Debate: Why I wouldn’t hire an Oxbridge graduate
By Sam Richardson
Proposition
Let’s get two things straight: yes I am a hypocritical bastard, and I may indeed be writing myself out of a job. However this isn’t an attack on posh people, red trousers and the like, just a little cynical reflection as I slide closer to the looming abyss of real life.
Imagine yourself as the business big dog, sitting opposite an eager Oxbridge graduate looking for a job. They got a solid 2:1, are smartly dressed, and pretty normal in every way. So you ask them: what makes you better than other universities? “Essays!” they shout “I do loads and loads of essays!” Big deal.
Who writes essays in real life anyway? It’s one of those skills that are disappointingly useless; in the real world, even if you write for a job, your boss isn’t going to be impressed by your ability to churn out 2000 words in the half-hour before the board meeting. In fact that sort of thing is rather looked down on.
Returning to our hypothetical situation, the struggling Oxbridge applicant launches into an earnest discussion of Proust, Marx or some crap like that. You roll your eyes and stare at the ceiling; you couldn’t care less. Acting intelligent used to be all the rage, in those heady days before the banking crisis. But since people found out that Oxbridge-educated bankers had been pretending to make money out of thin air, talking b*llocks has never been so unpopular.
This clearly brings us onto tutorials. Any Oxbridge student knows the tried and tested method: just say ‘yes’ to everything and count down the seconds on your watch. I tried this on my work experience, after being ominously called for a ‘chat’ by my boss. The poor man got so frustrated he had to take a fag break. I can understand why.
At this point in the job interview the desperate applicant whips out their secret weapon – a minor position in Lawsoc! Triumph! Or not. Because you, the business highflyer, yourself very possibly educated at these universities, will know from your student days that Lawsoc (or, let’s be honest, most student societies) do bugger all. Persuading an obscenely wealthy law firm to haemorrhage some money in your general direction is not ‘negotiating’, just as buying some sushi, putting it in a room, and getting people to eat it is only ‘event management’ in the very loosest definition of the term.
Thus we come to the crux of the matter: anyone who’s been to Oxbridge knows that our much-vaunted superiority is a complete scam. It’s only accumulated goodwill that keeps the whole bloody charade going: history graduates hire more history graduates, because they know no-one else will give them a job, probably for good reason (a historian myself, I should know.) For our own sakes, let’s hope no-one reads this article and in makes no impression on the real world whatsoever. Knowing the OxStu, that shouldn’t be too difficult.
Sam Richardson (my blog http://thelondonmob.wordpress.com/)
Rebuttal
I’m not sure how I can argue this without sounding like a self-satisfied, narcissistic douchebag…but here goes.
Yes, Sam, we write a whole load of essays. Yes, essays aren’t all that useful as they stand as an entity in themselves. But it isn’t about the essays themselves, it’s about what the essays represent. Okay, so I may have just come out of a Philosophy tute, but I have a point. I could emphasise the analytical skills that we supposedly gain through multiple essay writing, but let’s be fair, there is little analysis in rephrasing arguments.
Back in the 19th Century Oxford took on the most impressive students, let them fuck around for three years, and then sent them on their merry way, letting their ‘Oxford education’ speak for itself. Sadly, no more. But compare the Oxbridge workload to, let’s say, that of a sports science student at Hull. Anyone who has visited friends even at the likes of Bristol and Edinburgh can tell you that the level of time and effort spent on their degree per term is equivalent to what we do in around two weeks. The Oxbridge graduate knows the value of (hard) work, we do it all the time.
While our Oxbridge education may not exactly prepare us for all the shocks of ‘real working life’, it certainly does so more than many other places might. Is sleeping in until 3pm every day an employable trait? Are we prepared for the real world if we spend countless hours watching Made in Chelsea on 4od? I may not need to know whether or not I am a brain-in-a-vat in real life, but at least the nine-to-five nature of working life will not present me with a huge change in my lifestyle and, if anything, may be a welcome relief.
