Editor's note: Riazat Butt is The Guardian's religious affairs correspondent. Listen to her programme on Radio 4 at 2000 tonight - SB.

Oxford University's admissions system is one of those subjects that really winds people up - and that's why I wanted to look at it. It enrages those who think the institution is predisposed towards fee-paying white toffs, creating a breed of graduates that go on to dominate public life (Exhibit A, Andrew Neil's Posh and Posher on BBC 2 last week). Or it puts people (usually those who have studied there) on the defensive, saying the university is elite rather than elitist and that bright students, whatever their background, have as much a stab at getting a place as any public school pupil.

There are also those who think there is too much emphasis/attention on Oxford and Cambridge and there are plenty of other universities providing a first-class excellent education and a much better social life to boot. The rows have been rumbling on for years and look unlikely to be resolved any time soon unless, you suspect, there are radical changes to Oxford's admissions policy. But rather than assemble a collection of well-meaning, well-informed talking heads referring to events that occurred 20 years ago (or more) I thought it would be more interesting, and human, to follow pupils through the application process and talk to the people deciding their fate.

Few teenagers will have had to big themselves up or experience such a competitive environment - more than 17,200 people chasing 3,200 places for 2011 entry - at their age and I wanted to know what they thought of the procedure. Is it fair? Does it work? So we follow four students from my hometown of Southampton - they don't fit an Oxford stereotype, sorry to disappoint - as they try to grab a slice of academic glory.

I expect people will disagree with the content - and the conclusion - of the programme. I will probably be accused of not going hard enough on the contentious issues of educational or racial diversity. But I started making this programme thinking people could get to Oxford on merit alone. Do I still think that? Yes, but there are caveats. Doing your homework - not just for your A-Levels - really helps. Know what you want to study, why and where otherwise there is little to distinguish you from everyone else who is applying. Did our Southampton students manage this? You'll have to listen tonight to find out.

Riazat Butt is religious affairs correspondent for the Guardian and presenter of How to get into Oxford

• Listen to How to get into Oxford at 2000 tonight and for seven days after that on the Radio 4 web site and read an article about the programme on the BBC news magazine web site.
• Picture by Ross Parker. Some rights reserved.

I will be leaving a job I have loved in October. I will miss almost all of it. But I always felt that I should not do much more than seven years as Controller of Radio 4 and by October I will have had the best job in the BBC for six of those years. I did not want to run the risk of my ideas drying up, being insensate to the best ideas of the many people who make Radio 4 what it is or have anyone muse over a date for my departure. The job of Controller gives one person a very large amount of power and that needs to be disbursed with care. So I knew that I would one day have to hand over the reins before anything about Radio 4 became routine - but I very much wanted to leave bursting with enthusiasm and love for Radio 4 - and I am.

There was no other big job in broadcasting that appealed to me - and anyway I should not presume that anyone would have offered. I wanted a complete change and I have always had a profound respect and interest in academic life and academics. (Radio 4 after all is a platform for many academics and it manifestly needs their knowledge and goodwill). So I will be swapping the particular rituals of BBC life for the rather different ones of Oxford. I am well aware that it will be different - and exciting. Scholarship and curiosity help define who we are - and Oxford and St.Peter's are places of fantastic intellectual achievement and learning.

I hope very much that I have left Radio 4 in good shape for whoever is lucky enough to be asked to run it, and what will become Radio 4 extra (now Radio 7) if the Trust approves our plans - though in the end that is a judgement for you - the audience. I am acutely aware that not all of you, by any stretch of the imagination, will approve of everything that I have done. And there will be some of you who think I have got it mostly wrong - but when I listen to the programmes I am very often moved, excited, amused or thrilled by what I hear.

The editors, programme makers, schedulers, announcers, financial wizards and others who work to produce the programmes are devoted to their work and to the audience. I do not know that this is a unique phenomenon but it is one that is palpable in Radio 4. So to have been the beneficiary of their work and commitment has been a great privilege - and I shall miss their creativity, energy and companionship. It's been wonderful. I am not going for a while and in the few months that remain there is much to be done - though I shall try not to bind my successor with ideas that he/she may not want.

