Quote:
Originally Posted by Egan
Nope. It's a proud tradition of the British Government to provide the best service they can to the very rich and powerful as was recently proved by stupid former cabinet members whoring themselves for hard cash and getting caught by an investigative journalist. Of course, it's as old as parliament is - and the reasons for it are legion.
But, hey, if you really want a giggle you should read up on our defamation laws. Great Britain - trampling on dissent and freedom of speech the world over! Our law courts are a bigger tourist draw than Buck house, Loch Ness and Tower bridge put together.
|
Well, I remember reading up on the admissions process to Oxford/Cambridge. Apparently the taxpayer heavily subsidizes tuition to those universities so that the price is far below, say, going somewhere like Harvard or Yale, here, and yet...the ruling class is amazingly overrepresented, far more than their grades and standardized testing would indicate. The dons have a strict cap on admitting the "wrong kind of people." OK, I remember where I read this, before: it was about a girl from a working class background who academically KILLED in what we in the States would call high school, and she still couldn't get into Oxford/Cambridge, so she had to go to Harvard, instead. Which is much more expensive. Also, she's far likely to meet someone from somewhere other than Britain at Harvard, marry that person, and never return to Britain. Or just get recruited to an American or other foreign company, or whatever. Britain would therefore lose talent because of a classist admissions process.
Of course, we also have bias in our admissions processes. I sincerely doubt Obama would have gotten a scholarship to that swanky prep school in Hawaii if he weren't black, and George W. Bush wouldn't have got into Yale if he weren't a legacy. Supposedly, if places like Berkeley and Stanford admitted people purely on the basis of academic numbers, I understand virtually everybody at both places would be Asian. It goes on and on..