Atheist Elite College.

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

So I think the market they are targetting are people who want to go to Oxford but can't get in - i.e. not the academic elite, but the academically ambitious with lots of money. This is a market that TCD used to cater to, and St Andrews still does to some extent.

Absolutely, this is their bread and butter, so to speak. So that begs the question, why so many scholarships? My feeling is that being leading academics themselves, they also have ambitions to produce leading academics of the future. If I was the likes of Dawkins, I imagine I'd prefer to teach the brightest students, not to mention a broad mix of students. While it is a business, it is a slightly unusual one, as they don't need the money. When second guessing people's motives, looking at their needs often provides a good starting point. Then again, possibly just me being a bit overly machiavellian, time will tell.

Peregrinus

I suspect the issue is this; given that their students are largely going to be drawn from those who want to go to Oxbridge and can't get in, inevitable the grades you need to get a place at NCH are going to be lower than the grades you need to get a comparable place at Oxbridge.

But people tend to assess the academic prestige of colleges partly according to the grades you need to get in. And this will be particularly true of NCH for the forseeable future, because it will be fair spread of years before there is a slew of NCH graduates out there carving out glittering names for themselves in their chosen paths. So they really need to do what they can to ensure that the A-level grades of their incoming students are high. And of course you can jack up the average by providing hefty scholarships, etc to a number of students with outstanding A-level results. So that's the commercial reasoning.

I don't want to be too cynical. It's entirely possible that the people behind this college combine a desire to earn a few shillings with a desire to be engaged in elite education for its own sake, with a desire to make the world a slightly better place by offering opportunities to people who wouldn't otherwise have them, and the provision of scholarships could be motivated by all three desires.

I don't, though, think they hope to produce the next generation of academics. Nobody contemplating a career in academia willingly embarks on a course of study that costs fifty-four thousand pounds over three years. The great bulk of the students they attract will be hoping for an education that leads to a high-paying job that will pay off the collossal debt they will be carrying. They won't be going on to years as penniless PhD students. Obviously this need not be true of those who have scholarships, but there is no reason to think that the scholarship students will choose academic careers.

MrPudding

Taking Oxbridge rejects does not necessarily mean entry requirements have to drop. Plenty of students with all A or A* grades fail in their applications to Oxbridge. Given the small size of the intake it is conceivable that this new college could still have an entry requirement of 3 or 4 A grades at A-level and still pick up plenty of Oxbridge "rejects".

That one failed to gain entry to Oxbridge despite maxing out on A-levels does not mean one is a poor academic or itellectually suspect. Bad at Oxbridge entry tests or interviews is about all you can say.

MrP

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

I suspect the issue is this; given that their students are largely going to be drawn from those who want to go to Oxbridge and can't get in, inevitable the grades you need to get a place at NCH are going to be lower than the grades you need to get a comparable place at Oxbridge.

Perhaps not. Maybe a significant number are keen to be taught by the celebrity staff members, and a further cohort just like the elitist feel to the place.

I don't want to be too cynical. It's entirely possible that the people behind this college combine a desire to earn a few shillings with a desire to be engaged in elite education for its own sake, with a desire to make the world a slightly better place by offering opportunities to people who wouldn't otherwise have them, and the provision of scholarships could be motivated by all three desires.

Also being cynical, but like everyone else, they're doubtless driven by the desire to succeed, and succeed visibly. One measure is the success of the venture as a business, in terms of how much money it makes. Another would be their individual and collective successes as educators, which is measured in the quality of students they produce. (If in fact you could truly measure such a thing). If they're stacking the odds slightly in this regard by taking on lots of scholarship students, more power to them. It's still a very worthy philanthropic gesture, regardless of any motives that sniping pygmy detractors such as ourselves might speculatively ascribe. Each according to his ability, to each according to his need and all that jazz.

Peregrinus

smacl wrote: »

Perhaps not. Maybe a significant number are keen to be taught by the celebrity staff members . . .