Throughout my life I have been grateful that Radio 4 exists - but that applies to the BBC too. For all its failings and frustrations the BBC is a noble idea and much of what it does - though inevitably not all - lives up to its aspirations. So I wish not only for a strong Radio 4 - but a strong BBC too. And I shall be a devoted listener.

Mark Damazer is Controller of BBC Radio 4

• Mark Damazer spoke to John Humphrys about his decision on the Today programme this morning.
• The Guardian, BBC News Online and The Independent on Damazer's departure.
• Mark has been elected head of St Peter's College, Oxford and will take up his new role on 1 October. Here's the St Peter's announcement.
• Some more photographs taken in Mark's office this morning.

14:48. Interweaving a story about being thrown into a lake in Cardiff aged sixteen with a disquisition on memory - a clip of an interview with Graham Linehan.

14:43. Jon celebrates the speed of making radio features but he and Laura slightly disagree about the time it takes to edit a radio programme. 2 days or 4-5 days?

14:37. Now we're hearing a clip from David Shayler's press conference at which he announced that he is a messiah. Another example of Jon's readiness to keep quiet and let the story unfold.

14:33. Now we're hearing a clip from Jon's conspiracy programme in which he swears at 7/7 conspiracy theorist David Shayler: a huge compliance issue at the time but a hit with listeners who thought it was a blow struck for rationality.

14:28. On the key question of critical distance, Jon says you can't be too distant and critical: you have to be respectful of even the strangest opinions: even when interviewing Robbie Williams about aiens or David Icke about lizards.

14:22. One of Jon's big worries is alienating contributors so he's happy that Robbie loved the programme. He also remembers making a programme with Ian Paisley and being told afterwards that both republicans and loyalists involved like the programme.

14:20. Introducing a clip from his Robbie Williams alien abductee programme, Jon says he learnt an important lesson - when to keep quiet - by allowing Robbie to take over presenting the programme, for instance.

14:15. Introducing 'Jon Ronson On', Jon tells us that he initially wanted to bring NPR favourite 'This American Life' to Britain...

14:09. Jon Ronson and his producer Laura Parfitt have started with their workshop about making radio features with an anecdote about how they met - visiting a sex shop in France, apparently.

The Bedford campus of the University of Bedfordshire is home to a small advance guard of Radio 4 programmes for the next two days. The goal, as explained by Mark Damazer here, is to bring to the attention of the nation's students the range of Radio 4 programmes they'd be sure to like. I'll be in Bedford too and I'll be covering events for the blog.

Follow @radio4blog on Twitter for updates from sessions and recordings. If you're at any of the events and using Twitter, use the hash tag #R4UniTour so we can keep track of the conversation. Keep an eye on the Radio 4 pool on Flickr for pictures from the event (mostly by Stan Was who's already uploaded a lot of good ones from the first leg of the University tour).

And if you're a student or a staff member at the University, take a look at the special pages on your web site or get over to the Campus Centre Theatre in Bedford (the events aren't open to the wider public). Today you'll find workshops and masterclasses from the BBC College of Journalism, from the BBC's writersroom project and from top newsreader Chris Aldridge. A features workshop from producer Laura Parfitt and Jon Ronson, a BBC careers exhibit and recordings of With Great Pleasure and The News Quiz. Tomorrow there are more workshops, including more from the writersroom and one about social media by... me. And recordings of Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed and Nick Mohammed: Apollo 21.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the radio 4 blog

A small corner of Radio 4 has decamped to Derby for two days - to record some big programmes (inlcuding a fantastcially exciting live Woman's Hour this morning, with lots of audience participation), to run some workshops with students and to generally spread the good word with the students and faculty of Derby University.

I've been busy recording short vox pops - I've been asking students to tell me four things they know about Radio 4. Many photographs have been taken, both by me and by Stan Was, a Radio 4 producer. And I've been covering events on Twitter (the hash tag is #R4UniTour). Over the next few weeks we'll be visiting two more universities - at the University of Bedfordshire and in Cardiff - and I'll be covering events here on the blog. Watch this space.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog