As this article goes to print, Oxford University is missing two of its offer-holders. In a haunting echo of the trials faced by approximately 78 Palestinian students last academic year, several of whom held places at Oxford, two Sudanese doctors are unable to begin master’s courses at the University this October. This comes after the High Court dismissed their legal challenge to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s ‘emergency brake’ visa policy, which also affects applicants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, and Myanmar. 

As the Oxford Sudanese Society stated in its recent announcement, the decision is a “collective penalty” against students who have faced extraordinary barriers in accessing higher education. Based on rhetoric accusing students from the four nations of “abusing” the visa system to claim asylum in the UK, it is symptomatic of an en vogue desire to pander to anti-immigration sentiments. This flies in the face of the educational meritocracy successive governments have said they wanted to achieve.

If the UK holds itself to be a centre of educational excellence, it cannot deny deserving students access to universities on political grounds. The Home Office’s own figures, moreover, do not scream “abuse of the system”. In 2025, the four affected nations made up only 0.7% of study visas granted; 380 of the 1,480 Sudanese students given visas between 2021 and 2025 went on to claim asylum.

The rhetoric used to prevent talented individuals from taking up deserved places at Oxford and elsewhere, therefore, appears to be no more than a string of buzzwords. Effectively, the government is punishing students for falling foul of the current political landscape’s value systems. It did the same to the aforementioned Palestinian students, who could not be granted visas without registering biometric information that has been impossible to acquire in Gaza since 2023. 

After a summer of uncertainty, at least six of these scholars reached Oxford last academic year, benefiting from the University’s Palestine Crisis Sponsorship Scheme, which allowed them to carry out the biometrics process in Jordan. Yet many students without sponsorship remain unable to acquire the necessary documents. Some, who cannot meet the requirement of having to leave dependent families in a warzone, have had to make what one St Hilda’s College offer-holder described as the “heartbreaking choice” to remain. Many are therefore as shut off from British education as their Sudanese counterparts. 

There is hypocrisy to this at every level. It is, of course, obvious that falsely claiming that students are “exploiting British generosity” contravenes both universities’ efforts to attract diverse intellectual talent and the basic human right to education. But on a deeper level, we must examine British complicity, both contemporary and historical, in the current state of the countries the government has denied visa access to. 

There are no visa offices in the Gaza Strip partly because it is being bombarded by a state the UK continues to have a defence relationship with. There are, arguably, conflicts in Sudan, Afghanistan, and Myanmar partly because of British actions dating from the peak of the British Empire to the present day – and it is largely because of these conflicts that student visa-holders would choose to seek asylum. 

And if they were to seek asylum in such great numbers, why would it be a problem? Are we not facing a shortage of skilled, specialised minds, for example in the medical profession? Would the NHS not benefit from the government allowing students to study International Health, Genomic Medicine, or Health Service Improvement (a selection of the MSc courses that Sudanese and Palestinian offer-holders held places for), rather than blocking them from entering the country? 

Most saddeningly, this decision disadvantages students aiming to use higher education to better ameliorate the problems facing their home nations. One of the Sudanese students barred from entering the country saw an education at Oxford as her way to “help rebuild health systems in a country devastated by war”. It is paradoxical to take the current situation in Sudan as justification for preventing its students from accessing an education that could help lessen its severity. 

Every student with an offer from Oxford deserves to take up their place, regardless of nationality. By denying a whole generation of students their future on trumped-up charges of asylum ‘abuse’, the government is dealing direct harm to both Britain and the wider world. 

“Everyone has the right to education… higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26(1))

When I came very close to rejecting Oxford for the University of Exeter, a non-British friend of my mother said to me: “I hadn’t heard of Exeter until now, but the name Oxford? I’ve known it since I was a child.” Another person remarked that “you can pick Exeter, but as good as it may be, Oxford’s prestige will never be taken away”. 

