Welcome to my website.

 

If you’ve come across it it’s likely that you have some interest or investment in Cambridge University. If so, you may well find the story and documents I present here to also be of interest.

 

Site Structure:

The site is broken down into 8 main Sections. As well as this Homepage the Sections are:

 

CORRUPTION, emails, Data Protection & Letters: These Sections provide the meat and bones of the University's and Vice-Chancellor’s corruption in recent years. ‘Letters in Sequence’ are mainly in date order except where a change makes the sequence easier to understand, and, where possible, with the University’s annotations shown. Several letters are marked ‘Private and Confidential: For the Personal Attention of: Professor Alison Richard: Vice-Chancellor’. You will also see, however, that this confidentiality was not honoured by the University from the start—so I feel no compunction in sharing these letters with you.

 

The ‘CORRUPTION’ Section mostly concentrates on analysing the Vice-Chancellor’s response to the bringing of the ongoing corruption explicitly to her attention. This is a letter dated 14th June 2007 and is penned by the Board of Graduate Studies on the Vice-Chancellor’s behalf. Nearly every sentence of it is an outright lie or a manipulation. I then provide email correspondence between myself and the Physics and Materials Science Departments—to put into context those emails which have been used more explicitly elsewhere—and to allow the reader to form a judgement on these for him/her-self.

 

The Freedom of Information / Data Protection Act Section displays my requests. Interestingly, the final request seeking statistical information on the student make-up of the Colleges now, and over time, has received absolutely no cooperation. This was following up an article in The Guardian of the 20th September 2007 (also provided), which deals with similar matters at a University level. Interested parties, such as the Government or the ‘Sutton Trust’, may wish to extend their analyses of ‘discrimination’ from a University level down to the discrimination practised at a College level upon admitted students.

 

Application Papers: These are the materials I used for my PhD applications to Cambridge in 2006 and 2007. They are mainly included so that readers can form their own judgement on their ‘academic merit’ - since this is the criteria the University claims applications are judged upon.

 

History of Corruption: This expands on the Homepage account and displays some of the supporting documents, as well as providing a summary of what happened to my 2006 and 2007 PhD applications.

 

‘Warning Pages’: I offer my thoughts on how the hierarchy of British Universities is aped and perpetuated within Cambridge—along with the British class system—by the University’s much vaunted ‘Collegiate system’. I then reveal the cynical and callous ‘Hughes Hall Scam’ which the University continues to run—partly with the hope of saving prospective graduate students a lot of grief, confusion and disappointment. It is also hoped that this Section will be revealing and of interest to the general reader.

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When I first started gathering evidence, I worked under the assumption that the problems at Cambridge stemmed from a few vindictive but influential individuals. However, as you will see, so many of the University’s staff, departments and other University Bodies have now been implicated that the corruption has drawn in vast swathes of the University—and has spread—cancer-like—throughout the Admissions System.

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The site’s purpose is to present clear evidence of—and make public—widespread corruption within Cambridge University and also, in particular, the corruption of the Cambridge University Admissions system - and to identify some of the officials responsible. It documents the lack of honour and integrity that characterises the current University ‘leadership’, the lack of personal honour and integrity of the University’s Vice-Chancellor—Professor Alison Richard— and the malfeasance and moral decay of the University’s ‘Board of Graduate Studies’.

 

It concerns how I have, personally, come to be on the University’s (illegal) blacklist. And you may well be very surprised by the fanatical depths to which the University will sink to preserve its ‘College system’ in favour of ‘the people who count’, whilst seemingly acceding to Government demands to make Cambridge more accessible.

 

However, the site is not intended to read as a rant in any way. Rather, it aims to present information in a—largely—neutral way via the presentation of correspondence—leaving it up to you, the reader, to make of it, or use it, as you will.

Intended Readership:

 

It is hoped that the site will prove informative to all those with an interest or investment in Cambridge University. I do also, however, have some specific groups in mind:

 

If you are a fellow alumni or a member of the Regent House—(the University’s governing body) - I hope that you will be as appalled by the lack of honour and integrity that I have uncovered as I am—not to mention the sheer lack of calibre and courtesy, and the sheer lack of intelligence, of some of those who represent our University to the wider world. It is hoped that you struggle to believe what has taken place—as I have done. You may wish to make this feeling known to the University’s Executive and to hold them to account.

