Talk:St Hilda's College, Oxford

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[edit] Accepting men at St Hilda's

Somehow, this sentence: "However, it intends to join the unholy mass of mixed colleges in Michelmas term of 2007 by accepting male students, thus bringing to an end the college's prestigious role as the last all-female college in Oxford." does not seem NPOV. Does anybody agree on this?  :: Salvo (talk) 00:53, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I totally agree, I've re-written it. --Alf melmac 01:25, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone else ever heard of the "Women's Institute of Equal Rights"? This entry is the only google hit, and there's no source. 12:28, 20 February 2006 (UTC) Jdc

I strongly suspect that it's a hoax. The quotation (which I've moved from the article to this page, below) reads like a semi-literate parody of 1970s dim-left feminism of the silliest kind:
A spokesperson for the Women's Institute of Equal Rights commented on this development:
"The lack of an all-women's college or hall in the University of Oxford will result in a return to the phallocentric nature of the institution as a whole. We would have hoped this college could continue to provide a safe haven for women who excel academically in the company of fellow women without the forbidding presence of testosterone. It is a sad day for women's right in the developed world as we know it."
--Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 12:33, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I've rewritten the part about it being a womens' only college because technically it's not as the statutes have been changed. I think the article needs expanding generally to bring it up to the standard of the majority of other college pages, and so if I meet my offer to go, I'll expand it, if someone doesn't do it first! B.S. 05 19:44, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Libby Purves

I've removed Libby Purves from the list of former students. According to "Who's Who", she was at St Anne's. CarolGray 09:54, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Questionable text

I'm not sure about this:

As with all the colleges of the University of Oxford, St Hilda's has always maintained very high academic standards in all fields. In its history as a women's college, it has also shown continuation at degree level of particular trends demonstrated by girls at GCSE and A-Level, with students at St Hilda's scoring huge numbers of Firsts in English and History. St Hilda's has frequently produced a greater percentage of English Firsts per year than any other constituent college.

The first sentence is of course in a sense true. There is no such thing as an Oxford college that does not maintain high academic standards by comparison with the rest of the academic world. However, this site, giving the Norrington Table 2000-07 Matt Mayer: Norrington Table 2000-2007, indicates that undergraduates have typically achieved results that are among the lowest in the university (the permanent private halls, which are not included in these statistics generally do badly too). Out of thirty college presenting undergraduates for Final Honour Schools St Hilda's was ranked between 26th and 29th every year from 2000 until 2007 except 2005 when it came 19th. The Norrington Table is obviously flawed, but it gives a rough indication of comparative standards with which few people would disagree. If Merton were to claim 'very high academic standards' nobody could use to Norrrington Table to disagree with the statement. See also 'Merton tops Oxford college table': in 2004 only twelve undergraduates of St Hilda's out of 101 achieved a First. A former student of St Hilda's, Alex Langridge, commented, 'Ultimately it [the admission of male students] will drive up standards at Hilda's which always languished at the bottom of the Norrington Table.' (BBC) I don't have the document to hand, and may indeed no longer have it, but I remember that one year to mark a significant anniversary of the Norrington Table a newspaper worked out the average position of the colleges since the table was devised. Harris Manchester consistently came bottom of the table and on average was placed last and St Hilda's was in penultimate position. This sentence in the article therefore seems, to me, to be making the claim that St Hilda's is one of the best academically performing colleges in Oxford, whereas it is well known that it is one of the worst. Of course, I know people who went to St Hilda's and got Firsts and indeed master's degrees with astonishingly high marks, just as I know people who got Firsts, university prizes, and studentships for doctoral study from Regent's Park, another very poorly performing part of the university, and likewise I know people who went to Balliol and Merton and got only upper seconds, but the trend is for some colleges and halls to perform poorly and for others to perform very well. Other factors indicating academic standards would of course be postgraduate results, the research done by the college's fellows, and the future destinations of graduates (such as the number going on to hold positions in universities). However, these factors are currently not measured in as readily comprehensible a manner, if, indeed, at all.

Secondly, I am not sure about the 'huge' number of Firsts in History and English. Certainly the number may be disproportionately high, but whereas proportion, my proposed measurement, can be ascertained by quantitative methods, the notion of hugeness is much more subjective. One person's 'huge' may be another person's 'large', or even 'not so large'. I might say that Sir Alan Sugar has a huge fortune, whereas another person might think that 'huge' could describe only the wealth of Bill Gates. Personally, I would feel that 'huge' should mean at least twice the average proportion of candidates achieving a First in a particular Final Honour School across the university. But that is only my view. Somebody else might think that it should be 50% more, or might reject the use of a proportion in favour of an actual number. Far more useful is the comment on the Balliol College, Oxford article, 'In 2006, 45.1% of finalists got First Class Honours degrees, a higher proportion than any other Oxford college has ever achieved'. That is a fact (although it currently lacks a source).

The final sentence looks fine and I have heard it said before, though admittedly by somebody who read English at St Hilda's. However, it would be nice to have some statistics to support it.--Oxonian2006 (talk) 20:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hildabeest vs Hildabeast

I think the usual spelling is Hildabeast, not Hildabeest.--194.80.206.97 (talk) 14:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)