I recently had my first glimpse of the front door of Number Ten, surrounded by a group of fellow Cambridge students. To be honest, it left me feeling uneasy. I was participating in my college’s inaugural policy programme, which enabled me to meet an extremely rich roster of civil servants, politicians, and other individuals working in policy. This was an incredible opportunity for which I am extremely grateful. I met people who shape British policy, whose care for those for whom they are working revealed a genuine sense of public service.

Even fleeting glimpses into the heartlands of UK policy, making through visits to Westminster or the Foreign Office, reinforced how much of these processes occur in rooms not unlike those in which we work at Cambridge. It reaffirmed the inevitability that a disproportionate share of us will one day be employed in these settings. After all, 20% of MPs studied at Oxbridge. Not to mention the 56% of Permanent Secretaries and 51% of Diplomats who were educated at one of the two universities. Yet, is our education preparing us for the public service which ought to be integral to politics and policy?

“No amount of cleverness or tenacity can fill the void of empathy”

Before starting university, going to school exposed me to a wide range of people. I met even more through my part-time job and extra-curriculars. Now, on an average week at Cambridge, it tends to be the case that the only people I interact with face-to-face who aren’t either Cambridge-educated, or providing the Cambridge education, are the staff who my college pays to empty my bins and serve my meals. We aren’t allowed to work during term time, so the prospect of quite literally serving others is thwarted, while extracurriculars at Cambridge are, by definition, for Cambridge students only. These days, it feels like my encounters with the actual public begin at the motorway service station on my way home for the holidays, where they are paused again on the way back a few weeks later.

It isn’t anyone’s fault that Cambridge is a bubble; it’s the nature of the beast. It’s not as though there aren’t a great many advantages to a Cambridge education which we can hope to see reflected in our politicians and civil servants. A strong depth of knowledge, above-average intelligence, and the capacity to work hard are traits that are surely essential for admission to Cambridge. Fostered through the academic vigour of our studies, they can go a very long way indeed. But, no amount of cleverness or tenacity can fill the void of empathy, and of humility, which interactions with those for whom we are aspiring to work gift us.

Duncan Paterson makes the point that when dealing with particularly sensitive topics, weekly supervision essays may not be the most appropriate medium for building compassion. Although I firmly believe that humanities is not a misnomer, given the understanding of human beings that those subjects can provide, it will still never substitute genuinely knowing the people around us. Therefore, in some ways, spending the formative first years of our adulthood in Cambridge may be quite a serious disadvantage.

“Is our education preparing us for the public service which ought to be integral to politics and policy?”

A recognition of this, and also of the more sinister cultural facets of an environment in which ambition is a necessity for admission, is essential for the genuinely well-intentioned aspiring Cambridge public servant. A culture of networking promotes interactions with others which are both fundamentally inauthentic and wholly transactional.

Sure, it may be somewhat utopian to suggest that political consultations with stakeholders on the ground will ever be organic discussions in which the inherent power dynamic lies dormant. But when conversations with strangers become a means of assessing their worth with regard to our own aspirations, how can we ever have the humility to engage with the public with the sole purpose of serving them? Networking culture may be a way of getting ahead on the path to Westminster or Whitehall, but it is also antithetical to genuine public service.

During my time at Cambridge, I have met individuals who sincerely want to use their skills to serve others. I have also heard some absolutely outlandish statements about the working class, for example, by clever people who simply have no idea what they are talking about. The two are not mutually exclusive. A will and the intellectual ability to understand problems in the abstract is excellent, but at the end of the day, theory remains theory. For the aspiring public servants among us, recognising this may be the first step on the road to achieving our aspirations with integrity.

Self-awareness and humility could go a long way in encouraging an emphasis on a commitment to service, rather than an impressive list of connections or an Oxbridge degree, as the primary requirement for our politicians and civil servants. Recognising the gaps in a Cambridge education, and seeking to go out and fill them with experiences of actually working with the public, could be a good start.

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