我好多年没回过牛津大学(Oxford)了，因此最近故地重游时，我有一种时光交错的感觉。四处走动时，我不断回想起25年前的同一个月份，还是个本科生的我第一次来到牛津大学时的情形。我禁不住想到：“我居然能走在基督堂草坪(Christ Church Meadow)上查邮件！”我上大学的时候，学生宿舍里甚至连电话都没有装。
牛 津大学努力让自己亘古不变。晚上站在大多数学院的方庭里，环顾四周，你无法确定此时是1613年还是2013年。但事实上，牛津已经变了，变化得非常快。 我所知道的那个牛津大学，充斥着性骚扰、种族主义、伪文艺和雪莉酒。那个牛津已不见踪影，如今的牛津非常专业，并且开始关心金钱。
在我读书 的年代，考进牛津并不是太难，因为无论是私立学校还是公立学校，几乎所有考上的学生都来自英国少数上层或中上层家庭。此外，那时几乎没有女生。尽管当时的 录取流程随意性颇强，但要通过还是需要一点好运的。比如，我所知道的一名导师就理直气壮地青睐毕业于公学的浅发色的高个学生。
一旦被录取， 没人期望你会努力学习。你踏实地知道，你的简历上将永远挂着“牛津”的名字，接下来的3年里你要做的就是好好享受这个神奇的地方。我所知道的大多数学生把 精力用于成长、交朋友、喝啤酒、运动和寻找爱情。当时的一项调查显示，本科生在学期内平均每周用于学习的时间是20小时，而一年中两个学期加起来的时间仅 为24周。
一 周的全部作业一般也不过是写一篇短小的文章（这对做专栏作家倒是一种不错的训练）。我的有些作业写得太差劲了，结果我在期末考试前重读它们的时候，简直想 写信向我那些老导师致歉。许多导师反正也不在乎。他们中有些人在要求不太严格的日子（那种日子早已成为过去）获得了这份教职，没有博士学位(PhD)，也 从未发表过学术论文，终日饮酒。导师一对一指导学生的制度给了他们很大的自由决定权。我所在的学院有一名导师，据说曾在一些学生面前暴露下体，还曾试图招 募另一些学生为情报机构工作。还有一名导师骚扰了太多女生，导致校方最终采取了行动：禁止他一对一指导女生。
那时候，“政治正确”的观念还 不太盛行。在本科生公共休息室(JCR)会议上，如果一名女生试图发言，男生通常会起哄：“把咪咪露出来给爷们看看！”一名信仰锡克教(Sikh)的学生 则会引来这样的叫喊（而不会遭到抗议）：“现在他们连裹头佬儿都招进来了！”反同性恋被视作正常现象。只要对这些传统做法提出抗议，就会被视为缺乏幽默 感。这一切听上去也许像是老黄历了，但如今英国政坛的许多人物，都是与我同时代、或接近同时代的牛津毕业生，比如戴维•卡梅伦(David Cameron)、埃德•米利班德(Ed Miliband)、迈克尔•戈夫(Michael Gove)和乔治•奥斯本(George Osborne)。
那时的牛津大学是隔绝于现代世界之外的永恒象牙塔。这所亘古不变的大学，培养出了刘易斯•卡罗尔(Lewis Carroll)、C•S•刘易斯 (CS Lewis)和J•R•R•托尔金(JRR Tolkien)这样的作家，他们的作品经久不衰。在最理想的情况下，这所大学还帮助自己的学生过上了自由思 考、不受当代热点问题和潮流侵扰的生活。马克思主义和后现代主义的影响几乎丝毫未渗入牛津。有关约翰•斯图亚特•穆勒(John Stuart Mill)的课程讨论完全围绕穆勒本身，而没有演变成一场有关撒切尔主义的争论。牛津培养出了撒切尔（Thatcher，以及英国近代其他大多数首相），但这所大学本身却不关心政治。
牛津的教学体系时不时展现奇效。与一名优秀的思想家谈话一小时，会让你对问题产生崭新的理解。而在我那个年代，从牛津出来的学生可能不学无术、只学会了如何自信地忽悠，也可能受益于全世界最高的师生比例、从此脱胎换骨。
如 今的牛津更正经八百了。上个月，我在原来就读的学院溜达时，楼梯旁一个个中国人、俄罗斯和德国人的姓氏让我大为惊讶。牛津在知识上日益国际化。如今，牛津 更难考了，于是考进来的学生往往把牛津当做职业生涯第一站。许多学生第一学期就去就业服务处咨询，而在我那个年代，许多人在期末考试几天后还带着宿醉、东 倒西歪地四处瞎晃。
一切都变得更专业了。如今的牛津招聘的大多是著名学者，而很少再招聘酒鬼。另一个重要变化是，牛津开始关心金钱了。 1988年10月，我入学的时候，牛津发起了一场名为“支持牛津”(Campaign for Oxford)的筹款活动。当时的许多老师觉得那活动简直庸俗至极。而如今，牛津正忙着筹集30亿英镑。
这个地方如今四处是钱的味道。一下火车，你几乎首先就看到赛德商学院(Saïd Business School)。 在我那个年代，这所商学院还没有成立，博格布洛克科技园(Begbroke Science Park)那些高科技企业也还无影无踪，更别提牛津互联网学院(Oxford Internet Institute)了。如今的热门本科课程经济学和管理，在我那个时候还没有开设。
在这种变化中，牛津也许失落了某种东西，那就是永恒性。如今的学生再也没那么多工夫到莫德林鹿院(Magdalen Deer Park)闲逛、在暴露糟糕板球技艺的同时交到一辈子的朋友，也没有那么大的劲头在清晨5点揣摩自创的歌曲。但如今的牛津大学确实更优秀了。Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c337a5b0-3c38-11e3-b85f-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2k8530gqO
October 25, 2013 1:09 pm
My return to Oxford
©Luis GrañenaI hadn’t been to Oxford in years, so when I visited recently I felt like a time-traveller. Walking around, I kept recalling the university I had first encountered as an undergraduate 25 years ago this month. I found myself thinking things like, “I’m walking through Christ Church Meadow checking my emails!” Back in the day, students didn’t even have telephones in their rooms.
