Sunday 14 October 2012

Getting In, Getting On

It says only too much about the nature of this Government that it has given responsibility for social mobility to the Trotskyist bookseller turned Blair Cabinet Minister, Alan "Haze of Dope" Milburn.

And it will say everything about the nature of this Government if it does indeed endorse his proposal to admit university applicants with lower marks (what, for the benefit of American readers, are called "grades" in the United States) if they come from either economically or socially less exalted backgrounds. In best Marxist fashion, there is no apparent differentiation between the two, which will come as very big news to a lot of us.

I have never worked in Admissions, and I have never been sure whether or not I regretted that fact. But of this I have no doubt: if you can find no other way of differentiating between two candidates, then the one who has had further to climb in order to reach that position ought to be preferred. However, in all other circumstances, it should be academically the better-qualified applicant. Of course it should be. Why are we even discussing this?

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