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Beyond the Etonians Simon Kuper’s Chums in
Features Beyond the Etonians: Simon Kuper’s Chums in today’s Oxford
Pieter Garicano questions how far the Oxford experience has changed since the days of Johnson and Gove.
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CW: classism, racism, sexual harassment
Simon Kuper of the Financial Times tells me he is an unlikely candidate to draw back the curtain on what he calls “the Oxocracy”. A card-carrying member of the establishment he shines a li him. Besides, raised in the Netherlands, Kuper came to Oxford equipped with an outsider’s eye. More than just an exposé of an institution he “had a wonderful time at” or a compilation of party gossip, Chums is meant to provide the necessary context to grasp today’s ruling class. Throughout, he argues that a unique mix of public school arrogance and Oxford frivolity produced a dominant generation of politicians. Its ranks include David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Dominic Cummings. The book shows how they were shaped by the University and how Brexit was born. It also deals with life at the University as it was then – a life perhaps all too recognisable for today’s undergraduates. Arriving in Oxford just as Johnson left, but in time to catch Gove and Rees-Mogg, Kuper notes that these characters were infamous as students. From his desk at Cherwell, he had an early front row to the antics of many of today’s front bench. Boris Johnson was one of the most prominent undergraduates of his day. Jeremy Hunt was the boring and bureaucratic president of the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA). Gove and Rees-Mogg were constantly lampooned by yesteryear’s Cherwell, a publication then characterised by constant irony and an obsession with these big personalities. The men who grew up to become these characters were, in some respects, a diverse bunch. Some, like Cameron, were blue-blooded representatives of the hereditary elite. Others, like Gove, were products of the postwar meritocracy. This mix of hereditaries and
Yet, as much as there were differences between them, they had more in common. Nearly all were male. All were white. Almost all belonged to the ‘elite’ even before arriving. In the composition of its student body, the Oxford of Chums is a far cry from today’s University. Kuper recalls asking the only
“Kuper recalls asking the only AfroCaribbean undergraduate in from his college what the percentage of Afro-Caribbeans at the University was; the student retorted, “Percentage? There are six Afro-Caribbean undergraduates at the entire University”.
The history which the Oxford Tories learned revolved around themselves too. ‘Men like them’ had ruled over nearly a quarter of the earth’s surface for much of the past century. Spoon-fed a diet of imperialist nostalgia and martial glory from birth, the grey mediocrity of post-war Britain taunted them. However, Oxford Tories went to University upper classes. The dismal 1970s had been replaced by Thatcher’s 1980s British exceptionalism. Here was a group of men and women who had seen Brideshead Revisited on TV and were determined to make Oxford theirs again. Kuper emphasises that even then it was an anachronism. It was a conscious effort at imitation of their forefathers, not ‘authenticity’. Without the sense of wartime the upper classes of old, it ended up being a farcical parody. While most students of that time were listening to The Smiths, this small group set out to copy Sebastian Flyte. Tories was Brexit. Birthed as an undergradua to the lives of men whose views of England no longer matched reality. Also, as Kuper notes, the ideals behind Brexit assured them personally of a future. They claimed ownership over Westminster; Brussels was a much more hostile place to men like them. The University provided an easy backdrop. Inseparable from the men that inhabited it, Oxford shaped their way of life. It rewarded style over substance, and rarely asked for much depth. The book explains how the academic standards of Oxford in the 1980s were different. Tutors were often unquali tutor ‘unapologetically preferred tall blond public schoolboys and girls’. A don at Kuper’s college had a reputation both for exposing himself and trying to recruit students into the intelligence services. And, while providing a golden ticket to the elite, the entrance was rigged against almost everyone else . For some, admission was guaranteed from birth. Even if things went wrong, their privilege would save them. An anecdote from the book mentions Toby Young (now a polemic social commentator). Having failed to meet his offer from Brasenose of two Bs and a C, he was at risk of losing his place. A phone call from his father, Baron Young of Dartington, saved his spot. Ironically, Baron Young happens to be the man responsible for writing the 1945 Labour manifesto and coining the term ‘meritocracy’. For those who did not belong to the narrow upper and upper-middle classes, entrance to Oxford was restricted, if not impossible. Yet more striking for today’s Oxonian is how little has changed. It is true that the largest personalities of today are no longer Etonians cosplaying Evelyn Waugh. Yes, the student body is, slowly but surely, becoming more representative of the wider population. And, as Kuper mentions, today’s admissions are four times as competitive, fairer, and much more international. But, fundamentally, the institutional structure of the University described in Chums, the incentives Oxford creates, and the undergraduate life it feeds are not all that different. Kuper’s paragraphs on the ‘essay crisis’, the rhetoric rather than deep academic learning refer to the Oxford of the 1980s. Yet, they will ring as true for today’s undergraduates as they did then. At the time, Cherwell reported on the notoriety of Simon Stevens (now a former NHS chief executive) as a legendary tutorial faker who once got halfway through reading his essay before his partner revealed to the tutor that he was reading from a blank sheet of paper; the same anecdote was told by a tutor about a contemporary student only a few months ago.
