewing style and grade offer level, among others. Following this stage, the report calls for the introduction of a fully centralised system in which applications are assessed by departments rather than colleges.
The report also recommends centralising access and outreach work within each University, supported by pooled contributions from colleges, to ensure more consistent and targeted provision.
The report notes that elements of centralisation already exist within current practice and argues these could be expanded to deliver a more consistent, transparent and equitable admissions system.
Charlotte Armstrong, Policy Manager at HEPI and author of the report, said:
Oxford and Cambridge’s admissions systems are complex and uneven. Variation between colleges, both with regards to admissions and outreach work create an inconsistent and unfair system. At present, factors such as which college a student applies to can shape their experience of the process – and potentially their chances of success. That should not be the case.
Similarly, the variation in resources and buy-in between colleges with regards to access and widening participation work means that different areas of the country are receiving different levels of support. Centralising admissions and outreach would help ensure that all strong candidates are considered fairly, while maintaining the benefits of the collegiate system once students arrive.
Notes for editors
- HEPI was founded in 2002 to influence the higher education debate with evidence. We are UK-wide, independent and non-partisan. We are funded by organisations and higher education institutions that wish to support vibrant policy discussions, as well as through our own events. HEPI is a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity.
- The author of the new report, Charlotte Armstrong, is Policy Manager at the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), where she is responsible for managing the HEPI blog and supporting the Institute’s programme of policy analysis and engagement. Before joining HEPI, Charlotte worked on access and widening participation as School’s Liaison Officer for Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge.
Comments
Jonathan Alltimes says:
What is fair? This yet another argument for bureacratic standardisation, so beloved of ministers, university management, Universities UK, the OfS, and its predecessors. It finds it origins in the idea of statistical process control for resource allocation, first applied by the 1986 Research Assessment Exercise, where sources of variation in the quality output are eliminated by controlling production processes. It is a false analogy for higher education. It is another example of the erosion of the distinctives of higher education built on the idiosyncratic knowledge, specialism, character of academics, and their relationships and organization, which students encounter as persons and not widgets: higher education is not a good or a service it is the formation of an identity for employment by the academic communities of the guild. Colleges should retain their semi-autonomy to assess and select students in discussions with departments. Centralised recruitment sounds efficient and fairer, but it could be used against the colleges. The best route is to publish data and for the colleges to defend the biases in their selection for state-funded students.
Oxford is the last bastion of the guild and colleges for control of the university. Cambridge gave in decades ago.
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Dennis Sherwood says:
Figure 3 of this most excellent report presents a summary of the admission requirements to read English at the various Cambridge colleges, noting that some colleges “sometimes ask for higher grades or an A* in a particular subject”. For these colleges, presumably those candidates awarded the required A* can take up their offers, whilst those awarded an A cannot.
With that in mind, may I draw attention to a blog dated 14 August 2023 (https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2023/08/14/how-reliable-are-exam-grades/), written by the eminent and authoritative Mary Curnock Cook CBE, presenting evidence, from Ofqual research, that the grades awarded for many subjects are “within ±1 grade of the ‘definitive’ grade”. For some subjects, however, notably English Literature and History, around 95% to 98% are within “±1 grade”, with the remainder two or more grades adrift.
This implies that a candidate, in any subject, awarded an A might have been awarded an A* had the corresponding script been marked by a subject senior examiner, and vice versa.
Given this uncertainty, how fair is it that these colleges adopt the policy of “A*, good; A, bad”?
Charlotte Armstrong’s paper is surely important in recommending how Oxbridge admissions might be ‘fairer for all’ for the relevant eligible population of students.
But surely there is a far bigger, and more important, issue about admissions in general – the false distinction universally applied between any GCSE or A level grade and an adjacent grade, when the truth is that all grades are in fact reliable to ±1 grade at best.
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Jonathan Alltimes says:
That’s why entrance exams and interviews are required, so the universities can introduce personal judgement into the selection process, which is nigh impossible when processing hundreds of applicant.
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