No, private schools aren't victims of reverse discrimination' and Cambridge should know better | Lee Elliot Major

"Alumni LinkedIn feeds and social media threads quickly filled with outrage, as many Cambridge graduates interpreted the move as class prejudice rearing its ugly head once again. One angry fellow at the college said it amounted to a slap in the face for their state-educated undergraduates. It brought back memories of the sneering snobbery at Oxford when the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, then principal of Lady Margaret Hall, introduced a new foundation year. We don't do hard luck stories, sniffed one academic. Oxford doesn't do remedial education, complained another. The foundation year at Oxford and also at Cambridge has since enjoyed huge success, proving that students who have faced great adversity or academic disadvantage can flourish when given the chance."

"The words reverse discrimination are jarring. Whatever the intentions behind Trinity Hall's policy, singling out a tiny cadre of already highly resourced schools sends a powerful signal: that academic quality is most reliably found there, and moving beyond this clique risks lowering standards. In a society marked by extreme inequalities in wealth, schooling and opportunity, the claim that these institutions are the victims of discrimination would be difficult to sustain even by the cleverest of Cambridge dons. For others, this is a classic case of what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would term misrecognition: mistaking polished performance and extra preparation, which is so often shaped by privilege, for greater underlying talent and sincerely believing this to be fair."

Trinity Hall proposed targeting students from several elite private schools, arguing that focusing solely on broader fairness could unintentionally cause reverse discrimination. The proposal provoked strong alumni and graduate anger, framed as class prejudice and an affront to state-educated undergraduates. Critics recalled resistance to foundation years at Oxford, which later succeeded in enabling students from disadvantaged backgrounds to flourish. The phrase reverse discrimination unsettles many observers. Singling out a small set of well-resourced schools implies that academic excellence is concentrated there and that widening access might lower standards. Observers invoke Pierre Bourdieu's misrecognition to explain how privilege-shaped performance is mistaken for innate talent. Recruitment focuses on a few places in specialist subjects such as music, classics and modern languages.

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