Education

Fiona Hill’s Masterclass Is A Lingering Badge Of Shame For Oxford University


Former White House aide Fiona Hill gave a masterclass in last week’s impeachment hearings—but her career could have very easily taken a different path.

For her testimony was not just a devastating takedown of those who denied Russian interference in U.S. politics, it was also a rebuke to her home country’s obsession with class, and in particular to Oxford University, an institution that rejected her more than 30 years ago.

The Russia expert and former member of the National Security Council is an American citizen, but is originally from the former mining town of Bishop Auckland in County Durham in the North-East of England.

And speaking before Congress, she described how moving to the U.S. in the 1980s gave her opportunities she would never have had in the country of her birth.

“I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent,” she told the hearings. “In England in the 1980s and 1990s this would have impeded my professional advancement. This background has never set me back in America.”

This is a forceful rebuke for a country where class and accent still matters, baffling though this may be to citizens of her adopted country. It is still unusual to hear strong regional accents on the national broadcaster, the BBC, or among members of the Cabinet, for example.

But the strongest indictment is for Oxford University, which let Dr. Hill slip through its fingers three decades ago, perhaps alienating her from the British establishment for good in the process.

In a previous interview, Dr. Hill recounted how she had been invited for an interview to study at Oxford as an undergraduate in the 1980s, but found it to be a painful episode.

“People were making fun of me for my accent and the way I was dressed,” she said. “It was the most embarrassing, awful experience I had ever had in my life.”

She compared it to a scene from the film Billy Elliot, where a boy from a working-class community in County Durham overcomes the odds to become an acclaimed ballet dancer.

Instead, she headed north, to St. Andrews in Scotland, for her undergraduate degree, before heading to Harvard for her postgraduate studies and a subsequent stellar career in the U.S.

But while the encounter at Oxford took place more than 30 years ago, there is little sign that much has changed: students from Dr. Hill’s home region of England are still underrepresented at the university that likes to boast it is the best in the world.

Latest admission figures show that just 2.1% of U.K. students admitted to Oxford in the three years from 2016-18 were from the North-East of England.

This is despite the region accounting for 4.5% of all students in England.

And it is not because their grades are not good enough. The North-East is also underrepresented in terms of high-achieving students: 2.6% of those who get three A grades or better in public exams taken at 18 are from the North-East.

In contrast, London accounts for 16.5% of all students, 18.3% of all top grades, and 25.9% of all U.K. students admitted to study at Oxford.

The South-East and South-West of England are also overrepresented, while the other regions that make up the North of England, the North-West and Yorkshire and the Humber, are underrepresented.

In part, this may reflect the concentration of fee-paying schools, where students are given special preparation to apply to Oxford and Cambridge, in London and the South-East, but is hard not to conclude there is also a systemic bias against students from the North of England.

The fact is, more students go to Oxford from two leading fee-paying schools, Eton and Westminster, every year than from the entire North-East of England.

And while it is true that the students from the North-East are less likely to apply Oxford than their counterparts in London and the South-East, this may be at least partly because some are put off applying, assuming they will not get in or they will not fit in even if they do.

While Oxford has rightly been criticized for admitting few black students, its failure to recruit from North-East England is as much a badge of shame.

And if the result is that talented individuals such as Dr. Hill are pushed into looking elsewhere for advancement, then it is a wrong that Oxford should waste no more time redressing.



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