And let’s say you aren’t particularly hard-working. You’ve spent the last two days in bed catching up on the exploits of Caggie and all her friends. Well, then can only be one reason why you are still here – you can bullshit – and if that isn’t a useful life-skill, I don’t know what is. Let’s face it, it got us in to this hallowed institution, and now that we have perfected it through hours of tutorials, it will help us a lot in life.
We may not really be superior in our intelligence, nor in our breeding. We certainly aren’t superior in our looks. But what really sets Oxbridge students apart in the job-search process is that we’ve already been ‘filtered’, it saves employers hours of looking through hundreds of identical CVs by enforcing this arbitrary mark of “excellence”. And for all of our sakes, let’s not ruin the illusion.
Sakina Haider
Grace
16/05/2012 at 12:15
Well, this is the worst article I’ve read all day… If you’re trying to be funny, you’ve failed quite spectacularly. If you’re trying to be cool and cynical, you just look like a bitter, self-loathing idiot, and if you’re trying to make a serious point you’ve gone about it entirely the wrong way.
May I congratulate you, however, on managing to get something so utterly dreadful published.
Alexia
16/05/2012 at 13:05
Grace please do relax! I personally thought it was quite an interesting idea and perhaps one that sadly does have a ring of truth around it..!!
Crafter
16/05/2012 at 15:37
It’s not just essays, but a wonderful education with unparalleled opportunities! This is rather cynical and it would be funny had it all been truthful. Next time, try writing about the truth – I’m sure your actual experiences are funnier than made-up ones. (Or maybe not. I’d just like less hyperbole). And FYI, pretentiousness is everyone’s guilty pleasure…
Earnest Edward
16/05/2012 at 21:42
*it
Sir Alan
17/05/2012 at 11:58
Dear Sam,
No-one reads the OxStu, but everyone Googles you before you come in for a job interview.
You’re f***ed.
Xxx,
Sir Alan
Sam
17/05/2012 at 14:22
Just in reply to your comments: the piece is neither a joke nor a manifesto – it simply pokes fun, in admittedly a rather sarcastic fashion, at the reputation of the university as seen by its own students. If it makes you uncomfortable this might be because, as Alexia said, it has ‘a ring of truth around it’ – but of course there’s no shortage of hyperbole, and this has clearly drawn people into the article. There’s really no need to get angry.
As I recall ‘Sir Alan’ [Sugar] claimed he wouldn’t hire a history graduate anyway…
Thanks for the feedback!
Bemused
17/05/2012 at 16:20
An ill-thoughtout, hyperbolic comment that has decided on its opinion and spits outrage with every syllable, positively dribbling rage and righteous indignation while entirely failing to engage with the content of the article is rated up. Standard.
O wait hell no. This is the OxStu not the Daily Fail.
Lets hope people are so Oxford they’re liking it ironically.
Steven
17/05/2012 at 17:00
I found it quite funny, it’s clearly not meant to be too serious.
“Persuading an obscenely wealthy law firm to haemorrhage some money in your general direction is not ‘negotiating’, just as buying some sushi, putting it in a room, and getting people to eat it is only ‘event management’ in the very loosest definition of the term.”
That amused me anyway, and surely has a ring of truth about it.
It helps if
17/05/2012 at 18:28
you read it in Sam’s voice
Dagmar
23/05/2012 at 01:58
Neither of these is that funny
I am confused...
23/05/2012 at 13:19
“The piece is [not] a joke – it simply pokes fun, in admittedly a rather sarcastic fashion, at the reputation of the university as seen by its own students.”
Ahem. As my username explains.
It's grim up North (London)
24/05/2012 at 12:19
The article isn’t a joke, it’s serious AND true. The arts students here, if not the scientists, are mainly the product of privilege and ,whether they are or not, not far smarter than the average person.
Disappointed Newcomer
05/06/2012 at 02:06
This comment section is the first I have looked at on this website, and I’m really quite shocked. I hope this is rare.
Christian Shepherd
16/06/2012 at 13:49
Hi all,
I just thought that I might take a shot at defending Sam from some criticism.
