I just picked up an interesting factoid through the excellent Freedom of Information Act site whatdotheyknow.com - ever a fascinating source of diverting and illuminating information on our public organisations.
From Chris Campbell: "Please provide a breakdown of how many BBC employees, and in which BBC division, in the last 20 years have been Oxford or Cambridge graduates?"
Right of admission reserved. Photograph: sidebog7/Flickr/Some rights reserved
This taps a common perception of the media as being elitist and favouring candidates from private schools. But is there any truth in that?
The BBC said in reply it only began collecting information on university backgrounds in the past two years. Based on that data, 7,401 people have successfully applied for jobs at the BBC and of those, 364 - or 5% - have been graduates of either Oxford or Cambridge.
What we really need to see, of course, is the total number of applicants, and then how many of those went to Oxbridge, and compare that to the proportion that were successful. But do the Oxbridge applicants get in because they went to Oxbridge, or did they succeed because they are good? Both probably. We're still obsessed with status and class, aren't we?
