Distinction

So, do we suspect that the 80 percent who did not mention their university attended the University of Lincoln (or similar) — or that they are merely the upper 4/5ths of those who attended Oxford and Cambridge, and thus, had more class than to announce their alma mater?

Was that based on some prior estimate of what fraction of contributors would have an Oxbridge degree? (Without that, I can see how you could deduce “those who talk about their degree are much more likely to have an Oxbridge one”, but not “Those with Oxbridge degrees are very likely to talk about them”.)

“Attended” being a euphemism for “did not receive a degree” or perhaps even “flunked out”? Thus, “educated at Eton and Oxford, he could not cut the mustard among the global competition at Harvard, and then returned to the cushy confines of the old family firm, where he traded on his name for the rest of his working life.”

… nobody who does it, doesn’t talk about it. In defence of my fellow non-owners, the difference is that you can’t help talking about not having an idiot box, because as soon as you turn in to work on a Monday morning you’re bombarded with “Did you see…?” and if you don’t at some stage explain that you never see anything, you end up looking willfully mardy. OTOH, nobody at work has ever asked me if, or where, I went to college.

Why does this survey have anything to do with ‘People who have degrees from Oxford or Cambridge are more likely to boast about them’, and not ‘People who have degrees from Oxford or Cambridge are more likely to become skilled writers and intelligent commentators’? What am I missing?

Tim Rutherford-Johnson:

What am I missing?

This bit:

20 percent mentioned a university, and 85 percent of the time it was Oxford or Cambridge.

doug,

I’m no defender of OXford and Cambridge, and I’m sure they have their share of dolts who got there throguh clever coahcing etc, but no-one gets in anymore except on academic merit, quite narrowly understood as success in exam results. I don’t think any American university is as competitively meritocratic for its undergrad population as all top level UK universities.

So, for example, I find it highly unlikely that a member of the royal family will ever again go to Oxford or Cambridge unless either they slip in the rankings or they do something about their gene pool.

The classic poltical BBC sitcom Yes, Minister (which taught me my most imporant lessons about UK politics) had a scene between two of the most senior civil servants where they are discussing elitism in recruitment. Not true, we are open to good graduates from the best universities – both of them… Since this was a BBC show it was a double joke since the Oxon elite have been charged with holding a higher percentage of influential places in the Corporation over the years too.

Blackadder: “I knew she was a spy… when talking to her, I referred to the three great English universities – Oxford, Cambridge and Hull. Now, a real Englishwoman would have known that only two of these are truly great universities.”
Melchett: “Quite right. Oxford’s a complete dump.”

How about these recent appointments to Permanent Secretaries of Whitehall departments:

Bill Jeffrey was born in 1948 and educated at Allan Glen’s School, Glasgow and Glasgow University.

Sir Richard Mottram was born in 1946 and was educated at King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys, Birmingham and at the University of Keele.

Leigh Lewis was born in 1951 and was educated at Harrow County Grammar School for Boys and Liverpool University.

And as for this Nobel laureate in 2003 from Britain, his father was a gas fitter and he failed his 11 plus exam:

Sir Peter Mansfield Mansfield left school aged 15 and worked as a printer before joining the army. He only entered academic life after studying part-time to complete his school exams. He then earned a bachelor degree and doctorate at the University of London. After a spell in the United States he started work at the University of Nottingham, eventually becoming Emeritus Professor of Physics there.
http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/people/BG.0153/

What are things coming to?

Chris @ 16,

I think you’ll find that Bernard went to Cambridge and Hacker went to LSE. I suspect that you may have been misled by the Blackadder reference – sneering at “Bernard”s is a convention of Richard Curtis’s not one of Jay and Lynn.

This posted to demonstrate the tribal dedication to pendantry that I share with Bernard :-)

“Boston” is bad, but not as bad as:
“Harvard College” (vomit), or this exchange, which i participated in on a plane with a hideous undergraduate:
“Where do you go to school?”
“MIT. How about you?”
“Oh, just a little way up Mass Ave.”
Clearly he was referring to evening classes at the Central Square Y.

“It’s even worse when Yale grads say they went to school “in New Haven.””

That really does seem to happen all the time.

PS: The “….” at the end of Dean’s answer is an ellipsis. I cut out the rest of his answer. It’s not as if Anderson Cooper cut him off after his reference to college in New Haven.

“I don’t think any American university is as competitively meritocratic for its undergrad population as all top level UK universities.”

Over 70% of this year’s freshman class at the University of Texas at Austin got in because they graduated in the top 10% of their high school class. It’s a pretty meritocratic system, because it gives students from poorer schools districts a decent chance to compete with students from more affluent (and the affluent private) schools.

I find myself telling people I went to college in Pasadena. But that’s mainly because if I say I went to Caltech, Californians always seem to follow up with, “Oh, which one, San Luis Obispo or Pomona?”

Question being, why does it seem that there’s no equivalent culture of Princeton students doing the geographic dodge? Is it because you can’t say the town name without giving away the school (more or less)? So you have to say the state name and nobody wants to talk about living in New Jersey?

(Actually, under certain circumstances I do say New Jersey, and I do get away with it – because I say it only to people who don’t know much about the academic landscape and therefore would be unduly impressed by Princeton and it would be a big to-do [leading me to have to specify that many of the undergrads I’ve had in precepts were really dumb as nails] and then the person would ever after be on the lookout for me to tuck my shirt into my underwear on the assumption that people who go to Princeton must be so smart that they just can’t function socially, which is a notion of intelligence that I just despise. Can’t function socially? Not so smart, then, are you? But anyway, point being that under certain circumstances you can get away with saying New Jersey without people either assuming you mean Princeton [on account of how it’s not a well-established fact that if you say New Jersey you mean Princeton in the same way that saying New Haven means Yale] or following up.)

I’ve told plenty of people that I went to college in Massachusetts, but this after lots of experiences with having to specify location after simply saying “Smith College”. Of course, when I do say Massachusetts, most assume a Boston-area school even though there are quite a few schools to the west of that area in the state.

As for Princeton (where I got my grad degree), there are times I say New Jersey especially in a context where it doesn’t seem to matter what particular school and the conversation is more about geography. When talking to academics, I usually just say the school’s name.