Merit is an individual factor, not a social one. Lessons from Oxford

In the prestigious university, freshmen from state schools and disadvantaged families are on the increase. “We select by the individual, not by category”: Director Louise Richardson debunks three popular clichés

The last words of the outgoing rector of the University of Oxford, moved by a leftist intent, actually assert a rightist principle. After seven years as vice chancellor of the university, Louise Richardson in fact, he had to defend himself from an attack perpetrated on the conservative pages of the Daily Telegraph by Melvyn Roffe, president of the conference of private school principals in the United Kingdom. Supported by an investigation by the same newspaper, Roffe had floated the hypothesis of a bias in favor of state school graduates in the selection of freshmen, even imagining that, in the austere and somewhat gloomy college corridors, the professors then the five all satisfied.