White Xmas at Oxbridge

A bleak portrait of racial and social exclusion at Oxford and Cambridge has been shown in official data which shows that more than 20 Oxbridge colleges made no offers to black candidates for undergraduate courses last year and one Oxford college has not admitted a single black student in five years.

The university's admissions data confirms that only one black Briton of Caribbean descent was accepted for undergraduate study at Oxford last year.

Figures revealed in requests made under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act by the Labour MP David Lammy also show that Oxford's social profile is 89% upper- and middle-class, while 87.6% of the Cambridge student body is drawn from the top three socioeconomic groups. The average for British universities is 64.5%, according to the admissions body Ucas.

The FoI data also shows that of more than 1,500 academic and lab staff at Cambridge, none are black. Thirty-four are of British Asian origin.

One Oxford college, Merton, has admitted no black students in five years – and just three in the last decade. Eleven Oxford colleges and 10 Cambridge colleges made no offers to black students for the academic year beginning autumn 2009.

Oxford's breakdown of its latest undergraduate admissions figures, published on its website, shows that just one black Caribbean student was accepted in 2009, out of 35 applications.

A total of 77 students of Indian descent were accepted, out of 466 applications. Six black Caribbean undergraduates were accepted at Cambridge the same year.

In advance of a crucial Commons vote on Thursday, ministers have said universities that want to charge students up to £9,000 a year in fees will face fresh targets on widening access to applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. Oxford and Cambridge, which are expected to charge the maximum fee, say they are keen to recruit the brightest students from all backgrounds. Both have programmes to encourage applications from state school students, and those from black and working-class backgrounds.

But the FoI data shows white students were more likely to be successful than black applicants at every Cambridge college except St Catharine's, where black candidates have had a 38% success rate, compared with 30% for white students.

The starkest divide in Cambridge was at Newnham, an all-women's college, where black applicants had a 13% success rate compared with 67% for white students. The data for Oxford tells a similar story: at Jesus college white candidates were three and a half times more successful than black candidates over an 11-year period. Oxford says the figures are too low for the variation between colleges to be statistically significant.

The most selective universities argue that poor attainment at school level narrows the pool from which candidates can be drawn. But black candidates are more likely to apply to elite universities.

In 2009, more than 29,000 white students got three As or better at A-level (excluding general studies) and about 28.4% applied to Oxford; while 452 black students got three As or better, and nearly half applied to Oxford. A spokeswoman for Oxford said: "Black students apply disproportionately for the most oversubscribed subjects, contributing to a lower than average success rate for the group as a whole: 44% of all black applicants apply for Oxford's three most oversubscribed subjects, compared with just 17% of all white applicants. That means nearly half of black applicants are applying for the same three subjects … the three toughest subjects to get places in. Those subjects are economics and management, medicine, and maths.with 7% of white applicants. This goes a very long way towards explaining the group's overall lower success rate."

The FoI figures show large parts of the country never send students to the most prestigious universities. No one from Knowsley, Sandwell and Merthyr Tydfil has got to Cambridge in seven years. In the last five years, pupils from Richmond upon Thames have received almost the same number of offers from Oxford as the whole of Scotland.

Rob Berkeley, director of the Runnymede Trust, a thinktank that promotes racial equality, said: "If we go for this elite system of higher education … we have got to make sure what they are doing is fair. If you look at how many people on both frontbenches are Oxbridge-educated, Oxford and Cambridge are still the major route to positions of influence. If that's the case we shouldn't be restricting these opportunities to people from minority backgrounds."

Black students do not lack aspiration, but the opportunity to get into the most prestigious universities, Berkeley argued. "Of the black Caribbean students getting straight As at A-level, the vast majority apply to Oxbridge.... those who do choose to apply have a much lower success rate [than white applicants]. One in five in comparison with one in three for white students. That doesn't seem to have shifted for the last 15 years." A boom in university participation in recent years has led to a more diverse student body, but black students are concentrated in a handful of institutions. In 2007-08 the University of East London had half as many black students as the entire Russell group of 20 universities, which include Oxford and Cambridge.

Matthew Benjamin, 28, who studied geography at Jesus College, Oxford, said: "I was very aware that I was the only black student in my year at my college. I was never made to feel out of place, but it was certainly something I was conscious of.

"When I arrived and they wanted to do a prospectus, and have some students on the cover, they chose me, and one other Asian guy and another guy from Thailand. It was clear they wanted to project this image of somewhere that was quite diverse. The reality was very different – there were three [minority] ethnic students in a year.

"On open days, some black kids would see me and say 'you're the only black person we've seen here – is it even worth us applying?'"

A spokesman for Cambridge said 15% of students accepted last year were from minority ethnic backgrounds. "Over the five years to 2009 entry black students accounted for 1.5% of admissions to Cambridge, compared with 1.2% of degree applicants nationally who secure AAA at A-level. Colleges make offers to the best and brightest students regardless of their background, and where variations exist this is due to supply of applications and demand by subject."