 

I urge members of the Regent House, and members of the University Council, who still value the old concepts of honour and decency, to make a wholesale clear-out of Central Administration—starting with the Vice-Chancellor—and the sacking of all Senior Officers involved in this Corruption—particularly, but not exclusively,  the whole of the Board of Graduate Studies, Dr Laurie Friday, Dr Catherine Maxwell, Ms Louise Burton, Mr Ian Troupe, and Mr Matthew Moss.

 

There are wider issues here also, such as how the University is governed, and the lack of transparency and lack of effective scrutiny—internal or external—of its procedures. With the University’s 800th anniversary looming in 2009, now is an excellent time to clear out the ‘bad apples’.

 

If you are a member of the Country’s legislature or Government, a regulatory body, a Research Council, or other funding body, it is hoped that you will also be shocked by the University’s contempt for Law and the principles of reasonable and fair conduct—and that you will also hold the people involved to account and insist upon their removal.

It is hoped you will find interference in the conduct of research and the wastage of potential scientists and public money to be totally unacceptable—particularly in view of the Vice-Chancellor—Alison Richard’s—ironic appointment to the Government’s  new ‘National Council for Academic Excellence’.

 

There are also wider issues of how public (i.e. taxpayers’) funds are inappropriately used, and the lack of transparency and accountability in their awarding—both within and between Universities.

 

If you are a prospective Graduate Student, I provide specific ‘Warning Pages’ for you—not so much to discourage you from applying per se—but to enable you to apply with ‘eyes-open’ in the hope of avoiding one of the more callous and cynical scams which the University runs. It is hoped that this section will also prove revealing and of interest to the general reader.

 

If you are a student of the University (or his/her parents) who are having difficulties which are stressful and depressing yet hard to articulate and understand, I hope to reveal a flavour of some of the destructive machinations you may have inadvertently got caught up in. The site is also a stark warning that the very officials who seem to most want to help you, may in fact be the very ones responsible for your problems. Worthy of a special mention in this regard are Professor Sir Michael Pepper, Dr Christopher Morley and Dr Frank King on the ‘cleverer’ side, and Dr Laurie Friday on the completely transparent and inept side.

 

If you are a member of the Media or an internet enthusiast and would like to hold the University to account, or would just like to spread the word, then please feel free.

The University’s Motivation for the events I reveal:

 

To a large extent, a student’s Cambridge College is their University. Many facilities—social and practical—are compartmentalised down to a College level. More importantly, the College provides an identity for the student within the University—and, in fact, also serves as a label which follows the student around. Just as there is a hierarchy of British Universities, a parallel hierarchy is repeated within Cambridge via the Colleges. The Colleges perpetuate the British Class System.

 

This is one reason why the ‘College system’ is so important to Cambridge—the other reason is financial. The University ‘hard sells’ its Collegiate system in its literature, and regularly defends it to Government. On top of the University fees paid from the Public (i.e. taxpayer’s) purse, Cambridge also gets much extra public money to support the College system.

 

However, around 1994 the University came under pressure to expand the total number of graduate students—how much of this pressure was internal or due to Government pressure is unclear. Nevertheless, it was Government policy at the time to make Cambridge more accessible to all students.

 

The University was therefore faced with a problem for its College system. If the system and the ‘College experience’ were to survive relatively intact, it could not be swamped by new students. An obvious solution was to build more Colleges—but this would have been extremely expensive for the University. By contrast, the alternative solution chosen was a money spinner (-but not for the taxpayer).

 

This solution was simply to re-label some peripheral and unsuitable institutions as ‘Colleges’ and ‘attach’ the names of large numbers of new graduate students to them—and, of course, watch large quantities of public money roll in—not least to the University as a whole.

 

The problems of siphoning off large numbers of new students into sub-standard ‘Colleges’, and therefore out of ’Cambridge proper’, was anticipated—so in the same year, 1994, the Tutors of the Colleges met to effectively make ‘transfers’ between Colleges impossible.

 

In this way the ‘College experience’ and hierarchy could be preserved for the students (and parents) ‘who counted’, while seemingly acceding to Government demands to make Cambridge more accessible. Thus using many state resources to, in effect, disadvantage state educated (graduate) students.

