Being at the moment cut off from access to records,
I cannot say definitely how long it is since Oxford numbered more undergraduates than Cambridge. The tendency in recent years is sufficiently demon- strated by the fact that the Parliamentary voters at the General Election numbered 42,000 for Cambridge and only 29,000 for Oxford. But in the academic year that began this term Oxford has suddenly taken the lead. According to an answer in Parliament on Monday, the present totals, including the women's colleges, are Oxford 7,50o, Cambridge 6,943. The reason for the change of position, I imagine, is simply that Oxford has managed to find more accommodation for undergraduates than Cambridge, handicapped as that unfortunate university is by the influx of a phalanx of civil servants, whose advent, coupled with a pre-existing housing shortage, has restricted the out-of-college accommodation severely. Certainly both univer- sities are taking all the entrants they can and rejecting all they can't. Oxford, it may be noted, has 500 more women than Cambridge, which nearly accounts for the difference in the totals.
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