At the heart of his comment piece there is, in my opinion, an interesting question, which is whether there is a conflict of interests between an intellectually elitist academic institution and those of its undergraduates that do not wish to go into academia.
This might be reading a lot into Sam’s article, but to avoid setting up a straw man I think it is a good idea to ignore the hyperbole that is, unfortunately, necessary for a comment article and instead look at the core issue of whether Oxbridge does the best job of preparing undergraduates for the “real world” out of all British universities.
Even if we think that it does do this, which I assume most of us do or we wouldn’t be here, I think we have to admit it does so somewhat coincidentally. We are all acquainted with those people who are profoundly brilliant at their subject, but could not broker a business deal to save their lives. I would suggest that Oxbridge would have no problem filling all their places with such people if sufficient numbers existed.
I would perhaps conclude that people should hire Oxbridge graduates, but that this is not a testament to the universities’ educational system. It is instead a consequence of putting a large number of driven, competitive, interested and intelligent people together in the same limited environment.
So well done Sam for making an interesting point and I personally don’t think that anyone should hold it against you that you did so in a comment article, since it is unlikely that anyone would have taken the slightest bit of notice if you had written it in the same style that I wrote this response!
Cheers.
Anonymous
16/01/2013 at 19:07
May i add that just because you have an academic head, and more accuratley, are willing (by force, influence, or desire) to bleed over the pursuit of academia does not make you more intelligent than anyone else; memorizing, re -itterating a systematic education faster than anyone else because you are fortunate enough to enjoy the freedom of making it a priority for yourself certainly does not. From my experience, experiential wisdom gained from life does, virtue does as it is useful. Sam, your article is humble and if you continually think in such a balenced fashion im sure you will be a very wise young man in the future, one that plenty of people would like to hire.
Anonymous
25/02/2013 at 03:14
oxford breeds pcycopathologies. fact.
dphrei
01/03/2013 at 10:46
vomit coverd toilet bowls that don’t get cleaned until the cleaner comes. Hormone pills and large vodka bottles scattered everywhere. Short terms and short bursts of activity because they are not capable of long, hard days of real work. Oblivious to the real world they are supposedly being prepared to rule. What a tragic mess. The comprehensively low standards of oxford and, somewhat, of cambridge have earned britain the low ranking it so thoroughly deserves in the education sector.
I am not a class bigot. Yes, i would hire an oxford grad… After they had served their country, suffered in combat, got themselves back to normal and raised a happy family. That, right there is a leader, a captain of industry. Someone who knows the meaning of hard work and won’t flinch in the face of a challenge.
non-Oxbridge student
06/06/2013 at 23:41
Let me start by saying that everyone who gets into Oxbridge does deserve special recognition for their achievements. Whether or not the universities themselves are vastly superior to all the others is a separate issue (not saying they’re not, by the way), but due to the famously rigorous admissions procedure at Oxbridge, which requires a good performance in several interviews, very high grades and a good performance on aptitude tests, people who end up at Oxbridge are more often than not the brightest of their year group. So, it would be wrong to underestimate your abilities after getting this far.
At other universities, you end up with a mixed back: some Durham/UCL/Warwick students might have secured a place at Oxbridge on a better day, whereas others might have creeped in on account of freakishly high grades and not much else. I personally didn’t apply to Oxbridge so I guess I’ll never know where I stood…
However, you’re right to point out that the working environment at Oxbridge, or indeed at any university in the country, isn’t necessarily ideal preparation for the ‘real’ working world. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the hard-work done at Oxford would be “looked down upon”, but it’s not exactly vital. There is nothing to suggest that Oxbridge graduates are less prepared for the ‘real’ world simply because of where and how they did their degree.
That’s what job interviews are for, I suppose. I’m in favour of top firms wiidening participation to at least a few more universities (MC law firms in particular), but I think suggesting that Oxbridge graduates can’t do as good a job is a bit too far
non-Oxbridge student
06/06/2013 at 23:44
going a bit too far*