The first India students to take Oxford degrees arrived in 1871 and over the next two decades about 50 graduated. The University now has around 320 Indian students, along with more than 900 Indian alumni and six alumni branches in India. Famous Indian alumni include Indiaa s first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, as well as its current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The first India students to take Oxford degrees arrived in 1871 and over the next two decades about 50 graduated. The University now has around 320 Indian students, along with more than 900 Indian alumni and six alumni branches in India. Famous Indian alumni include Indiaa s first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, as well as its current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
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The first India students to take Oxford degrees arrived in 1871 and over the next two decades about 50 graduated. The University now has around 320 Indian students, along with more than 900 Indian alumni and six alumni branches in India. Famous Indian alumni include Indiaa s first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, as well as its current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
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Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Oxford - university - oldest in GB, probably 12th century (Cambridge slightly la
ter, set up by Oxford students who migrated there).
"Spirit of..." - Pre-modern values - therefore not market, consumer preference, efficiency, profit ... See facts on students + income Contains a Centre for Hindu Studies (which is one of the focus points of your vi sit) - and you're going to have a talk by Gavin Flood, who runs it... - Oxford l inks to India, esp, the India Institute (which was housed on the corner of Broad Street and Holywell Street - you can still see the carved elephant which is act ually its weathercock - During the Raj, the British generally preferred the Mosl ems to the Hindus: [It was almost an orthodoxy to believe that Hinduism was, if not an evil force, at least spent and worthless. Islam, on the other hand, was a religion the west could understand and with whose political leaders it could do business. Rudyard Kipling, the great chronicler of the Raj, had long made clear his fondne ss for Muslims and his distrust of Hindus. He was appalled by the Ramayana and t he Mahabharata, the two great Hindu classics, and repulsed by the jumble of the faithâ s beliefs. In contrast, Kipling claimed that he had never met an Englishman wh o hated Islam and its people, for "where there are Muslims there is a comprehens ive civilisation". This view was also reflected in Oxford.] Earlier this year there was an exhibition on Indians in Oxford. "The first India n students to take Oxford degrees arrived in 1871 and over the next two decades about 50 graduated ... The University now has around 320 Indian students, along with more than 900 Indian alumni and six alumni branches in India. Famous Indian alumni include Indiaâ s first female Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, as well as its c urrent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bollywood film star Soha Ali Khan." The "Indian", as you might say, who I knew best was Benazir Bhutto, when she was he re (in the mid-1970s) as a student (and party-giver), including being President of the Oxford Union. To return to Oxford itself: Key point: pre-modern spirit can partially endure because of endowments ... 300 million St John's richest - University also has endowments (500 million) but 38 colleges are the key (total 2 billion of top 15) ... makes it possible for them to do - in part - what they want, not needing to obey the government in everythi ng - About 30% of total teaching costs from government (in NL near to 100%); this wil l be reduced to nearly nothing by the present government - Oxford (and Cambridge ) will probably become completely "private" - but with a public mission (not pro fit but academic values) Spirit built up through the centuries ... But to begin with a material reality - the buildings - stone (spirit of permanence) ... Cf. Vatican and wooden Protest ant churches... Teaching system: tutorials (+ lectures at university level) Expensive - in euros 20000 per year per student, compared with 11000 NL, 9000 Ge rmany etc. Subsidized by the college endowments, esp. cost of college tutors. Co lleges also "home" - students live there, eat there, study there, have tutorials , use the library; there is a chapel, choir, bar etc. Plus "loyalty" - first to the college, then to the university. -> Self-confidence. Cf. recruitment - 1/2 private (public) schools, 1/2 state schools... History of Oxford - halls (of residence) -> colleges; mixture of disciplines, fo r students and teachers + living-in... Oxford is very decentralized: there is the university, the central administratio n, which in many fields no no power at all - e.g. students can only be admitted by a college, not by the university; so the colleges are in many ways more impor tant; but there are also innumerable centres of specialized research study, whic h are semi-independent and often have their own money. As well as a half dozen P PHs, which are religious semi-colleges, where students can study for university degrees - the Dominicans, Benedictines, Jesuits etc. Politically the Oxford spirit is traditionally monarchist, even Jacobite (suppor ting King Charles I during the Civil War of the 1640s - Charles lived in Oxford after fleeing from London - and after that the Stuart line, which was ended with the 1688 imposition of William (of Orange) and Mary; but Oxford remained sympat hetic to the Stuarts; as opposed to Cambridge, which supported Cromwell and the Parliamentarians during the Civil War. But the Oxford spirit also has to do with the buildings and surroundings, and al so the presence of so many young people, the students. Here are a few lines from the novel by Max Beerbohm, called Zuleika Dobson: "I floated out into the unten anted meadows. Over them was the usual coverlet of white vapour, trailed from th e Isis right up to Merton Wall. The scent of these meadows' moisture is the scen t of Oxford. Even in hottest noon, one feels that the sun has not dried THEM. Al ways there is moisture drifting across them, drifting into the Colleges. It, one suspects, must have had much to do with the evocation of what is called the Oxf ord spirit--that gentlest spirit, so lingering and searching, so dear to them wh o as youths were brought into ken of it, so exasperating to them who were not. Yes, certainly, it is this mild, miasm al air, not less than the grey beauty and gravity of the buildings, that has hel ped Oxford to produce, and foster eternally, her peculiar race of artist-scholar s, scholar-artists." There are practically no drop-outs from Oxford - if you start here as a student, you finish. And you finish three years after you begin. There is no accumulatio n of "studiepunten"; there are no "herkansingen". You take a number of written e xaminations after three years here, you get given a grade for them and that's it . Almost no-one fails, but you can get a very low grade, which some people do, i ncluding students who later become famous, great writers or prime ministers or w hatever. You might get a low grade because you have spent too much time on other activities, like sport (rowing, rugby) or play-acting or something else. All over the world there are clubs and societies for Oxford alumni, including in the Netherlands, the general idea being that all Oxford alumni are part of one big family. And every year there are Gaudies - big dinners or feasts - organized by the colleges for their ex-students, who come back to Oxford to attend them. In fact, students here already get used to festive dinners while they are underg raduates - there are lots of them in each college, black tie and formal dress, l ots of champagne and so on: very formal, with wearing of black gowns being requi red. Students generally like this old-fashioned formality and when they are poll ed about it, a big majority voted that they wanted to stay as old-fashioned as p ossible. I suppose this is also part of the Oxford spirit.