 

An interesting article appeared in The Guardian on the 20th September 2007, and I believe in other newspapers. Whereas the University is roughly divided 50/50 between state and private sector students, the actual number of schools involved reveals this to be far from a ‘fair’ distribution. The ‘top’ 100 schools, mainly fee-paying, out of about 3,700 from both sectors, account for ⅓ of undergraduate admissions. The ‘top’ 200 schools account for about ½.

 

This effective division of an ‘easier’ route into Cambridge on a ’prep school’ basis, and a ‘harder’ route through the competition (?) of the remaining 3,500 schools for the remaining places, accounts for the (partial) myth of intense competition for places on ‘academic merit’. This, of course, benefits the reputation of students (and schools and parents) from both routes.

 

This is not, of course, to say that there are not very many greatly intelligent students from both the private and state sectors, but merely to set the scene for the less well known continuation of this entry pattern and (partial) myth of competition through ‘academic merit’ played out again between and even within particular Colleges. The very hierarchy among British Universities is played out again in parallel and in microcosm within Cambridge—for the admitted student—via the University’s much vaunted ‘Collegiate system’.

 

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Overview of my own Personal Experience of Cambridge University:

 

The backdrop of University (graduate) expansion and the preservation of the College hierarchy, was the situation that I arrived into in 1994. For ‘unexplained’ reasons, the departmental decision on my Physics PhD application was held up for months, and recent Data Protection documents reveal that my application was never circulated to my chosen Colleges—as had been promised in the Board of Graduate Studies Prospectus.

 

Late in the year, after accepting the department offer, when I had had to give up my offers from other Universities and was therefore tied to Cambridge, the Physics Department and my supervisor to be—Professor Sir Michael Pepper FRS—pressured me into a ’College’ called Hughes Hall. This and later events confirmed that I was also an unwitting part of a ‘pilot’ for this scheme of graduate expansion. A scheme that the University had, in any case, already predetermined to pursue.

 

What was kept extremely quiet at the time (1994) was that Hughes Hall was not a Cambridge College at all—even in statute—and in fact only became one (in name) in 2006. (The University even lied about Hughes Hall’s status to my Member of Parliament). It was and is, of course, the example of an inadequate peripheral institution being re-labelled a ‘College’.

 

The attitude of the staff, lack of facilities, and the inadequacy of the site itself made community impossible. I was merely an observer, watching my friends and colleagues in actual Colleges excitedly enjoying the many benefits of their new life. It is a very unpleasant feeling to realise that one has been scammed out of being a real part of the University—and right at the beginning of a three year course.

 

Which College you’re in also has a major impact on your financial health while at the University. (Especially in regard to the accommodation costs of having to ‘live out’). Paradoxically, the higher your ‘pedigree’, the more likely you are to have all your costs heavily subsidized.

 

When I objected to this situation, and made clear my determination to be reassigned to a proper College, I became subject to psychological warfare—with the seeming aim of wrecking my confidence sufficiently to suppress my ‘dissent’. This came from many sources—including my supervisor. I would have left after about six months, but at this time my supervisor’s College—Trinity—led me on to expect a place at the start of  the second year. This was reneged upon, and with the prospect of a new batch of (mostly) enthusiastic students arriving, I stayed away.

 

In December ‘95 I wrote to Hughes Hall and the University to say that I wouldn’t come back as a ‘member’ of Hughes Hall. As well as being therapeutic, this was also necessary to try to provoke some movement on the University’s part. And if I had not, I would be staying away for ‘no reason’  - all too easy for the University to get rid of me. However, this letter was seemingly ignored. However, recently obtained internal documents reveal that at this time the Board of Graduate Studies conceded that another College place would have to be found for me. But, to my utter dismay, it turns out to have been my own supervisor—Pepper—who put the block on this solution. (The University later lied to the Government Research Council in writing about the cause of the resulting impasse).

 

I have long known that Pepper was involved in the pilot scheme, but I had hitherto thought at a ‘secondary level’. When my other supervisors at the collaborating institution—‘Toshiba Cambridge Research Centre’ - raised the problems I was having with Pepper, he told them that his ‘hands [were] tied’. However, it now appears that he was much more senior in the scheme than I had wanted to admit. (It may very well not be a coincidence that a much more recent student writing on the Graduate Union Forum, has the equivalent Toshiba project to mine and has also been placed in Hughes Hall).

