There are a lot of tweets being posted this morning deriding Oxford and Cambridge, not least pointing to poorly regarded politicians as evidence of these universities being ‘not all that’. Why should anyone bother wanting to go there?
I went to a bog standard comprehensive, then Cambridge, shared the SU job of representing its 9,000 undergrads, and have a few thoughts.
First, how rude and silly. I wouldn’t dream of roundly abusing Keele or its graduates on the basis that Priti Patel was there. I mean, how would that be alright?
These places are primarily communities of scholars – the most important spaces are library and lab. We are geeks, nerds.
The vast majority are there to pick over the past, look at molecules, prepare to transplant organs, find better ways to make bridges stand up etc. That’s exciting.
The public figures used as derisive examples – Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and so on – were outside the ‘body politic’ of their universities. I remember their types, of course.
[I'm afraid it is now patently obvious to all, I've never threaded Tweets before
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