The difference is most stark in college admission. The admission discourse here seems to be racially based — such as the recent ‘Prince’ article complaining about the small size of the Jewish population at Princeton compared to other Ivies (Oct. 23, ‘Choosing the chosen people’). But in no English university would your ethnicity or religion play any role in admission. I suspect that this is because the focus for our university admission shifts to trying to compensate for social, educational and economic disadvantage — regardless of skin colour.
While Princeton considers applicants’ grades in the context of their school, British universities turn it into an exact science, publishing tables with a multiplier for every high school in the country so that they can judge exactly how much Bs and Cs from a failing inner-city public school are worth when compared to a string of As from the top private schools, with an online database of how socially deprived every postcode (think a more precise British ZIP code) is. As to need-blind admission, which I understand some U.S. universities don’t practice, no British university really has to worry about whether their students can pay fees: The national government gives a full, low-interest loan for fees and living expenses to every U.K. resident, as well as a further grant for students on low income, which more than covers my accommodation and food while I’m at Oxford.
On the other hand, it shocks me — though perhaps this is due to my socialist British sensibilities — how little financial support is available to American undergraduates. If a university as large as Brown still requires the poorest to pay $2,000 a year out of their own pocket toward their education, and low-income students can’t afford to take part in extracurriculars even at Princeton, how much worse must it be at colleges that can’t provide generous funding packages? The tax on financial aid for room and board — another difference from the British system — also strikes me as somewhat disturbing, by definition hitting the poorest in society. Is this really the best way to achieve the American Dream?
If the goal of Princeton admission is that the underprivileged shouldn’t be disadvantaged, then perhaps it’s time to start focusing less on race and more on socioeconomics. Princeton’s admission policy certainly achieves racial diversity, and ethnic minorities are a lot more visible here than at Oxford — though that’s more due to black British being 2 percent of the population, rather than the African-American 12 percent — but racial diversity isn’t the same thing as helping the underprivileged. In a decade’s time, Sasha and Malia Obama may be competing for admission against a poor white kid from a New Jersey public school. In that case, is an affirmative action policy really reaching the fairest outcome, or is it just giving more advantages to the advantaged?
The great problem with British university admission policies is that, though our funding packages mean that there’s no financial barrier to going to the best universities, there is a social class barrier — a sense that Oxford and Cambridge “aren’t for the likes of us,” which discourages many students outside the upper and upper-middle classes from aiming high. America, on the other hand, lacks that class consciousness, which gives you an amazing chance to solve inequality. If colleges spent half as much time encouraging and supporting low-income students — from all races, religions and backgrounds — as you did on racial affirmative action, and the national government directed its budget toward financial aid instead of Bridges to Nowhere, you could easily have the fairest and most equal higher education system in the world. The opportunity is there if you want it.
Rob Day is an exchange student from Oxford, where he majors in ancient history. He can be reached at rkday@princeton.edu.
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