BRITAIN'S top employers have fallen out of love with Oxford University, a new survey of blue-chip firms published today has found.
Oxford graduates, as recently as three years ago the pick of the crop for recruitment directors, are now less likely to be signed up by Britain's biggest companies than those of six other universities, the study by the tutorial college group Mander Portman Woodward (MPW) reveals.
Only 45 per cent of the top 200 UK companies have taken on Oxford graduates over the past two years, compared with 65 per cent that have recruited from Cambridge - now by far employers' favourite university. Graduates of Leeds, Durham, Manchester, Nottingham and University College London are also more likely to find top jobs than Oxonians. The university could only tie for seventh place in the overall table with Birmingham, just ahead of Bristol, Exeter and Sheffield. Three years ago, when MPW last conducted similar research, Oxford was top of the pile.
James Burnett, head of development at MPW, said that the study - conducted to help the colleges' students to choose a university - fitted with other recent work showing Oxford's crown beginning to slip. It follows the most recent Times league table of universities, in which Oxford was edged out of a top-two position for the first time - by Imperial College, London.
"It is hard to think of obvious reasons why Oxford has slipped, but it seems that Cambridge and other universities have been more pro-active with careers guidance," he said. "Other universities have overtaken Oxford while Oxford has stood still. Durham, in particular, has been slipping in the academic league table, but has climbed in this one because they are really getting their act together on careers."
Oxford's poor performance may also be affected by the tendency of its graduates to choose careers in the professions, the Civil Service and the media rather than business and the City. Imperial's low standing, too, was probably down to the large number of graduates who progress to doctorates, or who take jobs with smaller computing, engineering and bio-tech firms.
Colin Lucas, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, was surprised by the findings, saying that its own figures showed less than 2 per cent of its graduates still looking for work six months after leaving. Major graduate recruiters such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble, he said, "come back to Oxford time and time again when they are looking to recruit people who will shape their organisations in the future, and they tell us that the intellectual achievement of Oxford graduates, and the many skills they develop in their courses and in extra-curricular activity, help to make them highly employable." Oxford was "not complacent", Dr Lucas added, and was "always aware of the highly competitive graduate recruitment market and the quality of students from other universities". Universities in the new elite group, however, felt the results reflected a growing mood that Oxford and Cambridge were no longer ahead of the pack.
Rennie May, director of Durham's Careers Service, said: "We have had comments from employers that they prefer Durham graduates rather than Oxbridge because of their maturity and all-round range of capabilities. We know that there is increasing targeting of specific universities by employers and Durham is always on the list."
The survey is also the latest evidence of a de facto "Ivy League" of top universities. "The results confirm the feeling we get in our contacts with employers, that there is an unofficial Premier or Ivy League of universities - for the most part the 'old' universities - in the minds of employers," Mr Burnett said. "Whilst a good many of the newer universities offer very practical or vocational degree courses, employers still prefer the arguably more academic courses offered by the Premier League."
Every year hundreds of graduates secure top jobs with starting salaries of £20,000 to £30,000 through the so-called "milk round" - the process by which the City and the professions visit campuses at careers fairs to win the cream of the year. Once the preserve of Oxford and Cambridge, the milk round now takes in almost all the universities in the table, as recruiters cast their net more widely in the search for talent.
None of the former polytechnics featured among recruiters' top 20, and Mr Burnett said that this was reflected by his experience of students' choices. "At MPW we see a lot of candidates resitting exams to make their grades, and there was a feeling after the polytechnics became universities that fewer would bother," he said. "In fact, the opposite has happened - more and more students are resitting as they are acutely aware of the league."
TODAY'S poll of graduate employers is the latest in a series of embarrassments for Oxford University, adding to the whispers in academic circles that the most famous seat of learning in the world is on the slide.
League tables produced by The Times and the Financial Times have seen the dark blues slip from their accustomed place among the top two universities in Britain. Twice this year, employers have given an even less flattering verdict and one of its own college heads has said that Oxford is "hanging on by its fingernails" to a place in the world elite.
Oxford has rebuttals for the polls: the league tables take no account of college spending, many graduates take jobs outside the big firms. But a damaging impression is being created. In terms of all-round academic strength, only Cambridge would be seen by most experts as superior to Oxford among British universities. Oxford outperformed all its rivals in this year's elections to the learned societies and registered record research income of £114 million. However, Imperial College, London, and the London School of Economics have shown that the picture is less clear in specialist areas.
Although Oxford has had some success in reversing the "brain drain" to the United States, traditional measures of excellence such as numbers of Nobel Prizes suggest that there is much ground to make up. Both Oxford and Cambridge struggle to match the spending power of American universities such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford. Harvard's endowment, for example, is six times the size of Oxford's and fees of more than $30,000 (£18,750) a year constantly widen the gap. Oxford's research income and fundraising prowess remains impressive in British terms. But Cambridge coups, such as securing Microsoft's first non-American research campus, have added to the impression that a gap is opening up.
Sir Ron Oxburgh, the Rector of Imperial College, London, who has taught at both the ancient universities, blames Oxford's unwieldy system of government. "Cambridge is superficially similar to Oxford, but in fact it is run very differently because there is a different relationship between the colleges and the centre," he said when Imperial overhauled Oxford in The Times league table.
Reforms put forward by Sir Peter North, the past Vice-Chancellor, to be debated during the coming academic year, are intended to give Oxford the ability to take initiatives more swiftly. The Government's decision to channel college fees through the central administration may also help to shift the balance of power within the university. Many of the leading figures in the university believe that only the freedom to charge higher fees will generate the funds needed to restore Oxford's international pre-eminence.
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