For many people in this country, their only regular contact with university students is via University Challenge. I don't know what the audience numbers are, but they must be in the millions since BBC2 continues to show it in a prime-time evening slot. I am certainly a follower (partly, I guess, because I took part when I was a student - we won both the rehearsals and then lost narrowly when it came to the real thing so that was the end of that).
I would argue that the image of the students on the teams is important for the general audience watching. What I am about to say should not be taken as applying to tonght's teams - it's a more generic point. Many teams now include postgrad students, and indeed mature students who are studying at undergraduate level. That is good. The representation of women is less good: many teams are exclusively male: teams with more than one female are rare. For some universities the subject mix is well balanced, for others it seems as if the team chose itself on the basis of personal friendship. I know that teams are chosen by the Student Unions of the relevant universities, so clearly they have to be left to their own devices on how they choose. But more teams are put together at the start of the season than ever appear on air, since the BBC weeds out - through a process of preliminary evaluation - teams that are not good enough.
But the issue that does make me anxious sometimes is the social mix of the students. I accept that one cannot be 100% certain in ascribing the social class background of student contestants simply from their accent, deportment (and possibly their subject - 'Classics' os probably a give-away for someone who has attended an independent school). But it does seem to me that the teams that come forward to University Challenge sometimes convey an image of coming from a very narrow sector of society, and not representative of stduents as a whole - or perhaps even of the stduents in the relevant institution. Of course, they may have been chosen because they are the best at quizzes. But universities might like to add in other considerations.
Oxford and Cambridge Universities both struggle with an image of being full of 'toffs' who went to public schools. It is an image that is conveyed to millions of people around the UK via the composition of some of the teams that the Oxbridge colleges put forward on University Challenge. Perhaps the cause of widening participation at Oxbridge could be furthered by more teams with a 'boy or girl next door' feel to them.
Tonight I was interested to see a team exclusively of medical students (there are no other at St George's) victorious - and the captain was a woman. But befroe anyone points it out I recognise that the Sheffield team that got to the final a couple of years ago was an all-male team, although it did include a mature postgrad student. However, they did convey the spirit of being ordinary guys.
Oh, by the way, I'm not the only member of the University Executive Board who was on University Challenge as a student.
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