Many people’s understanding of Cambridge started from “Farewell Cambridge Again” which was selected into the middle school Chinese textbook. In fact, Xu Zhimo said in “Smoking in Culture”: “My eyes were taught by Cambridge to open my eyes, my thirst for knowledge was inspired by Cambridge, and my self-awareness was given to me by Cambridge.”
Cambridge, Newton, Hawking, Dirac, Byron, Darwin, Russell… The cradle of hundreds of celebrities, 95 Cambridge University alumni became Nobel Prize winners. There is a saying in Cambridge: If the University of Cambridge had only cultivated Newton in history, it would be worth it. So how did the Cambridge elites spend their college career in the first place?
We have a stroke from ancient times to the present
Not long ago, the University of Cambridge published a student code of 350 years ago, from which you can get a glimpse of how ancient Cambridge students spent their student lives. This is a student code written by Dupert, a research scholar at Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 1660. The code provides clear guidelines for Cambridge students’ clothing, behavior, study and leisure activities. First of all, the code requires students to dress simple and to behave in a standard manner, especially not to “pick their noses” in front of the teacher, because that is absolutely uncultivated behavior. What is surprising is that the rules require students not to play football, because football is “a sport that clowns, not scholars, should be engaged in.” The sport promoted in the code is tennis. It seems that until today, tennis is still regarded as an aristocratic sport, and it has nothing to do with being respected by the British upper class since ancient times. In the 17th century, Cambridge University students were two years younger than current undergraduate freshmen. From Dupert’s student code, we can understand the strong religious atmosphere of Cambridge University at that time. Many courses were taught in Latin or Greek. The code warns: “Students must participate in prayer on time, and they cannot wait until everyone is almost finished praying. Sunday is the Sunday. Students cannot sleep in bed. They should serve the Lord all day.” The code also teaches students to make friends carefully. , Choose honest friends, don’t make friends with “vulgar language”. In addition, the code also requires students to only activities on campus, except for “going to church, going to school, going to the bookstore, and going to book binders”, students are not allowed to wander around in Cambridge.
Although Cambridge has a traditional university student self-discipline code, the pranks of Cambridge elites are still famous, and finally the school’s tolerant handling is quite eye-catching. It is said that one day in June 1958, a car was suddenly displayed on the roof of the Senate House of Cambridge University. The story of this anecdote was only cracked 50 years later. Senate House is a place where Cambridge’s people’s attention is drawn. It is the place where graduation ceremonies and other grand ceremonies are held. It is also the place where student exam results are announced. The building is tens of feet high and surrounded by high iron bars. Any tall building close to it. The anecdote of the car on the roof is probably the most creative and high-profile student prank in the history of British higher education. No one knows how this dilapidated, British-made Austin Seven hung over the roof of the stately building overnight. The car looked like it had fallen from the sky. The police, firefighters, and civil defense units finally took a lot of effort to dismantle the cars on the roof and transport them in batches.
Since then, no one has revealed who the students who planned the prank were, nor have they been able to understand how these students lifted the car on the roof. When this group of students gathered again 50 years later, they accepted a dinner reception hosted by their alma mater, Cambridge University, Gonville and Case College, when the mystery was revealed. It turned out that a student named Peter David was the leader of this prank. At that time, he found 11 classmates to divide into three groups, and worked together to hoist the car on the roof. They deliberately chose to act during the Cambridge rowing race, because at that time everyone’s focus was on the tense rowing race. The action plan is as follows: the group of people on the ground team fixed the car to the suspension cable; the roof team used the A-shaped boom to lift the car; there is another group of people responsible for putting up the wooden planks from the windows of the next house The bridge transports the equipment to the roof. When the car is hoisted in the air, the ground team must be towed with steel cables to prevent the car from hitting the house. After the car is hoisted to the roof, the roof team must pull the car laterally to fix it on the roof ridge. Back then, the University of Cambridge claimed that it did not know who made the prank. However, the superintendent of Gonville and Case College gave these students a bottle of champagne to congratulate them for using their engineering knowledge to successfully hoist the car to the roof. The staff of Gonville and Case College said: “Their genius creations are something to be talked about, leaving Cambridge an interesting anecdote.” Now, the guides in Cambridge will talk about this anecdote to tourists. The planner, David, said that the only regret that some of their students had about the prank was that the car could not be parked on the roof of Senate House forever.
