With the apparently surprising news that Oxford Brookes University is now performing worse at meeting its inclusiveness targets than the University of Oxford, it might feel like now is not the time to ask how - or even should - state-school students try to get into Oxbridge. 

Oxford Brookes fell far shorter in its outcomes (68 per cent state-school intake in 2018-19, versus its benchmark of 91 per cent state-school entrants) than its far fancier neighbour (61 per cent and 73 per cent respectively). 

This is great PR for Oxford, at a time when it is desperate to appear open to students from state schools. 

But I have a question. I see what Oxbridge is getting out of the equality-and-diversity drive to get more students from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds walking across their hallowed quads. But what do those students get out of it in return? 

Understanding the pressures

Or rather: does Oxbridge even understand what those students need, who they are and what pressure they face that their traditional, privately educated population does not? 

If they do, they need to create structures and cultures that encourage access. Otherwise, they are wasting those students’ - and maybe schools’ - time.

Last year, my niece applied to study architecture at Cambridge. She is a bright and confident young woman, from a middle-class, educationally orientated background. Her (state) school is high achieving, and likes to get its students into Oxbridge. 

She was also a mixed-race state-school student from an inner-city area. She was encouraged to use the Target Oxbridge programme. This aims to help black and mixed-race students from African and Caribbean communities increase their chances of getting into Oxbridge. 

The novelist Zadie Smith is the programme’s patron, and says on its website: “Going to Cambridge changed my life. Nothing I have done would have been possible without it.” 

Dropping the bombshell

All of which is great (although I am not sure of the usefulness of telling young people from minorities - or from any traditionally disadvantaged background - that things won’t be possible in their lives unless they go to Oxbridge, but hey). 

My niece turned up to a day in which she and a group of other young people of colour, from a full range of state-school backgrounds, were shown around the university. All went well. These were all intelligent students whose schools were considered Oxbridge material. 

Then the bombshell dropped. Students at Cambridge (Oxford too) are not allowed to work during term-time. 

That’s right. In 2020, full-time undergraduates are being told that they are not allowed to work. How are we feeling about the sincerity of Oxbridge’s equality-and-diversity agenda now?

Now, to repeat, my niece is from an education-orientated, middle-class background. But she, as a 17-year-old from a state school, standing with a group of black and mixed-race kids, could see the flaw in the plan in a way that the lofty Cambridge dons could not. 

After all, there is a strong intersection between being from a minority-ethnic community and having a low family income in this country. 

So, the flaw is this. Poor kids being told they cannot work if they come to this prestigious university are being told very clearly: this place will not work for you. It will not understand your problems. Or your parents’ anxieties about money. In other words: this place is not for you.

I decided to check this out. A candidate for Cambridge helpfully asked precisely the question on the studentroom.co.uk forum: Does Cambridge really not allow part-time jobs during term-time? 

Lessons in unthinking privilege

The responses are fascinating, as they are object lessons in unthinking privilege: “The term-time workload is pretty intense. But short terms also mean that accommodation is relatively cheap. The cost of living at Cambridge can be lower than other universities.” 

Yeah, well, define “cheap”. Cheap is not telling a kid from a council estate that it’s totally fine not to work while racking up literally a lifetime’s worth of debt. 

To say that is to misunderstand fundamentally how debt, and managing debt, defines lives at different rungs of the social ladder from those who run Oxbridge. (Like those middle-class people who say it’s better to eat little meat but to buy the absolute best, not understanding that to many people, the idea of a £15 organic chicken is enough to bring them out in anxiety hives.) 

Another student suggests you can work on the side, as long as you don’t get caught.

And right there is the trick to privilege. It gives you the confidence to believe things won’t go wrong. For you. What if you didn’t grow up with that confidence? What if you don’t even know it exists? 

Again, all this leaves non-traditional Oxbridge applicants with the deep-seated sense that Oxbridge cannot be the place for them. And parents, teachers and other education workers should consider whether or not they’re right.

Until Oxbridge can come up with structures and attitudes that actually are of meaningful use to the sorts of students their PR departments want them to recruit, maybe those students will find better universities for them. 

That’s right: better than Oxbridge.

Oh, and my niece went to Manchester. She loves it there. And I suspect it probably loves her. I wonder if the same could have been said of Cambridge.

Neil Blackmore worked for several years in HE communications and FE governance, before becoming a full-time writer. His novel, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle, will be published on 30 April. He tweets as @NeilBlackmo