 

After it became clear that I was still being blocked from entry to a proper College, I informed my Research Council of the situation (in March ‘96). Only then did the University and Board of Graduate Studies take (what turns out to be) Pepper’s line and insist that it was up to me to find a College place—whilst at the same time, behind the scenes, disabling each of my efforts—and waiting for my funding to run out. However, due to much effort on my part, my Research Council supported me, keeping my funding available for years after it would normally have been terminated—they also wrote to the University asking them to resolve the situation, so that my research and career could resume. But the University did not relent.

 

And all because I wanted to change to an actual College of the University at the wrong time.

 

Eventually, in early ‘98, I had to give up my efforts for the good of my well-being and turned to other things.

 

During 2004 and by invitation in 2005, I came to apply to do a DPhil in Physics at Oxford, but after many odd events—and not a single interview—I was eventually turned down by all the Physics Departments of that University. At that time I just didn’t want to see this as blacklisting.

 

However, it was pretty obvious. I was turned down flat by the Head of Condensed Matter Physics without my application being circulated to any of their other academics. Another group said that they would only consider me if I added a Cambridge reference to my other three (already excellent) references. When I did so, they turned me down flat. The Academic Tutor in charge of Graduate Admissions for the Astrophysics Department invited me to apply the following year and retained my papers for this purpose. He entered my papers in each of their 3 ‘rounds’ of  admission. After the first round he wrote to me, saying that I would receive an official ‘1st round turn down’, which would sound unduly negative, saying that ’your application is still very much alive as far as I am concerned’. However, after more encouragement I was eventually turned down without an interview—this was now penned by an ‘underling’.

 

After 12 years (since I left Cambridge), I naively thought that the pilot scheme would be long forgotten, and applied again hoping to be part of the ‘Cambridge experience’ that had previously been denied to me. My papers and references (including the Cambridge reference) are excellent, and the University proudly claims that decisions are made purely on ‘academic merit’. Over the years 2006 and 2007, I applied to 6 Cambridge Departments. In the event, I’ve been illegally blacklisted and turned down by 7 of them !

 

This blacklisting is so blatant, and reveals so starkly how corrupt in general central administration has become, that the evidence of it forms the main story of this web site.

 

Some highlights from the 2007 admission round have been:

 

Having 2 of my 3 formal applications removed and concealed by senior staff at the Board of Graduate Studies—so that they wouldn’t be circulated; being offered a place straight away on the strength of the one application which slipped through—only to have it partially reneged on days later, and fully reneged on months later; having my College choices deleted by the Board of Graduate Studies; being admitted to a good College, but not receiving this offer; having a minute by minute file compiled on my applications by the Board’s Officer in Charge of funding and liaison with the Research Councils; and being turned down by the largest department in Cambridge which I hadn’t even applied to !

 

However, until my recent Data Protection request, the link between now and the past had been obscured. After all, who could be bothered to blacklist me after 12 years, and in such a fanatical way—and why ?

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Some Data Protection documents provide the answer (—even though it is obvious that the University has concealed many more). These reveal that the University ran a secret campaign, spanning at least two years, and culminating in June 1999, to have my existence expunged entirely from the formal and official statistics of my Research Council—the EPSRC—as well as excluded from their ‘Completion Rate Survey’ - which officially records reasons for non-completion.

 

My funding was also secretly terminated, and back dated to an inappropriate and inaccurate date—which presumably has some significance for either the University or the EPSRC.

 

By doing so, the University removed the official record of the problems they had caused by the misuse of their own College system, my warning about it, and my subsequent blacklisting. All matters which the University evidently wants to stay buried.

 

They also avoided incurring the usual financial penalty for a research student not completing his/her degree in time. Since the record is very clear that I did everything in my power to resume my research, and that the University itself prevented this, it is hard to imagine a stronger case for a penalty to have been imposed and official records kept.

 

In order to change the opinion of the EPSRC, which had supported me for years, it seems highly likely that the University has told many lies or manipulations—many of which are likely to be libellous.

 

Against normal practice, both institutions explicitly state that I will not be told of this process or its conclusion.

 

Similarly, a year later, the University unilaterally and surreptitiously removed me from its Register of Graduate Students. (Given that this action appears to breach the legal duty incumbent upon any Public Body to act reasonably and fairly, it is by no means clear that I actually need to apply again in order to resume my research !).

