Stormzy's unveiling of his new all expenses paid scholarship for two black students to go to Cambridge has understandably been met with positivity. At first glance, he is providing much-needed opportunity for two students, currently so badly underrepresented at the university. But only after a closer look at the eligibility criteria for this scholarship does its more disappointing nature become clear.
The scholarship is "open to any black student with an offer to study at Cambridge." You don't need to be a first-generation applicant, from a low-income household or attend a state comprehensive. Instead, the students are chosen based on academic record and personal statements, with a low emphasis on whether the scholarship would be your only means of affording to go. Once again, arguably the biggest access problem facing Oxbridge today is being swept under the rug: class. Whilst this scholarship may crucially attract more low-income black students to apply, there is no guarantee that they will be chosen and may instead be left with a whopping £50,000 in debt at the end of their degree. With social mobility in the 70s being easier than it is today, the criteria of eligibility for Stormzy's scholarship may simply augment the levels of wealth inequality in the university.
Ultimately, the criteria must be stricter, and should be solely for black students who are first-generation and working class. What is the point of a scholarship that could be snapped up by two privately-educated students? Two students who, even without the appeal of a scholarship, would have applied, got in and been able to afford the high costs of studying anyway. If you have paid to attend a private school, regardless of ethnicity, you are certainly not most in need of this scholarship. By having this criteria, I can't help but feel as though Stormzy is actually adding to the Oxbridge problem. Oxbridge makes a great deal of trying to show they care about inequality: they publicise that they're trying to tackle the problems that you can physically see, racial and gender inequality, which allows their neglecting of the invisible inequality of wealth to go unnoticed.
Oxford's latest admissions statistics revealed that state comprehensively-educated students are nine times less likely to get into Oxford than their privately-educated peers and that only 10% of undergraduates come from disadvantaged backgrounds. These intensely disappointing figures show that problems relating to socio-economic background are, alongside racial equality, just as pressing, if not the most urgent, facing Oxbridge today. By focusing merely on the ethnicity of students, this scholarship runs the risk of being lost to those who have no great need for it. A tighter criteria, limiting this scholarship solely for black students who are first-generation and working class, would allow students who need it most to stand a better chance of receiving it.
Oxbridge's accessibility is bad enough already and this scholarship as it is may, sadly, only exacerbate the problem. The most shocking admissions statistics coming from Oxford and Cambridge this year were undeniably those relating to wealth. This institutionalised ignorance of the impact of social class is a trait that Oxford and Cambridge don't appear to care to lose. And with more superficial scholarships like Stormzy's being unveiled, I can't help but feel as though working class people are being shunned even more from higher education.
