There is an old French saying that loosely translates to "Achievement without struggle is a shallow victory."

This so called leveling of the playing field is simply giving an unearned advantage to a group so they may appear to have achieved something.

The demolition of the humanities is nearly complete anyhow. Why shouldn't receiving a degree from Oxford become a participation trophy?

And then there's this:

"Figures showed 32 per cent of women scored the highest grade in history at Oxford compared to 37 per cent for men."

I want to know what genders the other 31% are. Presumably, there are a lot of them. And they're totally being oppressed by those evil binary-gender people.

Is home exams a new term for CHEATING?

Any educational organisation that promotes cheating voids their qualifications and recognition of all qualifications issued

No Govt Agenct can hire "cheats" from such as discriminates against non cheaters and is unethical
No company can be employed for Govt contracts if they employ unethical cheats

All women will be determined to be cheats and unemployable in the real world where lying and cheating are at least publically reviled

SO STUPID - IT BURNS

"Achievement without struggle is a shallow victory."

I so agree with this.

And Graham Palmer has a very good point.

At the end of this tirade, the author offers some practical advice:

While other people are telling you "Let's make a New Year's resolution to lose 15 pounds this year!" I'm going to say let's pledge to do fucking anything -- add any skill, any improvement to your human tool set, and get good enough at it to impress people. Don't ask me what -- hell, pick something at random if you don't know. Take a class in karate, or ballroom dancing, or pottery. Learn to bake. Build a birdhouse. Learn massage. Learn a programming language. Film a porno. Adopt a superhero persona and fight crime. Start a YouTube vlog. Write for Cracked.

But the key is, I don't want you to focus on something great that you're going to make happen to you ("I'm going to find a girlfriend, I'm going to make lots of money...."). I want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that would make you ever so slightly more interesting and valuable to other people.

Instead of demanding the world adjust to your weakness, adjust your weakness to the world. Get better at something, anything. Add value to yourself.

Rice University here in Houston has a long history of take home exams. There are even closed book, fixed time, take home exams. Apparently they get around the blatantly obvious opportunities for cheating by having an 'honor squad' that can inspect your home at random in order to ensure you are behaving honorably and taking your tests right. I personally prefer the simple proctored exams. But friends who went to Rice strongly defend the system.

Amy is correct that Oxford is expressing a demeaning attitude toward women, giving them favors to allow them to score better. It goes further than that. Oxford has admitted in the article that this attitude and possibly other practices have denied these women the full advantages of an Oxford education. Oxford has defrauded these women of the full value of their tuition.

The proof is that Oxford women as a group do worse than men on Oxford's usually administered tests. Progressive truth holds that women are equal to men in cognitive ability and drive to succeed. So, the only explanation for their group differences is discrimination by Oxford. This is how discrimination law is applied by progressives to all segments of society, and especially to employers.

Oxford might claim that these women had already been damaged by societal discrimination before entering Oxford. All bigots claim something like this. Oxford knew or should have known about these deficits before these women entered, and should have given remedial training to correct these past effects. Failure to do this is another indication of active discrimination against women.

Allowing women at Oxford to take easier or more comfortable tests is an attempt to paper over Oxford's own discrimination, after the fact, without delivering the full value of the education which these women paid for and deserve. Title IX lawsuits should ensue, both civil and federal.

- -
The above is entirely true from the progressive viewpoint, but it is not my personal view. I accept that men and women show group differences in many respects, including dispersion in cognitive ability. Jordan Peterson has explained that men have a wider variation in IQ than women. There are more geniuses as well as more idiots among men than among women.

So, I don't see evidence that women have suffered discrimination at Oxford. Women as a group merely did somewhat differently on the tests, there being somewhat more high achievers among the men. There were probably more low achievers among the men.

But, what does my opinion matter. The accepted Progressive truth is the absolute equality of men and women in all respects. Under that view, Oxford is a repressive, patriarchical, bigot.

I note Saul Alinsky's "Rulebook for Radicals", Rule #4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

Progressives want total equality, so give them total equality, until some rational result can be negotiated.

"Figures showed 32 per cent of women scored the highest grade in history at Oxford compared to 37 per cent for men."

Umm, Cousin Dave, I read that sentence to mean that 32% of the women scored the highest grade in the subject of history*, while 68% of women scored one of the lower grades, i.e., not the HIGHEST grade. Same with the men: 37% scored the highest grade, while 63% scored other, lower grades.

*A+, 4.0, or something else? I don't know: the closest that I've ever gotten to Oxford is Dublin, Ireland.

I don't think Oxford should worry about making the results "fair." Biology isn't fair.

When I was 8 I went to a new school that divided students by ability. I went with the high ability readers, along with 2 other girls. 2 girls went with the low readers. The classes had about 18 students each. There were just two or three boys in the middle group.

I started theorizing reasons for this. I learned about survival of the fittest at the same age and it really made sense biologically. Males were the "experimental" sex with more variation. More male babies were born, but fewer survived both because of birth defects and accidents. For the survival of our species, women were less likely to vary. This made them more likely to survive. Since women spend 9 months nurturing a new life, they need to be universal strong genetically. Diversity can't be risked. We grew stronger as a species through sex selection. Women picked the most desirable men and the weaker ones were generally left behind.

During the ensuing 46 years, I have reflected on my thoughts as an 8 year old girl and notwithstanding confirmation bias, I don't think my old theory is all that bad. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. I was one of them. Perhaps it explains why there aren't as many successful women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies as well as a lack of high achieving women at Oxford.

Perhaps part of the gap is also due to prejudice. Of course, some women are intelligent enough to compete on equal footing. Though I had a strong start, people assume that I am a dumb blonde. Perhaps that is through categorization. Perhaps it is through my speech and mannerisms. Perhaps I succumbed to society's pressure to fit in which is not sex specific but individual.

Jen- Great comment. Your theory makes a lot of sense to me. I have no particular background in human development, but it seems logical. Wish Amy would comment on it.

"Women picked the most desirable men and the weaker ones were generally left behind. "

Hence the brilliant and sparkling state of humanity here in the best of all centuries.

From humorist/novelist Fanny Fern (1811-1872).

"Dinner Parties" (1870):

"I lately read an article in a London paper, in which 'the woman-question' was treated in the following enlightened manner: The writer avowed his dislike to the cultivation of woman's intellect; since men had enough intellect, in their intercourse with each other; and wanted only with woman that charming, childish prattle and playfulness, which was so refreshing to the male creature, when he needed relief and amusement!

"The author of these advanced ideas didn't state whether he considered these *childish*, *prattling* women fit to be mothers and heads of families; probably that was too puerile a question to consider in the same breath with the amusement they might afford men by the total absence of intelligence."

And, in her essay "Shall Women Vote?" Fern compared anti-suffragists to Mr. Tulliver in George Eliot's 1860 novel "The Mill on the Floss." (Mr. Tulliver marries a fool so he can be the boss, only to find his son has inherited his mother's weak brain. His daughter Maggie did not.)