How University Admissions are Socially Engineered
‘Tis the season of social engineering, otherwise known as UCAS applications. Universities are readying themselves to meet their EDI commitments by making contextual offers based on information provided by UCAS, and increasing numbers of middle-class parents are thinking of clever social engineering additions to the application in the hope their offspring will receive lower grade offers.
UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) is a charity (non-profit) that handles the applications of almost three million applicants. In the application process there is a hefty Diversity and Inclusion section, all of which is optional. UCAS states clearly that:
Nothing in this section is used to decide if you will be placed at your university it is purely to make everyone aware of any additional support you may need.
But if this is the case, why include it at all? Why allow students and parents to game the system, and universities to use the information to select on ethnicity, religion, financial and social background? The system is open to abuse by both woke universities and sharp elbowed parents.
UCAS applicants are encouraged to include details concerning:
- Ethnicity
- Religious beliefs
- Sexual orientation
- Care support information
- Parental information, such as their education level and occupation
- Mental health conditions or long-term illnesses
- Estranged from parents
- Caring responsibilities
- Parenting responsibilities
- Refugee status
- Parent or carer who serves in the armed forces
- Whether you’ve served in the armed forces
- If you’re in receipt of free school meals
Universities are boastful of their efforts of admitting students who may not otherwise get good enough grades. The University of Oxford for example states unambiguously:
We know that factors such as socio-economic disadvantage and school performance can make it difficult for you to access your full potential before applying to university. Therefore, we use a range of contextual data to help us to better understand your achievements in the context of your individual background. For UK students applying for an undergraduate course, we look at:
- Information about your school
- Information about your neighbourhood
- Any experience in the care system
- Eligibility for Free School Meals (FSM) since age 11
- Additional Widening Participation (WP) information
While initial intentions could be interpreted as being laudable, unfairness rapidly sets in. The furore over disgraced former Oxford Union President-Elect George Abaraonye’s acceptance to Oxford to study PPE with ABB, rather than a three or four A*s at A level, is only the most recently egregious example. Long gone are the days when I, a state school student at late 1990s Christ Church, asked my history tutor if I was simply there to make up a quota. I have never forgotten his reply: “A comprehensive you say? I had no idea. However, you’re as hopeless as the rest of your year. After extending the franchise, academic standards have barely improved since the aristos used to spend their time throwing sofas out of Peckwater windows.”
Rather than being exasperated by rock bottom academic standards, academics today seem to embrace them. Students are encouraged by UCAS to “Let us know about any extra supporting information you’d like to include on your application.” From the young people I know and work with, the range of “supporting information” added on to applications is truly impressive: a broken ankle, colour-blindness and ‘generalised anxiety’, for instance. One mother included a letter from her local MP explaining how utterly useless her daughter’s sixth form college was. Students are encouraged to list all the medications they are taking and include illnesses their parents and even grandparents have suffered from during GCSE exam season or Year 12.
Aiming for a contextual offer is the new ‘receiving extra time in exams’: it makes for good middle-class dinner party conversation. Does the death of a pet count? Does having one non-British grandparent count? Moving house?
Even when no additional needs are shared, universities use personal details supplied via UCAS to make contextual (i.e., lower) offers. The daughter of a medic I know, who attended one of London’s smartest schools and received a string of 9s (A**) at GCSE, received two contextual offers from top-flight universities. The only explanation was that her large Georgian house shares a postcode with the KuKu gang.
Our middle son has recently filled in his UCAS form, and only after he sent it off did we realise he hadn’t properly gamed the system. Having changed jobs at the time of application my husband was technically unemployed. If our son included such information would this have made a more compelling application to highly competitive drama conservatoires? Damn. He’ll have to get by on talent alone.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.
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It is impossible to complete any university form of any kind in the UK or US without having to answer a question about whether you identify as a different gender to your sex at birth. You literally can’t avoid the question. You can’t not answer, and telling them to f off is not an option.
This is how an ideology is imposed in the modern world. Through inflexible, inescapable IT systems.
On a train journey recently I was asked to complete a customer service questionnaire by a lovely old lady of about my age. She even gave me a pen. It started with usual basics, name, age, journey details which I quickly completed. Then they wanted to know what gender I identify as. At which I scored out all the options and wrote in “only 2 sexes, male and female and gave it back. To paraphrase Jericho Green, I tried to cooperate but they wouldn’t let me.
But soon ESG will apply to individuals and we will all be squeezed out of society for not having the right world view on everything.
As I’ve said before, our civilisation is at the threshold of a new Dark Age, and our “universities” are in the vanguard of this catastrophe. So of course what matters to these establishments is not academic talent but what kind of meals applicants have been eating, what their skin colour is, what kind of parents they have, etc, etc, etc.
It isn’t the Universities doing this by choice. They do it because they are pressured into ideological alignment by ESG point scoring. The very same kind of thing that sees all the “diversity” in TV Ads, where way more Black and Asian people appear in them than is representative of society as the scoring system seeks to present a world as they scorers would like it to be rather than how it actually is.
How about admission based on merit? Old fashioned, I know.
University, echoing Miss Jean Brody at her prime – is supposed to be for la crème de la crème. University should be for the top 5% to 10% – we do after all need plumbers, electricians, engineers more than thise with degrees in history of lesbian art and social studies.
Fortunately electricians, plumbers and engineeers will earn far more than anyone with a useless degree and a £30000 student loan to pay off.
I had an electrician install a double point socket and it blew the whole circuit when a plug was installed.
The second electrician who came to fix the problem took close to an hour to resolve the problem! I strongly suspect the first was a totally incompetent DEI appointment.
The students not up to the rigours of the course or the needs of independent living will probably drop out.
Preparing them for the real world. A bankrupt ideologically deranged Maoist shit hole where mediocrity is mandatory and Feudalism is the only game in town.
Yours is a good summary of the lunacy.
Unless your degree is gonna put in with the top 1% of earners or even 10%, I would concentrate on the Trades.
Hopefully my oldest son will be ok with his STEM degree. My younger son, in all fairness to him, would have struggled at University. He has an apprenticeship with Network Rail, probably AI proof. At least he will have the railway track in good shape for the lanyard laptop classes to get to the office on the occassional days they have to show their face!
I know my eldest son is bright, but didn’t realise he was going to be bright enough to get into Oxford for a four year-engineering course. I don’t recall playing up any mitigating circumstances on his application. It was the height of the restrictions and his interview was on zoom. His GCSE results were assessed by the teachers as the exams were cancelled. He’s in his final year of four now and has reported back that around 30% of his year group have dropped out after three years and are content with a Ceng and not attempted the final year to emerge with a Meng. Could this be a reflection of that intake year not being up to it? Has the drop-out rate increased because of laxer application standards due to the restrictions at the time?
All Corporations, Institutions, Media and virtually everything else you can think of is now controlled by ESG. (Environmental and Social Governance) Everything that gets done now must be ideologically aligned. This is the scoring system that decides who can and who cannot operate in the economy and in society. It is ideological enforcement. A poor ESG score can stop you getting investment and loans yet no laws were passed, no regulations are involved.
ESG monitors everything. Your opinions, your speech, your donations, your political world view, whether you proclaim allegiance to saving the planet, diversity quotas etc etc etc. Those who do not comply will be squeezed out of existence. No one voted for any of this tyranny and there is no regulatory oversight at all.