Falling In Love Again

How a thousand-year-old city seduced me, once more

Image credit: the author

Nearly four decades ago I embarked on the extraordinary privilege of studying as an undergraduate at Oxford University, which is arguably the oldest continuously active university in the world and still among the top three in terms of academic rigor and achievement. There is another top university in England but I can’t remember its name at present, so quite evidently it’s not as good as Oxford.

Unlike US universities, which give preference to the children of alumni, entry into Oxford is strictly on merit and the competition is fierce. The University essentially creams off the top half of the top one percent and the in-person interviews are supposed to help create a diverse and multi-faceted student body. Compared to many universities, Oxford is tiny, with just 12,000 undergraduates. Back in my day there were typically around 3,000 postgraduates but these days, thanks to the need for lucrative tuition fees, that number has swollen to more than the number of undergraduates and many of the new buildings that have sprung up in the last decade exist to house this increased number of older students.

Oxford is a unitary institution comprised of thirty-nine independent Colleges, federated within the University. In theory they are responsible for their own affairs, but in reality…