If so, they will be disappointed. By all accounts the celebrity staff members do very little teaching.

(Which is pretty much how it is in many other universities and colleges with celebrity academics, I hasten to add.)

Peregrinus

MrPudding wrote: »

Taking Oxbridge rejects does not necessarily mean entry requirements have to drop. Plenty of students with all A or A* grades fail in their applications to Oxbridge. Given the small size of the intake it is conceivable that this new college could still have an entry requirement of 3 or 4 A grades at A-level and still pick up plenty of Oxbridge "rejects".

That one failed to gain entry to Oxbridge despite maxing out on A-levels does not mean one is a poor academic or itellectually suspect. Bad at Oxbridge entry tests or interviews is about all you can say.

Fair point.

Time will tell, I suppose. After a couple of years there'll be data available on what scores entrants to NCH actually have, and that can be compared with data on comparable scores for Oxford and Cambridge. We'll know then if the NCH intake is more or less qualified than the Oxbridge intake, A-level results-wise.

recedite

Peregrinus wrote: »

not the academic elite, but the academcially ambitious with lots of money. This is a market that TCD used to cater to..

An odd slur against TCD there. When or what are you referring to?

Peregrinus

recedite wrote: »

An odd slur against TCD there. When or what are you referring to?

Don't know why you consider it a slur. It is the case that, into the 1950s and 60s, and even into the 1970s, TCD has a significant contingent of English students from a social class that traditionally would have aspired to go to Oxbridge. They were students who had failed to secure a place at Oxbridge, and who chose TCD as a more socially acceptable alternative than a British redbrick.

recedite

Well I think TCD has been a part of the "free education" system for as long as it has existed in Ireland, and before that they had scholarships,which they still give out for student accommodation.
If they had spare places available in the 1950's due to a boycott organised by the catholic hierarchy, why wouldn't they offer them to fee paying foreign students?
Even today there is still untapped potential to earn foreign currency within Irish universities, which should be fully exploited as long as Irish students of merit applying through the CAO system are not displaced.

Peregrinus

recedite wrote: »

Well I think TCD has been a part of the "free education" system for as long as it has existed in Ireland . . .

Really? You think? Since 1592?

Well, you think wrong. TCD is, and always has been, a fee-charging instution. After it had been charging fees for 400 years or so, in 1995, the Government introduced the "Free Fees Initiative", under which on certain conditions the Exchequer pays the fees of EU/EAA nationals who are residents of the EU and who are undertaking a first undergraduate course. That's a lot of students, of course, but the have the Irish Exchequer to thank for covering their fees, not TCD for waiving them.

recedite wrote: »

If they had spare places available in the 1950's due to a boycott organised by the catholic hierarchy, why wouldn't they offer them to fee paying foreign students?
Even today there is still untapped potential to earn foreign currency within Irish universities, which should be fully exploited as long as Irish students of merit applying through the CAO system are not displaced.

You misunderstand me; I'm not slagging off TCD or saying that they shouldn't have accepted English applicants for whom they were a second choice to Oxbridge. Nor do I criticise NCH for meeting this demand today, if as I suspect they do. I merely observe that that is a market to which TCD at one time catered, and which I imagine NCH will cater nowadays.

recedite

I meant for as long as the "free education" concept has existed. I'm open to correction, but I think there was some sort of govt. student grant system in place even before 1995 that ensured any bright student with no family money could take up a place at TCD, or indeed at the NUI colleges. In other words TCD was not any different to any other Irish uni in terms of being elitist or "only for the rich". If it was better than NUI colleges at attracting UK students, then fair play, but I would not agree that it was "pitching" for rich dimwits who failed Oxbridge entrance exams, or trying to fulfill that role.

I'll suggest another possible alternative market for the new NCH. Instead of trying for failed Oxbridge candidates with money, maybe those candidates from outside the EU who already pay full fees anyway in existing Irish/UK universities.