 

Particularly in view of the manipulations the University is likely to have peddled, and the currently buried history of my case, it would be highly embarrassing if I suddenly turned up doing a PhD again. If now accepted by any University, this would get back to the EPSRC, as the funding body concerned, and likely reopen the whole business.

 

Unlike all my other referees, Pepper has continually declined to give me an ‘Open Reference’ -which I could use without needing to go back to him. A decision that, until now, I have found perplexing. But, of course, it allows the University to keep track of where I’m applying to. It seems likely that all my applications would then suffer the same odd fate as the Oxford ones. Simple—but clever !

 

In view of the dishonest nature of the University’s central administration—revealed on this web site—it is also highly likely to be significant that the University has concealed the correspondence concerning my case between itself and the Prime Minister’s Office in or about November 1997.

 

All that now remains of the story is to identify the Kingpin or Kingpins who have coordinated this activity—both now and in the past. Many roads lead to the University Registry. The structure in my own case is as follows:

General Themes: Naturally, the site focuses on my own experiences, but it is hoped that this will draw attention to issues which have a far broader applicability.

 

One issue is how the predominance of the ‘social’ order, the class system, gets in the way of utilizing talent and suppresses opportunity—perhaps a major contributing factor to the oft mentioned ‘brain drain’.

 

It is recently much discussed, how Cambridge as a University appears to discriminate on ‘social’ rather than ‘academic’ grounds in its admission practices. The site therefore encourages those with the necessary clout to extend this discussion of social discrimination down to the admitted student within Cambridge, via the University’s much vaunted ‘Collegiate system’. What can happen to the state educated student once they are admitted is never much discussed.

 

 

Another major theme illustrated is how many of our ‘traditional systems’ are simply no longer working. These are those like those of Cambridge, but also of many other institutions, which have traditionally relied on the integrity of their constituent officials for their effective operation.

 

A major purpose of this site is therefore, to put it bluntly, to expose the rotten and duplicitous nature of many who have come to be in positions of power at Cambridge University, whilst hiding behind the respectability their positions have hitherto afforded them—not least as a warning to their colleagues and others who have to deal with them. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

[In addition, it may also be, of course, that the University is still attempting to cover up activities which have a much wider and far more serious scope than I’m currently aware of, and are still ongoing today, particularly since multiple files are still being kept on me, collated by Dr Kate (Catherine) Maxwell, until recently in charge of liaisons with the government Research Councils].

The site has now been running since the 11th November 2007, and interest is now in the tens of thousands. Despite this, however, the story is still seemingly the subject of a National Press Blackout.

 

University Threats: You may like to know that the Vice-Chancellor threatened Court action over the site (Christmas 2007). Not, however, to challenge these thoroughly evidenced revelations, but on the spurious grounds of claiming ‘copyright’ to the evidence of her own and the University’s wrongdoing ! However, when I wouldn’t be bullied, the University failed to file the promised action in the legislated time. Accordingly, after two weeks of malicious disruption the material was again presented in full. Equally unsuccessfully, the Vice-Chancellor tried to disrupt my advertising by claiming all use of the term ‘Cambridge University’ to be a breach of trademark.

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Other News: The University appeared to be using the online ‘Cambridge Graduate Union Forum’ to propagandize against me and my site. But this backfired when students insisted on raising the evidence and issues from my website.

 

This forum ‘thread’ had attracted about 290 comments and about 12,000 views, half these numbers coming in the last week the thread was viewable and increasing rapidly. Apparently because of this, the thread was locked from new comments and immediately afterwards the entire Graduate Union Website went offline. This happened on the evening of 14th March 2008. It remained offline until the evening of 29th March 2008.

(As of 7th August 2008, the two ‘locked’ threads discussing my website on that forum have attracted nearly 55,000 views).

Also related to the issues on my website: Following my 2007/08 PhD applications, the Board of  Graduate Studies have now removed the options to name types of College not to be considered at, and one specific College not to be referred to, from the University application forms.

 

The University Physics Department have chosen to separate their admissions procedures entirely from those administered by the Board of Graduate Studies.

The Cambridge student newspaper Varsity ran an article concerning my website and its contents on the 8th February 2008. But all of the University bodies, departments, and Colleges involved made themselves ‘unavailable for comment’. Thus refusing to speak to their own student body about these issues.

 

I include the Varsity article as a useful alternative summary.

(Regrettably, for ‘Safari’ users, the above few links give jumbled results)