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All minority groups are not the same

­I arrived at St Hugh’s in 1997. This was the era of Cool Britannia. Oasis, Blur, and Blair (the untainted, pre-Iraq version) were big. So was smoking. No one had mobile phones and if you wanted to access the web you had to use the college Computer Room. There were no online social networks and there was no instant messaging.

So, in many ways, Oxford in 1997 was a different place. Some things, however, don’t change much. I spent a good deal of my time at university supporting a now-defunct organisation called the Oxford Access Scheme, which aimed to get more “inner-city and ethnic minority people” (our language then) into Oxford. And the same debate rumbles on.

After many years working in this field, firstly at Oxford, then at Pearson, and then since founding Rare in 2005,  I have three observations and three suggestions.

Observations:

1. Let’s distinguish between international students and home students. Oxford is a publicly funded, UK university and it is reasonable to look at the subsidised UK population studying there and see if it is representative. And there is good data available on this. Obviously the experiences, and the voices, of international students are important: in analysing where we are in relation to race in the UK, however, it does not make sense to include international students in our calculations.

2. All minority groups are not the same. The headline stat is this: about 14% of the UK population is non-white, and about 13% of home undergraduate admissions to Oxford last year were non-white, so the two are about in line. Oxford has admitted about 91% of what it “should” admit if it was to be exactly proportional. This is more or less within a margin of error.
However, talking about non-white or black and minority ethnic (BME) people as a whole masks significant variations between different ethnic minority groups. I spent much of this morning looking at 2011 census data versus Freedom of Information (FOI) information about admissions to Oxford in 2013 (I couldn’t find 2014 numbers or information about race on the Oxford University site, so I used this). I compared the percentage of people in the general population with the percentage admitted to Oxford, and then I looked at what proportion of the people that “should” have been admitted actually were. Here are the results:

Ethnic group

Number of students versus proportionate number (NSVPN)

%age of Oxford student body

% of UK population

Mixed White and Asian

413%

2.48%

0.60%

Chinese

162%

1.13%

0.70%

Indian

114%

2.86%

2.50%

Mixed White and Black

88%

0.97%

1.10%

Black African

42%

0.75%

1.80%

Bangladeshi

31%

0.25%

0.80%

Black Caribbean

28%

0.31%

1.10%

Pakistani

28%

0.56%

2.00%

Now this is rough and ready, because I’m comparing with the general population and not with the population taking A Levels, but nevertheless it ought to be indicative. And here’s what it says: the “BME” category, in relation to representation, means nothing. Mixed white and Asian people are significantly over-represented at Oxford – much more so than white people, who are only very slightly over-represented. So are British Chinese and British Indian students. Mixed-race students of black heritage are mildly but not markedly under-represented.

And black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani students are very significantly under-represented, with fewer than half as many students from these backgrounds in the university as there should be. So if there’s one thing Oxford should do on race, it’s focus outreach efforts on these under-represented minority groups. Specifically, we need to (i) raise educational achievement in these groups (this is part, though not all, of the reason for their under-representation at Oxford); (ii) encourage bright students from these groups to study a wider range of subjects than just law and medicine (another part of the reason for their under-representation), and (iii) build relationships with bright students from these groups to show them Oxford is for them too.

3. It appears to be impossible for a minority student at Oxford to talk about any negative experience without (i) this being interpreted as an attack on the university per se and (ii) the national media picking it up. The I Too Am Oxford campaign – many of whose organisers and participants are prominent in access efforts – is a prime example of this. By contrast, efforts by these same students to broaden access to Oxford are ignored by the local and national media. It seems that “black student happy at Oxford, seeks to broaden pool of like-minded people” isn’t a story, but “Oxford racist” is.

Suggestions:

1. If you care, get involved. Two years ago I helped set up Target Oxbridge, a programme to get more black, state-educated students into Oxford and Cambridge. It works. We have a 50% success rate so far. We need volunteers to help us and there are other initiatives with similar goals out there. And if focusing on race, or on some ethnic minority groups, makes you uneasy, read Observation 2 above again.

2. Fight ignorance. If you hear a fellow student make a racist comment, stand up, be counted, and face that student down.

3. Lobby your college, the university, and OFFA to do more on race. The current government seems to regard the social mobility agenda as the answer to all problems of equality. It isn’t. The particular issues facing black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi students are not just about poverty. There’s an interplay of factors including culture, religion, and gender which need separate and individual attention. A lack of social and cultural capital within these groups has a big impact, both on academic achievement and on the navigation of the UCAS process – in other words, the cumulative effect of people within your ethnic group not attending top universities (as a result of class and in some cases active discrimination) makes it less likely that you’ll have someone to advise you on how to go about getting in. This can be changed, by identifying promising students from these groups and building relationships with them, one by one. It would be great if, in another fifteen years time, the NSVPN for each of these groups were over 80% – this will only happen with pressure from the student body.

Raphael Mokades is the Founder and Managing Director of Rare. He has written on business, sport and social issues for the Financial Times, Guardian, and Times and is the author of six Rare research reports.

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