HansHolzel

recedite wrote: »

I meant for as long as the "free education" concept has existed. I'm open to correction, but I think there was some sort of govt. student grant system in place even before 1995 that ensured any bright student with no family money could take up a place at TCD, or indeed at the NUI colleges.

Ah, those good old grant days (three per year i.e. one per term). Some f*^king high, walking down to the bank with that cheque in your pocket :-)

Peregrinus

recedite wrote: »

I meant for as long as the "free education" concept has existed. I'm open to correction, but I think there was some sort of govt. student grant system in place even before 1995 that ensured any bright student with no family money could take up a place at TCD, or indeed at the NUI colleges. In other words TCD was not any different to any other Irish uni in terms of being elitist or "only for the rich". If it was better than NUI colleges at attracting UK students, then fair play, but I would not agree that it was "pitching" for rich dimwits who failed Oxbridge entrance exams, or trying to fulfill that role.

Well, I can assure you that the pre-1995 grant system did not achieve the objective that "any bright student with no family money . . . could take up a place". But, yes, there was a grant system, and it operated equally with respect to TCD and other third-level institutions.

I wasn't meaning to suggest that NCH's for-profit no-public-funding model was something that TCD had previously followed; just that the Oxbridge rejects that (I think) NCH caters to is a market which TCD used to cater to. And - I shouldn't need to say this - there's nothing wrong with that.

recedite wrote: »

I'll suggest another possible alternative market for the new NCH. Instead of trying for failed Oxbridge candidates with money, maybe those candidates from outside the EU who already pay full fees anyway in existing Irish/UK universities.

Oh, yes, I'm sure we'll find that in their student body, non-EU students are overrepresented, by comparison with most British universities. (And nothing wrong with that, either.)

But what's distinctive about NCH is that it very clearly offers an Oxbridge model of education - tutorial-based, not lecture based and with a very, very low student:staff ration of 10:1. (NCH aside, there's only two other educational instititutions in the UK which offer that kind of ratio, and guess which two they are?) So who is that model likely to attract?

I stress I'm not being critical of NCH. They think the Oxbridge model is a good one, and they want to emulate it. They want to do it without seeking government funding, because they are fed up with the distortions introduced by government funding priorities. (It's the New College of the Humanities, note, and it's the humanities departments up and down the country that are being decimated by a government which thinks that university education is about training people for jobs, and jobs are either in technology or business.) So, they value the humanities for their own sake? They admire the Oxbridge teaching model? Good on them.

But the cost of avoiding the compromises forced on you by government funding is accepting a different set of compromises. The College may value the humanities for their own sake, but when the are charging eighteen thousand sandwiches a year, there's an awful lot of customers who won't shell out unless they are persuaded that this is an investment with a good prospect of paying off in the form of a high-earning job, which a BA in history or philosophy doesn't invariably lead to. Hence every student, in addition to taking a Univ of London BA in one of the humanities, take the New College Diploma, which includes the Professional Programme, covering numeracy and financial literacy, impact of technology, negotiation, self-management and working in teams, etc - it looks a bit like a mini MBA, really, and I don't think that's a coincidence.

Another compromise is that you have to market yourself - hence the celebrity faculty like Richard Dawkins and Laurence Krauss. Ask yourself why a College which offers courses only in Economics, English, History, Law, Philosophy and Politics would need a famous evolutionary biologist or a famous physicist on staff? (Hint: there's a clue in the word "famous").

Again, I have no problem with this. I wish NCH well and I hope it survives and prospers. And it won't, if it doesn't attract students. And if a connection with Richard Dawkins raises the profile of the College - and it will, signficantly - then that will help. But, being realistic, Dawkins's contribution to the success of this venture will be more on the marketing side than on the educational side. Whatever teaching he does there - and I suspect it won't be much - is not going to affect the class of degree that anybody gets.