It goes beyond the structure of the classes and tutorials. PPE, a degree which then was considered to skate too thinly over three subjects in three years, continues to be criticised for the same reasons. With an academic year
lasting just 24 weeks, depth is hard to achieve. With face-to-face time limited to just a few hours each week, the emphasis will always be now as then, the most important parts of University life are those that take place outside the classroom, ranging from drama to rowing or student politics to socialising. A survey from Kuper’s time indicated that the average student worked on their degree for just twenty hours a week. This continues to be the norm for many students today, even if a tutor quoted in the book explains that the expectation is now forty. Like Kuper, this is not meant to insult Oxford. The University is a wonderful place and, by many objective standards, the world’’s reading the book must raise questions for Oxonians today. If the structure of undergraduate life then had such adverse outcomes and is so worthy of condemnation – and the structure fundamentally hasn’t changed – what does that imply for Oxford now? Kuper doesn’t just single out the University itself. He dedicates multiple chapters to the Union, a place that served as a political ries. Failings in today’s cabinet are traced to habits encouraged then, from electioneering and ‘binning’ to an emphasis on rhetorical nue to be an intrinsic feature of the Union, even if those partaking have changed. I ask him if, now that Etonians no longer run the teaches you to ‘hack’ and ‘knife’. Kuper responds by highlighting greater inclusivity at the broader University, where 69% of those admitted are now from state schools. One wonders, however, how much this
affects the outcome. Indeed, the participants have changed, but the place, once they arrive, hasn’t. Like the University, the Union highlights its greater inclusivity – but the incentives and politics remain. In many ways, it is student politics that has changed the least. This term will see Union members vote once again on whether slates should be banned, as they once were in Johnson’s day.
Even the inclusivity increase is complex. The book mentions the cost of Union membership in the late 1980s being £65. £146. The current price of the membership is almost twice that, at £286. Even an ‘access’ membership costs £169.95. Meanwhile, the prominence of hacks in Oxford life may have grown greater still. Kuper tells me of many
of the big names then, “It’s not that I hated them. I just was not very aware of them. They were very far for me. I was very far from them. We had our own lives. I had a very happy life.”
Boris Johnson was exceptional precisely because he was one of the few undergraduates known to the wider student population. Today, social media allows many students to become ‘big names on campus’. Scandals rapidly become common knowledge, even as the permanence of the internet means the stakes are ever higher. To be sure, Cherwell would write pieces like 1988’s ‘Union hacks Gove. But its reach and frequency was a fraction of Oxfess’ today. Undoubtedly, Kuper is aware that many is to be done”. Radically, he even proposes shuttering the institution and making it graduate or research only. He celebrates the Dutch or German systems while noting that they do not deliver close to the same level of academic excellence. Nor, as Kuper is aware, are the best universities in these countries immune to similar accusations of elitism. He (rightly) notes that shutting Oxford would see different universities (Imperial, King’s College London, and so on) increase in prestige, as would-be Oxonians seek education elsewhere.
What remains unclear from the book is if Kuper’s primary criticism of Oxford today is who gets a spot, or what the University does to students once they arrive. Despite arguing against the abolition of private schools, it seems the upper- and upper-middle class grip on Oxford bothers him most. However, as he writes repeatedly throughout, Oxford’s inta-
of wider society. What – broadly – hasn’t changed is the incentives students face upon matriculating and the structures within the institution that will shape them.
“To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.” This quote serves as Chums’ epigraph and summary. In good Oxford fashion (and as Kuper acknowledges), the catchy Napoleonic quote is probably apocryphal. The book that results is entertaining, eminently readable, and very recognisable. Yet,
for those of us who are twenty now in Oxford, it raises the question: faced with anall too similar environment, will we turn out different? “To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.” The quote serves as Chums’ epigraph and summary. In good Oxford fashion (and as Kuper acknowledges), the catchy Napoleonic quote is probably apocryphal. The book that results is entertaining, eminently readable, and very recognisable. Yet, for those of us who are twenty now in Oxford, it raises the question: faced with an all-too-similar environment, will we be different?
Image credit: artwork by Ben Beechener
Members of the current Cabinet who attended Oxford:
- Boris Johnson (Balliol College, 1983)
- Dominic Raab (Lady Margaret Hall, 1993)
- Rishi Sunak (Lincoln College, 1998)
- Elizabeth Truss (Merton College, 1994)
- Michael Gove (Lady Margaret Hall, 1985)
- David Frost (St John’s College, 1984)
- Jacob Rees-Mogg (Trinity College, 1988)
Source: Wikipedia
