Oxford Ramps Up Recruiting

Oxford University’s Chancellor will embark on a visit to India next month in an attempt to advertise Oxford University as an alternative to Harvard and other Ivy League universities.

Chancellor Christopher Francis Patten said in an interview with the Financial Times (FT) that Oxford needed to increase its recruiting efforts to stay competitive with American schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

Noting that Oxford was “falling further and further behind” U.S. universities in recruiting top international talent, Patten said that all schools need to have a thorough strategy to target prospective students, the FT reported Sunday.

Oxford University Press Officer Ruth Collier wrote in an e-mail that the British press had taken Patten’s remarks out of context, blowing the visit out of proportion. Patten was simply “talking about what he had coming up—whereas it has been portrayed in the British press as if he announced his trip as the launch of some kind of massive campaign,“ Collier wrote.

“It’s not a big drive, more that we are trying to strengthen existing links,” Collier wrote.

Collier admitted that Oxford views Harvard and the other Ivy League schools as competition. “We view ourselves as a world-class university and would like to attract the best students in the world—as do the Ivy League universities,” Collier wrote.

Harvard College Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73 said that Harvard is not specifically concerned about losing potential students as a result of Oxford’s recruiting efforts.

Harvard always tries to be “visible, attractive, and accessible,” Lewis said. “We take nothing for granted here.”

Harvard already has a good recruiting network in India, Lewis said, referring to the Harvard Club of India and the Harvard Business School Association of India. Next month, the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) is holding a Global Series event in India, which “demonstrates Harvard’s deep interest in the region,” according to HAA Deputy Executive Director Charlie Cardillo ’91.

Historically, both Oxford and Cambridge University have drawn heavily on students from countries in the old British Commonwealth. Neeraj “Richie” Banerji ’06, an international student from India, said Oxford is better known in his home country than Harvard. Just fifty years ago, almost all Indian students studying abroad would go to England, Banerji said.

Toward the end of the century, however, there was a rising concern that Oxford and Cambridge were losing their exclusive draw, as U.S. universities were making inroads.

“Oxford is seen as a little stuffy, a little conservative compared to schools in the U.S,” Banerji said. “Harvard is a much more contemporary thing.”

Banerji said he was skeptical about the prospect of Oxford’s reported drive, “Any effort that they now make will be seen as being late to the charge, and they probably don’t want people to think they are in trouble, but they are in trouble.”