Bernie Reeves’ recent post raises the interesting question of how it is that Oxford and Cambridge Universities have not succumbed to the politicized curricula of American colleges and universities. He offers two explanations, the size and number of the Oxbridge colleges and the lack of tenure. As someone who has taught at Oxford and several American institutions, I can say he is missing one crucial point. What he should be pleased to consider is that we might even be able to replicate this one element here.

First, small size and the absence of tenure are no guarantee against academic faddishness slipping into undergraduate education. There are many small colleges in this country already, and nationally about three quarters of all instructional faculty are not tenured or on the tenure track. If these two features alone were enough, we should already have achieved an Oxbridge education in America.

And the students at Oxford and Cambridge are not immune to the fads sweeping across American campuses. Disinviting speakers and shutting down events happens there just as it does here. Don’t forget, in 1933 the Oxford Union voted in a debate not to fight for king and country. Despite this, the curricula are not politicized. Why not?

The piece missing from Reeves’ account that is both common to Oxford and Cambridge and unique to them is the public examination. Although it differs somewhat between the two, at both universities the individual colleges educate the students but the university tests them. Oxford still preserves the most extreme version of the public examination wherein students read at their colleges and sit a series of exams at the end of their three years.

What is more, those exams are set and graded by one person per subject, based on a common reading list. Yes, this is teaching to a test, but only in the best sense. There is no place for teaching a peculiar and idiosyncratic interpretation of a book or event, at least not if there is any hope for your students.

Reinforcing the better angles of the academic nature are the forces of self-interest and competition. As the colleges prepare their own students for the exams they also develop reputations for being more or less rigorous. There is even an official “Norrington Table” to rank colleges based on their student results. No college wants to be known as sending their students to the exam underprepared, nor do individual instructors.

Of course there is far more to Oxbridge than the final exam. The ancient universities draw from the top students throughout the United Kingdom who then compete in the exams against each other, not against the students of Howard Jacobson’s fictional Wrottlesley University. I am only pointing out how these two institutions have avoided what Reeves has described as “the radical re-interpretation of curriculum that has reduced U.S. colleges and universities to politically correct, multicultural bastions of mediocrity in the fields of the liberal arts.”

I am under no illusion that a public exam will solve the ills of American higher education. But it could be a start and it could be tried. Imagine a Revolutionary America exam set and graded by Richard Brookhiser or, if you prefer an academic, Gordon S. Wood. With enough attention and incentives (cash prizes or scholarships, for instance) students from around the country might take their chance on it and reveal some hidden gems in little-known colleges. Who doesn’t think that there will be more upsets than the typical March Madness?

We might begin at the local level with regional contests and prizes. Instead of a scholarship, what about an interview or even a job at a local company? Small efforts like these would begin to set expectations and work out some of the kinks in the system. And it would give us good work to do as we wait for another—doubtless very different—Cecil Rhodes.