To be upset about ‘university blind’ recruitment

Your DC has got their degree and some people in life will be impressed that he went to Cambridge, but everyone knows that getting into Oxbridge is more about money and connections and schools, and not actual merit and ability.
Blind recruiting is a good thing. And if your child gets an interview they can brag about Cambridge then to the recruiter/ interviewer.
For some places it would be a plus, for me as a horse it would be a minus.

My daughter has a 2:1. She didn't go to a top uni but hasn't even been able to get a job in the field she wants to work and despite having a bachelor of science degree. No one seems to give a monkeys. After endless endless applications for jobs she now works in a clothes shop. She's happy for now as she's getting some money but at the same time feels she's wasted 4 years.

It’s not just university blind, recruitment info is anonymous so that you can’t tell gender, ethnicity, age, disability, or know if someone came from a privileged background or not.

ultimately people have to stand on their own merit and not name drop universities to try and indicate anything. The degree is almost immaterial as long as you have one, but it’s the cv, the way you highlight your skills and experience.

this is a good thing. Honestly I work with universities, after leaving no one gives a hoot where you went.

The ‘master’ is still not the CPS.

Any more than the discourse on rape is determined by legal definitions of the offence in different countries. In the U.K. the offence of rape requires a penis, in the U.S it does not.

But if a candidate is relying on the potential employer to look at their university name and be impressed vs being able to demonstrate their knowledge and skills are of a high level, are they really that much stronger than another candidate from a university 10 ranks lower?

Totally agree. I've read grad application forms which essentially (not literally) say 'I'm on for a first from Oxbridge so don't really have to answer the rest of the questions on this form do I?' - rejection.
We also had a candidate walk into a selection centre saying 'I'm from Oxford, where are the rest of you from', talked down to them until the other candidates whooped his ass in the group exercises.
i mention these only to remind parents of students at prestigious universities that employers need skills that students will have to be able to prove outside academic achievement.

I'd expect the candidates from top universities to be able to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in the selection process. A PP said that blind selection didn't work because the graduates from top universities got most of the jobs anyway, but that doesn't mean blind selection hasn't worked. It means the top graduates have demonstrated they are better.

Exactly.

Thinkingtwiceagain
They're not all the same, of course they're not.

But if a candidate is relying on the potential employer to look at their university name and be impressed vs being able to demonstrate their knowledge and skills are of a high level, are they really that much stronger than another candidate from a university 10 ranks lower?

I'd expect the candidates from top universities to be able to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in the selection process. A PP said that blind selection didn't work because the graduates from top universities got most of the jobs anyway, but that doesn't mean blind selection hasn't worked. It means the top graduates have demonstrated they are better.

University blind is a problem if the first sift is a blanket rejection for anyone without a 2.1, but I would imagine any company that decides to do that in the knowledge not all universities are equally academic accepts that they're not that concerned about having top academic talent.

All degrees (that are non-accredited) are obvs not equal. My DD is doing Modern Languages at Portsmouth Uni - she is having a blast and working hard but of course her degree is not remotely comparable with a top RG degree! It is not the same as MFL at Oxbridge or Bristol. There is no standardisation of degrees at uni level (unlike the standardisation at A-level and GCSE). So surprising that parents don’t realise this! So many ppl on this thread have their head in the sand - degrees are not the same!

I am a brownie guider and have been for over two decades and I’m not 40 yet or even this year. A degree is a good thing but showing that I have and continue to volunteer with young people counts just as much. No matter what level your degree is at or where it is from if you show no life skills or external experience it can count for little. My DH has no Highers (A Levels) but two university degrees. He graduated the second time in 2018 at the age of 35. He got straight into third year (Scotland) the second time due to experience not his previous degree.

Also @poetryandwine grades are usually curved. A programme with a large number of 2:2's wouldn't be acceptable, even at Oxbridge. Individual modules might have a high pass or fail rate though.

I suppose you can argue that the 'better' students make the more, erm, academically 'daring' choices and ended up with a 2:2. But that means they overestimated their abilities. Although knowledge isn't restricted to exam marks...

poetryandwine
I agree with you.
It's fine to be institution blind, if the rest of the recruitment process is designed to allow applicants to demonstrate their knowledge and relevant skills.

If it's a case of auto-bin anyone without a 2:1 at first sift then that's quite unfair when not all universities are equal in their academic rigor.

Well it used to be the opposite - any degree was needed. Now that more people have degrees, 2:2's are a cut-off.

From an 'equality' perspective the percentage of people with 2:2's are very small. For a humanities degree you'd need to have done zero reading for that grade. For STEM, it's a bit more difficult but as most universities base it on a weighted average of marks across years it shouldn't come as a complete surprise. Hence, an 'objective' criteria.