There are many other weird behaviors of Cambridge people. Cambridge female economist Victoria Bateman, during an interview with the BBC, she took off her shirt to protest against Brexit. She said: “The idea of Brexit is equivalent to the emperor’s new clothes.” Ms. Bateman wrote “Brexit” on her chest. She said in an interview that Brexit will expose the British economy to huge risks, and those who advocate Brexit are ignoring the facts and deceiving themselves. In the interview, she asked for a “frank public debate” with the British politician who advocates Brexit and a member of the House of Commons, Reese Mogg. This is the meaning of her naked breasts with her shirt off. Ms. Bateman’s attitude reflects the opinions of a group of British intellectuals. Therefore, her words and deeds have been praised and supported by many British people. Of course, a group of British intellectuals have opposed her ideas and protested by stripping off their clothes. . Bateman is an undergraduate graduate of the University of Cambridge, and later received a master’s degree and a PhD in economics from the University of Oxford. She is an expert on macroeconomics and economic history in the United Kingdom. She has published many books and is currently a professor at the University of Cambridge. As a feminist, this is not the first time that Ms. Bateman has made a fierce undressing protest against Brexit. At the beginning of 2019, in a lecture attended by dozens of people in the Cambridge University Auditorium, Bateman stripped naked in the center of the podium with the slogan “Brexit makes Britain naked” and gave an hour-long stripping speech. Criticize the Brexit proposal.
Studies have shown that the average starting salary of Niu Jian economics or business graduates is £32,400, while graduates of humanities and social sciences from some low-profile universities in the UK have a starting salary of less than £16,000. After the tuition fees of universities in the UK have risen, some people have suggested that diplomas from non-prestigious universities may not be worth investing so much, with low returns and economically uneconomical. For this reason, Sir Peter Lampel, Chairman of the Sutton Trust, said with emotion: “In this way, instead of getting a diploma from a university where you can only engage in lower-paying jobs after graduation, it is better to become an apprentice and earn money while learning skills. “Data shows that six months after leaving school for a graduate of Oxford and Cambridge, the annual salary was 25,600 pounds. Research by the charity Sutton Trust pointed out that adults with a college degree still earn more than others. According to the survey, the “premium” of college diplomas for boys is 28%, and the “premium” for college diplomas of girls exceeds 50%. The highest-paying majors in the Niu Jian Diploma are economics and business, followed by science and engineering, and then medicine. The study also found that the starting salary of Niu Jian graduates from poorer backgrounds is higher than that of students from rich families. According to data released by the British government, the average annual salary of university graduates is 9,000 pounds higher than those without a university degree.
According to data published by the University of Cambridge, the proportion of students in state schools (also known as state schools) admitted to Cambridge last year increased slightly, reaching 62.2%, while another 37.8% of students came from private schools. In October last year, a total of 16,752 students applied for undergraduate courses in Cambridge, and only 3,448 were admitted, that is to say, every 5 students compete for one place. Among them, there are 10,310 students from the United Kingdom. The majority of successful applicants obtained an A* in at least one of the high school exams (A-level), and two of them were A. The person in charge of Cambridge said that all students admitted to Cambridge have demonstrated the potential to stand out in Cambridge. Last year, Cambridge cost 4.5 million pounds to hold 4,000 various public activities, including open department activities, subject classrooms and student experience to attract applicants. At the same time, Cambridge also provided a scholarship of 6 million pounds to more than 2,000 students from low-income families. Among Cambridge students, girls accounted for 47% of the total number of students, minority students accounted for nearly 19%, and less than 5% of students have a physical disability.
The British “Daily Mail” reported that more than 1,000 students at Cambridge University are using a “sugar daddy” website to pay for their tuition and living expenses. Seeking Arrangement, a dating website that helps “Sugar Babies” obtain financial support for older men and women, revealed that the number of students using its services at top universities in the UK is shocking. Statistics show that there are currently 1,019 Cambridge students looking for “sugar daddies or sugar moms” on the website, and almost 1 in every 20 Cambridge students register on the website. The Las Vegas-based company said it has 475,320 British students among its existing users. The American company said that after students found “sugar daddies or sugar moms” on its dating site, they received an average of £2,910 a month in pocket money. A user survey on the Seeking Arrangement website shows that 30% of people spend their earned money on tuition or school-related expenses. Brandon Wade, Founder and CEO of Seeking Arrangement, said: “Because British students cannot afford the rising tuition and living costs, they are forced to find other ways to fund their education expenses. Young people understand the importance of a degree. They want to achieve their educational goals, but they can no longer rely on traditional methods to complete their studies.” British media said that last year the number of British students who wanted to find sugar daddies and sugar moms to relieve financial pressure increased to 475,320. For this reason, the British media said: “The value of education is undeniable, but in recent years, due to rising tuition fees, students pursuing first-class degrees have been overwhelmed.” The average monthly allowance for “Sugar Baby” students is £2,910, which is A person earns twice as much as a part-time job under the national minimum wage. However, the student consultation website Save the student reminds those who are considering joining the ranks of “sugar babies” to be cautious. Jack Butler, Operations Director of Save The Student, said: “Every year we conduct a national student financial survey, about 4% of students admit that participating in adult work is a way to make money and fund university studies.” The so-called adult work is What, you know.
