i'm really going to try not to tweet about admissions again after this, but seriously, this past week has been a shitshow. worse, it has been an AVOIDABLE shitshow. and we still don't know how any of what's happened will impact on next year's admissions round.

this is what i mean when i say there's no perfect solution. deferred entry for this year's cohort means fewer places and tougher competition for next year's cohort. the physical, logistical limitations of room numbers and pandemic safety remain extant.

and now this u-turn. like, that's what i mean when i say that the real target here should be the government, not 'oxbridge' (when this is a national issue, not only one for the oxford and cambridge constituent colleges)

they could have informed those of us on the ground in admin and admissions WELL in advance of what they were planning; they had plenty of time to do so. they could have made choices that didn't further disadvantage the already disadvantaged. they could have anticipated this.

obviously they didn't, because fucking why would they; but they could and should have done so. everyone calling on their alma maters to honour the offer, your hearts were in the right place, but you could've taken a cue from the students and gone directly to parliament square.

the people trying to make this happen at an institutional level (the people you've been emailing, or as i like to call them 'my coworkers') have been killing themselves trying to scrape together a solution to the gov't's malicious incompetence. and now all that work is useless.

i'm thrilled for the students for whom this means justice; i'm deeply worried about next year; i'm furious at williamson and johnson and the architects of this monumental fuckup, and will remain so. and i'm very tired of watching the anger those dickheads deserve get misplaced.

ANYWAY how about that fuckin uhhhh blaseball

(this is a joke, blaseball isn't back yet. i wish.)

there is, by the way, a whole separate thread about how the ongoing marketisation of higher education has pushed institutions to over-offer every year in order to protect their bottom line, which means that sometimes more kids are entitled to places than places exist...

...but that one is for someone more qualified than me, i think. point is, this is happening in a context that's been created by years of pressure from multiple successive governments. like i said: it's never as straightforward as it looks from the outside in.