Why William should go to Cambridge (Massachusetts)
by George Walden
Princes William and Harry have asked us, with all courtesy, to stop mourning their mother and to look to the future. So this may be the moment to put in my pennyworth on a royal subject of some seriousness that is relevant to us all: namely, our future King's education.
The Prince is 16, and, after his impressive performance in his GCSE examinations, his thoughts, and those of his family, will naturally be turning to where he will go to university. There have been rumours that he is destined for Cambridge - assuming of course he secures the right A-levels and does well at interview, which princes usually do. Cambridge remains a fine university, and for William to go to an Oxbridge college after Eton would be the obvious, traditionalist thing to do.
But tradition does not appear to have been an infallible guide for the Royal Family of late, and Cambridge, though the easy option, would be the wrong choice. Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the other hand, seat of Harvard University, would be a far better place for the future king to complete his education, in every sense.
A year ago there was some doubt about how long the monarchy could continue. Now it appears that it will, and on the assumption that the public will prefer their monarchs to be distinguished people in their own right, we might as well have the best educated king we can get. Whether you happen to be a royal or, as we quaintly put it, a commoner, there are few things more advantageous in the modern world than having some of your education abroad.
It is not just that American universities, at their best, are easily the equivalent of Oxbridge. Getting a new perspective on your country at a formative age is vital, and there are few places better than America to do it. Nothing could be better for William the Prince or for William the common man than to escape for a few years from the pokily introverted world in which, through no fault of his own, he has been brought up.
In Cambridge, England, a good half of the Prince's fellow students would be people from backgrounds not dissimilar to his own: the privileged products of private schools, with all the little snobberies and assumptions that can go with them.
BEING a Prince at Cambridge, it is hard to see how you can get things right. If the snobs don't get you, the inverted snobs will, and it is hard to know which is worse. In Cambridge, Mass, there are privileged youngsters ("preppies") too, who can be just as obnoxious. But there is also a wide cultural mix, including some 20 per cent Asians, and this being America, what you are matters rather more than who you are.
From what we know of the Prince, and his academic potential, he might find the change of atmosphere congenial. And if some of the meritocratic mores were to rub off on him, so that he got used to wearing his royalty lightly, gained confidence in his own achievements as a person, and became sickened by the mixture of deference and pop-sentimentalism which surrounds royalty in Britain, so much the better. And should the Prince decide, on his return to Britain, to use his Harvard degree to get himself a job, while he waited his turn to head up The Firm, better still.
In Cambridge, England, the grouse moors are tempt-ingly close - a mere hour's flight away. From Cambridge, Mass, there are no grouse moors to go to, whether you want to or not. In England, the Press is full of stories about the Royal Family, and about the Prince's late mother in particular, which must be a daily burden for William.
In America, the Press is not averse to a bit of royal sensationalism, but at least the stories and commentaries by our army of royal grafters, insiders and would- be powdered courtiers do not feature in the New York Times, the Boston Globe or the Los Angeles Times day in, day out, with every sign of continuing to do so through all eternity. So, on that score, at least the Prince could pick up a newspaper without feeling, as one assumes he does in Britain, a twinge of nausea.
THERE would be other advantages to a spell abroad. In Britain, we have a somewhat romantic notion of our place in the world. In America, you are lucky if they know the name of the British Prime Minister. This is, no doubt, remiss of them, but then it is remiss of us to believe that the merest scrap of news affecting our culture or politics puts us at the centre of world attention. There would be brilliant teachers at Cambridge, England, at whose feet the Prince could sit, but then there is probably a rather greater number of brilliant folk at Cambridge, Mass, including the phenomenal Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Business School - all good for inculcating a healthy sense of the competition.
You could even put the question the other way round: in modern times what sort of a king would Prince William make if he didn't have close personal experience of the most powerful and creative country on earth? On the negative side, he would also learn that there are things in America that no sane person would want to see imported here.
There will always be someone to say that, even if William were willing - and one hopes that he will have the final choice - a prince cannot study at Harvard because it has never been done before.
A somewhat thin joke, told me by a Cambridge under-graduate, may be relevant.
Question: How many Cambridge professors does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: Change? Change? What do you mean, change?
If ever there was a moment to break with precedent in the education of royalty, it is now.
© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 03 September 1998