I know that the firms who don't need the degree classification still fail a lot of those grades at the first sift. Presumably making an allowance for outstanding work experience, 'rigorous' degrees etc.

But it's not the end of the world. Direct entry roles don't usually require the classifications, so...

I do have some concern around the fact that students with a 2.2 from a demanding programme can no longer get past HR at many large firms, where a 2.1 from a less demanding programme will suffice. But I think the answer is to stop excluding the 2.2’s. Let applicants compete on the explicit and implicit things they have learnt, whether applications are blind or not.

p.s. I don't mean just internships, but actual work. A PT job, or at least something that shows work related skills like volunteering or student societies.

I beg to differ. Plenty of universities have placement years. And there's a big emphasis on work experience (internships etc) in top universities.
A CV with none of that would fail our first sift. Oxford or Oxford Brookes.

And for those whose CV looks good but only manage to give me 'group work'/'personal life' examples in the final round of competency interviews... instant fail. I've had better discussions with our school leaver recruits than some graduates and usually these are from top unis. I've rarely had similar failures from 'lower ranking' unis. But that's because they know they have to work extra hard anyway, so don't coast off reputation.

'Most' jobs don't require academic rigour. Which is obvious when you look at the top performers 10-20 years down the line. Especially as large companies have standardised assessments, anybody who passes is deemed capable on the 'technical' side. It's the other skills - resilience, communication, willingness to learn etc that are more important.

Standards do vary. Once I was helping a transfer from Oxford get settled in to our Y2. Her tutor had sent me copies of her Y1 exams, for context.

Even though we are in the tier just below COWI, I am sadly confident that the majority of our Y2 and Y3 students would have failed the Oxford Y1 exams. (Because of course organisation, our students do not get all the material until the first term of Y2.). Same material, different level of sophistication.

Similarly our exams are more difficult than those we assess externally for other universities. Yet our students do well with blind admissions, because training shows. That is the point.

@Mirabai , that great philosophical question put so eloquently by Humpty Dumpty:

"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean. Neither more or less." Alice responded to Humpty Dumpty, "The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things?" Humpty Dumpty retorted: "The question is, which is to be master? That's all."

How the U.K. criminal justice system frames any offence is quite distinct from discussion of the issue itself. - Racism is a global phenomenon it’s not defined by the CPS.

Sure @TreadLight - but ‘honks’ is not a racist word. @FarmGirl78 is at fault here for misunderstanding what OP said. OP said nothing wrong - unless u are saying no one can use the word anymore which would be a shame as I use it regularly (my son’s feet honk a lot!)

I recruit graduates and blind recruit. It will actually do your son a favour in the long run, as some hiring managers may roll their eyes at Oxford and Cambridge graduates - especially if you are looking at the likes of Boris and Truss being educated there. They are not great examples of what these institutions have produced.

When looking for a graduate, I want to see that they have some life skills, so a part time job, volunteering etc. I also want to see that they have completed a year in industry or a summer placement and can talk about the benefits of this. 3 years at ANY Uni without any of this won’t get past the first sift for a shortlist at my organisation.

Modern racism is based entirely on the perception of the victim, not the intention of the perpetrator. If FarmGirl78 feels racially offended, she is the victim of racism.

E.g. the CPS definition of hate crime.
"Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person's ... race or perceived race"

https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/hate-crime#:~:text=%22Any%20criminal%20offence%20which%20is,orientation%20or%20transgender%20identity%20or

It's mad, but I don't make the rules.

I find this whole conversation bizarre. I have always worked in technical industries. The top companies don't just recruit based on your alma mater. Some specialist companies only recruit from one optional course.

From my experience, blind recruitment seems to be favouring being egalitarian over being exception.

Lmao in my head when I read this post I imagined honks to be farts. (Idk what honks meant before btw)

I was stretched to the limit on my socialising and clubbing activities at Manchester Poly. I had a wild time.

l would have hated Oxford which l viewed as staid and boring.

l still managed to live a successful life.

Bet this was the British Diplomatic Service.

What are you saying? I responded to a post on quantum mechanics with a post on quantum mechanics and then a poster decided this was comparable to reading Romeo and Juliet.

I didn't say it was comparable to studying Romeo and Juliet.

This was the post:

Lol, I did quantum mechanics in A level Physics and you think that is Uni level
I studied Romeo and Juliet at 14 and at undergraduate. 🤷‍♀️

I was challenging the (fairly silly) idea that studying a topic at a lower level automatically means that studying the topic at a higher level is the same, especially when it seems to be to dismiss someone else's study.

It could be quantum mechanics, or Romeo and Juliet or the works of Bach, or the anatomy of the heart for all I care.

Using the aww bless someone thinks their university topic is difficult but I studied it at A Level is a fairly flawed argument. Many topics in many disciplines can be studied in varying depths.