The Exeter course of my choice, Middle East Studies, had for many years ranked higher than the equivalent course at Oxford. But since Oxford had been consistently ranked first overall for the past decade, I felt it would come across as foolish to reject what is often dubbed ‘the best university in the world’ for an institution that was, while outstanding, not ranked in the top ten globally.

Where I study, or who has studied there before me, has never been of any importance nor a source of pride for me, but it is widely accepted that some of the best writers, poets, scientists and public figures the world has ever seen received an Oxbridge education. Therefore, Oxford and Cambridge being ranked outside the top three universities in the UK was not something I ever expected to read. 

And yet, in this year’s The Sunday Times Good University Guide, Oxford was ranked four places below St Andrews, which came first.

Last year, the guide ranked LSE first in the UK, even though Oxford was ranked first globally by both the QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education for the tenth consecutive year.

The most recent university rankings, published by Times Higher Education (THE) last week, place Oxford as the  ‘number one for a record 11th consecutive year’. Oxford holds the longest reign at number one of any university in the history of the ranking.

Chancellor William Hague wrote on LinkedIn on Wednesday that “Rankings are only one measure of a great university, but to sustain this position for 11 consecutive years in an increasingly competitive world is a tremendous achievement.”

While The Sunday Times ranks St Andrews 1st in the UK, the QS World University Rankings place it at 115th, and the Times Higher Education places it at 185th worldwide. 

In contrast, The Sunday Times ranked Oxford  5th in the UK, but the QS World University Rankings placed Oxford 4th globally, while Times Higher Education (THE) ranked it 1st.

These numbers may initially seem contradictory and confusing on the surface, but asking which university is the best  in the UK, or globally, simply depends on who you ask and which factors they consider.

The Times and The Sunday Times UK ranking is first and foremost designed around the undergraduate student experience and prioritises factors like student satisfaction, teaching quality, graduate prospects, entry standards, research quality, and more.

By contrast, both the Times Higher Education and QS World University Rankings assess global university performance and place greater emphasis on global academic position and research standing. They prioritise academic reputation, employer reputation, research citations, global research networks, international students and staff, and research productivity.

While one ranking is concerned with the undergraduate student experience in Britain, the global rankings, which consistently place Oxford among the top 5 universities globally , place  more weight on a university’s global academic influence and profile.

When comparing St Andrews to Oxford, it is important to recognise that St Andrews is a relatively small and undergraduate-focused university. Oxford, by contrast, is a large, internationally oriented institution with considerably greater research output and global influence. I would not necessarily expect Oxford to rank 1st in rankings that focus on the day-to-day undergraduate experience. 

In fact, the current Sunday Times ranking explains Oxford’s fall to fifth place partly by pointing to its student feedback performance. THE has no direct student-satisfaction measure; instead, it considers research environment and quality, industry knowledge and transfer, and reputation surveys.

It is therefore not surprising that St Andrews, despite not dominating global research to the same extent as Oxford, has scored highly on the factors that a UK undergraduate league table like The Sunday Times prioritises, such as student satisfaction.

As someone who also initially applied to St Andrews before withdrawing, and later accepted an offer from Oxford, St Andrews now being ranked first in the UK by The Sunday Times does not make me regret my choice because I understand what that ranking was primarily measuring. It does not focus on global academic reputation, research influence, international standing, or fully capture the breadth and scale of research.

Oxford’s reputation is built upon nine centuries of academic history. Its rival, Cambridge, was founded by former Oxford academics. Yet despite St Andrews ranking first as the UK’s best university, I doubt we will see an influx of students rejecting their Oxford offers for St Andrews overnight. 

In fact, when I once told a former teacher that “Oxford is just a name”, they replied: “A name that holds power in so many rooms.” 

St Andrews attained 1st position according to one particular ranking and its specific set of criteria, but even if, for the sake of argument, THE did not rank Oxford 1st, I would feel no different. No ranking table that can erase Oxford’s institutional reputation and traditional prestige.