Universities are much better off without thicko rugby boys, according to Dame Mary Beard. As one of Britain’s most beloved boffins, she has spent most of her life studying and teaching at Cambridge so understands campus life better than most. (Though I would argue that everywhere, bar the pitch, is better off without thicko rugby boys. Queueing to get a key cut at Timpson, for example, is better without a honking scrum taking turns to snort pints of Strongbow. Having your gnashers scraped at the hygienist is better without a hooker force-feeding dog food to the fullback, while the rest of the team sing Come On Eileen and pour pink water down each other’s trousers.)
While discussing the current state of higher education at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, the renowned classicist said over her career she has seen Cambridge transform from a monoculture of posh white men into one that is “more inclusive, more open, more interesting.” By the time she retired three years ago, she said: “There weren’t any of those thick, white rugger-buggers that I used to teach in 1982. They have been excluded.”
My own recent stint as a student at a London uni bears that out. I dragged my master’s out for the maximum five years, and in that time I witnessed no homoerotic initiation rites, no competitive drinking games, and no one turning up to a lecture hungover with one eyebrow shaved off and a moustache drawn on with a Sharpie.
Notably, around a third of each year’s cohort were from China, all paying eye-watering international fees – three-times what a strapping prop from Twickenham would pay. As one of the longest-running students, I saw a pattern form.
Unsurprisingly, language was a barrier, even after the compulsory proficiency tests. Few were truly fluent in English, and the texts were hard going even for native-speakers. In class, some used live-translation technology to keep up with the lecturer.
English-speaking students dominated rowdy discussions, while few Chinese classmates contributed. Some barely spoke at all.
These are highly-intelligent, ambitious students but understanding a complex subject in a second language, while navigating a major culture shift, must feel intimidating.
In class, the Chinese students tended to sit together and outside friendships fell along language lines. What might have ticked all the diversity and inclusion boxes on paper, in practice, there was very little cross-cultural pollination.
So while universities may pat themselves on the back for castrating hyper-masculine toffs and cheerleading multiculturalism, are international students being treated as little more than cash cows?