That's a fair point if you're talking about mastermind or brain of Britain which is open to anybody to enter, but the whole point of UC is that it's meant to be a quiz for undergraduates, and while the open students technically are, obviously they don't really fit the intended demographic.

As even the regular teams often have average ages well into the twenties, I would tighten up the rules to include only genuine undergraduates doing a first degree and no more than four years after finishing normal secondary education. If you want to widen the scope a bit I would possibly admit one postgraduate.

Otherwise they might just as well drop the university aspect of it and open it up to teams representing any organisation, firm or institution.

I remember this from the only connect thread, where somebody was convinced the person was doing it to somehow fool people, rather than because jt was his she felt comfortable.


David Aaronovitch wasn't it?


So he's never done any proper work then. Seems par for the course.

The debate here is looking at Open but Salford against whom they were competing were not exactly spring chickens.
Yes, most of the contestants are undergrads but there are many postgrads included in the teams from traditional universities and we see plenty of more mature students from those too.
I don't see it is up to the BBC or the production company to start dictating the demographic of the teams. The only criterion should be that participants are current students throughout the competition.
If some quizmeister deliberately enrols with the OU just to get on UC it seems a very risky and costly strategy.

Has University Challenge ever specified that for undergraduates only? I thought it was for 'students'. Perhaps there are just more 'professional students' now, doing higher degrees.

Surprised no one has mentioned the chap with the silly hat on? Every time the camera was on that team my eye was drawn to it, always find attention seekers like that very annoying.

Mr "'ow do?". I was half expecting the rest of the team to follow up with their own whacky greetings but sadly they resisted.

On the subject of older teams having an unfair advantage, that's only an issue for general knowledge, because they may have had more time to assimilate facts. What was impressive about these teams - and the OU in particular - was their knowledge of very specialist scientific or mathematical topics. Most people could live to be a hundred and never know a lot of the stuff the OU team did.

I've never seen a copy of the rules from the olden days, but it usually seemed to be restricted to genuine undergrads. Otherwise what's the point of persisting with the "university" bit? You might as well open up the format to general teams.

Why not? It's their quiz and they make all the rules, which are purely arbitrary really. If the intention was to have a quiz for students embarking on their first degree then it's just as valid as Top of the Form, which was restricted to school kids. At least with that there was no chance of 30 year olds ever satisfying the criteria.

When you see younger teams struggling with questions about the 80s and 90s, such as the recent question about the miners' strike, it's obvious that a team of very mature students is going to have a significant advantage, because such events are within their personal memories rather than stuff they might or might not have read about.

I remember OU last winning University Challenge when they included effectively a professional quizzer like those on 'The Eggheads'. The main reason he'd done an OU degree was get on University Challenge to complete a full set. I'd like to know more about this teams' background. Three of the team were studying maths but I'm sure they have first degrees in quite different subjects.

Just because they're not undergrads doesn't mean they're not university students. And as far as I'm aware there's never been a rule against postgrad students taking part or older students for that matter and why should there be? Some institutions specialise in older or postgrad students, why shouldn't they be able to participate?

And if being older was such an advantage as you seem to claim then why aren't every year's winners either the OU or Birkbeck or Nuffield College Oxford?

Yes, what are the chances of the two "old" teams being drawn against each other (thereby minimising the number of "oldies" in future programmes)?
OK, it's an easy calculation - the question was rhetorical.

I do have a feeling that someone connected to the programme has in the past made a statement that the programme is primarily intended to be made up of "young" students. Though whether that was policy or merely opinion, I cannot say.

Not everyone at the OU has a first degree and given their ages it's quite likely that even if they did have first degrees they'd be only a dim and distant memory by now.

I agree that it's dodgy having somebody enrol at a university simply to get on UC but I'm not sure how you'd tailor the rules to prevent that from happening. The rule is that you have to be enrolled at a university as a student for the duration of the programme. How do you prove that someone only enrolled at the OU or somewhere else just for the purpose of getting on UC? Even professional quizzers are entitled to expand their horizons!

Would someone be allowed to compete on UC if they were enrolled at the OU but not doing a degree? As far as I can see getting enough credits for a full BA at the OU costs nearly £17,000 so it would be a big investment just to get on TV for 30 minutes.

As I understand it, they have to be enrolled for the entire duration of the competition in the year in which they enter. That's why Corpus Christi got disqualified in 2009 because one of their students graduated and was working for PWC whilst still appearing on the show. I guess at the OU you could simply sign up for enough courses to cover the period that you're on the show but that would still probably fetch up at around £6,000.

It was a lot less however when the OU last won. The fees rocketed when most of the government funding was withdrawn.

It all arbitrarily depends what you think the point of a quiz for students is. I suspect that when it started in the early 60s most people's idea of a student was a young person doing a first degree at university, so no real need for any special age restriction rules. Probably, nobody else would be interested in taking part anyway. Then you have a quiz to find out how much that particular narrowly defined group knows about different areas of culture and general knowledge, in a fairly innovative format.

There are plenty of quizzes that are open to everybody else, so why include people outside that specific group who, because of their age, should at least have picked up a wider general knowledge over the years? In fact, why are they even interested in competing against teams who might be nearly 40 years younger? What satisfaction is there for a team of 50somethings in proving you know more than 19 year olds?

If it's University Challenge, why not allow senior lecturers or professors to take part?

Or, why not stick to the obvious original concept and just allow young students?

The alternative is to go down the blockbusters route and open it up to anybody, with made up teams like its little brother, Only Connect.

That interpretation of the format would make for a much more boring programme than the one we have today. UC is always more enjoyable when the teams have a good mix of contestants, some younger, some older, some male, some female, and so on. There's nothing more tiresome than a team made up of very young, very middle-class white boys, and I'm not being PC here - it's just not fun to watch. As I said a few posts back, this week's match was enjoyable because both teams (but particularly the OU) had an impressive range of specialist knowledge

It's not just a general knowledge quiz, there are topics where the average person can struggle even to follow the questions, so excluding older contestants because they are somehow not real students seems a bad idea, particularly when they can answer challenging questions on science, maths, medicine etc.

And your source for that would be?

As for having a better knowledge of modern history I can't be the only person to have been struck by the OU team's repeated determination to send Glen Miller on a cultural mission when he was long since missing, presumed dead.

How bizarre. Perhaps excluding the white, very middle aged, very middle class Open 'students' it isn't hard to imagine sipping a large glass of Chardonnay as they spend a leisurely couple of hours perusing their coursework after feeding the cats, and others of the type, might allow some of the more ethnically diverse genuine students to take part. I mean, just have another look at them. Leicestershire, Shropshire, a very unscottish sounding inhabitant of the western isles, and Mags from Gloucester. You couldn't possibly select a more white, middle class bunch if you tried. The younger teams are much more diverse, down to earth and interesting.

They also wear funny hats.

'ow do!!

Open captain's hair looked a right mess.

You hardly ever see black UC contestants.

How pompous and ageist is that? Sounds to me that if you are completing your work despite having to feed the cat and possibly hold down a full-time job at the same time, you can certainly call yourself a committed student. Have you seen the diversity profile of Leicester (chez Keith Vaz)?

Indeed. But the point being made was that excluding older contestants would lead to teams of young, white, middle class boys. Going by the evidence of Mondays teams that's nonsense. There has been more diversity in younger teams.

Well, we don't know if any of them complete their work, but I was answering a specific point, see above.

Leicester university students are not necessarily a representative sample of the population of Leicester, the city.