The director of graduate admissions at Oxford University has needed to apologise in court to a student suing considered one of its colleges for “selecting by wealth” after offering inaccurate evidence.
Jane Elizabeth Sherwood told a court hearing she were wrong to say that other universities had an identical admission practices. In written evidence, she apologised to the court and to Damien Shannon, 26, who’s suing St Hugh’s College, Oxford, for less than admitting students to postgraduate degrees ready to show they’ve got money to satisfy both its fees and £12,900 in living costs.
As the Observer revealed last month, Shannon claims that those without easy accessibility to capital and savings are being “disproportionately discriminated against” by this so-called financial guarantee, in breach in their human rights.
The university as an entire doesn’t consider money earned through part-time work when it judges whether a student has the means to review in Oxford. It also only has one university-wide scholarship that’s means-tested, in accordance with its own defence papers.
St Hugh’s is fighting Shannon’s legal claim and Sherwood had told Manchester county court that other universities set similar financial guarantees. In further evidence heard inside the court on Friday, Sherwood admitted this was inaccurate. Her written apology said: “The University of Exeter doesn’t require a financial guarantee from postgraduate offer holders. Nor does Goldsmith’s College, even though it does require a deposit in respect of fees for certain courses, eg the MA in film-making.”
Shannon told the Observer: “The university’s director of graduate admissions attempted to justify the financial selection policy by claiming, falsely, that two other universities were operating an equivalent policy. This was done notwithstanding my having mentioned in my previous submissions to the court that the claim was not true – nevertheless, it was repeated, although eventually withdrawn. The claim was rightly withdrawn and an apology was issued to both myself and to the court, and naturally I accept the apology entirely.”
At a primary hearing of Shannon’s case on Friday, judgment was reserved over whether the student’s human rights were breached when St Hugh’s turned him down on financial grounds after he had met their academic requirements. Judge Armitage QC said he would return to Manchester county court with a judgment at a unspecified future date.
Shannon alleged that his place at the economic and social history course was withdrawn due to “arbitrary figure” the faculty had set. The university says a guarantee was required to make sure postgraduate students’ fees and living costs were covered within the course.
