A Cambridge college’s plan to target students from some of the country’s most elite private schools has struck a nerve. As reported by the Guardian, Trinity Hall justified the move by claiming that a focus only on “greater fairness in admissions” could “unintentionally result in reverse discrimination”. Alumni LinkedIn feeds and social media threads quickly filled with outrage, as many Cambridge graduates interpreted the move as class prejudice rearing its ugly head once again. One angry fellow at the college said it amounted to a “slap in the face” for their state-educated undergraduates.
It brought back memories of the sneering snobbery at Oxford when the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, then principal of Lady Margaret Hall, introduced a new foundation year. “We don’t do hard luck stories,” sniffed one academic. “Oxford doesn’t do remedial education,” complained another.
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