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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   32065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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whatever ruleset upper class academia emphasizes?

Quis paget entrat, is the joke about that. Though upper-class academia does have its share of clever, as well as well-connected, students.

St Cake's School is an imaginary public school, run by Mr R. J. Kipling (BA, Leicester). The headmaster's name is part of the joke regarding the name "St Cake's", in reference to Mr Kipling cakes. Articles featuring the school parody the "Court and Social" columns of The Times and The Daily Telegraph, and the traditions and customs of the public school system. The school's motto is Quis paget entrat (He who pays gets in), although variations on this arise from time to time, such as when the school decided to admit only the daughters of very rich Asian businessmen, and the motto became "All praise to the prophet, and death to the infidel". While the school's newsletters feature extraordinary and unlikely results and prizes, events such as speech days, founders' days, term dates and feast days are announced with topical themes, such as under-age drinking, drug abuse, obesity, celebrity culture, anti-social behaviour and cheating in exams. The school is sometimes referred to as "the Eton of the West Midlands", in reference to that area's relative lack of such schools and the magazine's founders' attendance at Shrewsbury School in that region.

It is worth noting that the top British public (i.e. private) schools do not run on a quis paget entrat basis, and have not done since roughly the 1980's. There is a standard examination (Common Entrance) meaning that the system is transparent enough that people would know if it ran like Harvard admissions. At the time Prince Harry got into Eton in 1997, they apparently still had slightly lower academic standards for children of hereditary peers (and significantly lower standards for royalty - he wouldn't have met the reduced standards for the aristocracy), but they had no need to let a dim kid in for cash, and didn't. The other top schools had published pass marks with no exceptions.

Part of the joke about St Cake's is that there used to be a lot of mildly shit public schools that were selling social exclusivity and nothing else (and the resulting stereotypes survive because the upper classes are one of the designated acceptable targets for outgroup-bashing humour) but most of them went out of business after WW2.

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