Oxford works hard to look timeless. If you stand in the average college quad at night, you can’t tell by looking around whether the year is 1613 or 2013. Yet in fact the university has changed, quite quickly. The Oxford I knew – shot through with sexual harassment, racism, dilettantism and sherry – has been replaced by something quite professional and money-conscious.
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It wasn’t very hard to get into Oxford in my day, as almost all students – whether from private or state schools – were drawn from the small British upper and upper-middle class. Moreover, most were men. Still, we’d all needed luck to survive the rather random admissions process. For instance, one tutor I knew unapologetically favoured tall, blond public school types.
Once you’d got in, little effort was expected. Safe in the knowledge that you could put Oxford on your CV for ever, you had three years to enjoy this magical place. Most students I knew spent their energy trying to grow up, make friends, drink beer, play sport and find love. A survey in my time showed that the average undergraduate worked 20 hours a week during term-time – which meant just 24 weeks a year.
Often an entire week’s workload consisted of writing one shortish essay (good preparation for being a columnist). Some of my essays were so shoddy that when I reread them before my final exams, I almost wrote to my old tutors to apologise. Many tutors didn’t care anyway. Some had got their jobs in bygone amateur days, didn’t have a PhD, never published academic papers and lived off sherry. The one-on-one tutorials allowed them great discretion. A tutor in my college was known for exposing himself to some students, and trying to recruit others to the intelligence services. Another harassed so many female students that finally action was taken: he was banned from tutoring women one-on-one.
Political correctness was not rampant then. At meetings of the undergraduate junior common room, if a woman tried to speak, it was customary for men to chant: “Get your tits out for the lads!” A Sikh student elicited the cry (which nobody challenged): “They’re letting in towelheads now!” Homophobia was taken for granted. Any complaints about these traditions were treated as evidence of humourlessness. All this might seem like ancient history, except that many of today’s British politicians – David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Michael Gove, George Osborne – were Oxford contemporaries or near-contemporaries of mine.
Oxford was an ivory tower then, a timeless place, removed from the modern world. This timelessness had engendered timeless authors such as Lewis Carroll, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. At its best, it also encouraged a life of the mind free of contemporary concerns or fads. Marxism and postmodernism barely penetrated Oxford. A tutorial about John Stuart Mill was entirely about Mill, and not an argument about Thatcherism. Oxford had educated Thatcher (and most other recent British prime ministers) and yet it felt apolitical.
Every now and then, the tutorial system worked brilliantly: an hour’s conversation with a wonderful thinker from which you emerged with new understanding. You could leave Oxford in my day having learnt nothing except how to bluff your way in a plausible accent while underinformed; or you could leave transformed by the best student-to-staff ratio on earth.
Things are more serious now. Wandering around my old college last month, I marvelled at the Chinese, Russian and German surnames at the bottom of the staircases: Oxford is being intellectually globalised. Today’s students work harder to get in, and then tend to treat Oxford as the first stage of their working lives. Many visit the careers service in their first term, rather than just toddling along hungover a few days after final exams.
Everything has become more professional. Oxford now mostly recruits star academics, seldom alcoholics. Crucially, too, the university has discovered money. In the month I arrived, October 1988, Oxford launched the fundraising “Campaign for Oxford”. Many dons thought this impossibly vulgar. Now the university is busy raising £3bn.
The place smells of money. Practically the first building you see after getting off the train is the Saïd Business School. It wasn’t there in my day. Nor were the high-tech companies at the Begbroke Science Park, let alone the Oxford Internet Institute. Economics and management, a massively oversubscribed undergraduate course today, didn’t exist in my time.
Possibly something has been lost in the change. Oxford isn’t timeless any more. Today’s students have less time to mooch around Magdalen Deer Park, or to build life-long friendships while playing bad cricket or dissecting indie songs at 5am. But it’s surely a better university now.
simon.kuper@ft.com; Twitter @KuperSimon