(Un)Social Networks

It is perhaps inevitable given the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter that the number of places blocking access to them is also growing. Burma, China, Iran, Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, the roll-call goes on and on.

Harrisburg in Pennsylvania? Can that be true? Can a town better known for its steel industry and agriculture than for internet censorship really have joined the list? For the past week the private Harrisburg University has instigated what it calls a "blackout" of all social networking sites. It has removed from its central server the channels that pipe social media, cutting off access to Twitter and Facebook, instant messaging services and video chat through Skype.

To be fair to the university, its action cannot be equated to those of the Burmese military junta or the ayatollahs of Iran. This is, after all, a modern science and technology college, opened to students five years ago, that offers specialist courses in use of the internet.

Rather, the idea was to undertake an experiment to find out what impact social media and multitasking were having on college life, its students and faculty alike. It was dreamed up by the university's provost, Eric Darr, who became intrigued when he observed his 16-year-old daughter at home one night. "She had Facebook open on her laptop, was listening to music on iTunes, had apps open on her iPhone and three different conversations going on instant messaging – all simultaneously," he said. "It struck me how overpowering all this was, not in a negative way, and it made me wonder what would happen if all that wasn't there."

On Monday morning the university closed channels to the social networking sites so no access could be gained via the university's central wireless system. The reaction of the 800 or so students ranged from curious to puzzled to outraged.

Darr was in the room when one student moaned that without Facebook on his laptop in class he didn't know what to do. Darr said: "I was standing right there, and said to him there's always the novel idea of paying attention to your professor." Alexis Rivera, an 18-year-old student of internet security, said she had been surprised by the effect of being deprived of her beloved instant messaging and Facebook. "It's a lot better," she said. "I can pay attention much better now."

As it is a laptop university, students have computers open at most lectures. In an average class, Rivera would have AOL, Yahoo, MSN and Skype instant messaging running, with up to seven chats going at the same time. "Normally I'd be chatting to other people in the class about how boring it was," she said. This week, without the distractions, she has found herself taking more notes and following the tutor with greater understanding. She has been doing more homework, as in the past she often missed assignments because she was so busy messaging she didn't hear them. And she's also become more outgoing. "I'm a lot more social," she said. "I talk to a lot more people, face to face, rather than sitting there typing away."

Others have been less enthusiastic. Several of the college's computer geeks have rerouted internet access through Canada or Norway or used proxy websites to break through the firewall. Some students have nipped to the nearby Hilton hotel to use its wireless access.

Giovanni Acosta, 21, knows how to overcome the blackout but decided against it, as he wanted to see the outcome of the experiment. At first he said he was twitchy. "I had to log on to Facebook even though I knew it was blocked, and I did that every 10 minutes or so, again and again," he said. "But now the itch has gone. I've learnt how much I was being distracted."

God Help US!

Sarah Palin has returned to Alaska after her whirlwind 68-day exposure to America's national political scene, but the controversy over her vice-presidential candidacy shows no sign of abating.

As the state governor stepped off a plane in icy Anchorage on Wednesday, she faced fresh allegations over her behaviour on the campaign trail and renewed attacks on her lack of readiness for the White House. Many of the attacks were from disgruntled aides within John McCain's campaign.

The most piercing allegations concerned Palin's ignorance of foreign affairs - which were depicted to be even more extreme than already thought - and the amount she spent kitting out herself and her family with a TV-friendly wardrobe.

Fox News, a channel that had been generally flattering in its coverage of the "Palin phenomenon", reported that aides were astonished when they learned she was unaware that Africa was not a country but a whole continent. She was also said to be unable to name the countries that belong to the North American Free Trade Agreement: the US, Mexico and Canada.

Unnamed McCain advisers, their ire no longer constrained by campaign discipline, complained that the Alaskan governor had been uncooperative with them. The New York Times reported that the McCain circle was angry about her decision to talk directly to someone she thought was French president Nicolas Sarkozy, but was in fact a Canadian radio DJ playing a prank.

The most colourful new information concerned Palin's spending spree on the campaign trail. Newsweek reported that she ended up spending far more than the $150,000 (£93,000) that was already known about, with up to $40,000 being lavished on her husband, Todd.

A wealthy donor who had offered to pay was shocked, Newsweek said, when he got the bill from the high-end retailers Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. One McCain aide characterised the episode to the magazine as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast".

Palin refused to address the accusations. She said: "If they're an unnamed source, that says it all. I won't comment on anyone's gossip based on anonymous sources. That's kind of a small, of a bitter type of person who anonymously would charge that I didn't know an answer to a question. So until I know who's talking about it, I won't have a comment on a false allegation."