new RG uni's

My friends Dc spent many hours doing an online application for a City job, last year and was granted a telephone interview. He then had a long telephone interview and then was asked what University he went to. He said Exeter and was told that the interview was now being terminated because Exeter was not good enough!

I can certainly believe that theta.

I think York and Durham are excellent universities. I'm not in the least trying to dispute that. What I am talking about is the difficulties students face trying to negotiate increasingly complicated information about which universities are 'good enough', in the context of a scarcity of jobs.

Sorry, probably I am banging on about it too much, I just feel bad for this generation of students.

@Doom The absence of durham in particular from the RG was more of an issue for RG members than it was for Durham. Neither York nor Durham need the RG. Exeter - not so sure. RG labelling is good for attracting overseas students and that has long been one of the key growth strategies for Exeter. And Exeter needs to continue growing because the infrastructure has already been improved to cater for the anticipated greater numbers of students. And it's starting to become a thing.

I hope so yellow!

I don't think the information is easy to find - or to interpret.

You talk to students, you hear a lot of stories they've been told by people in positions of authority, like teachers or parents, which is total rubbish.

One of the common things people say is, 'This university is brilliant, we are just as good as [insert famous university/group here], look at our results'. If you don't know much about the whole process of doing a degree, it can be really hard to unpick truth from propaganda. Stuff like this - York or Durham saying 'we don't need to be RG, we're very good ... no, wait, now we are thrilled to be part of the prestigious RG' adds to the confusion. I'm aware of why they've done it and I am not slating them, but I do also understand why students get concerned.

I think you may be underestimating quite a lot of employers Doom.

Also the information is essentially out there and easy enough to find. If anything, there is too much information as Sting might say.

Well, no, it's not really a separate issue. Or rather, it's only a separate issue if you are already confident you have correct information, which is pretty self-defeating IMO.

My experience is, students - and prospective students - worry about how universities are perceived by employers and they worry they won't see through the hype. It is quite natural for them to worry when things like this happen, even if that worry is unjustified. I sympathize with that a lot.

Completely agree about the need to disseminate correct information but that's a separate issue entirely.

Besides which, thinking in terms the 'most competitive employers' is only helpful for a small minority of graduates. What about the rest, who do all need jobs?

These are my worries.

@mummytime Pressures to grade inflate have been around for some time. :(

See, yellow, I think it's unfair to say 'shallow'. Yes, if you're talking about students from the sorts of schools where most students go to university, maybe so.

What about students from less advantageous backgrounds? Lots of people pick a university based on bad information. We can either blame them, or we can sympathize and try to change things so they get better information.

@Yellowtip exactly.

Birmingham is pretty highly regarded, not the same as Cardiff if we are going to be snobby.
I have heard from two friends about the pressure they are under to grade inflate at a pretty well regarded but not Russell group uni. One actually resigned because of it. And it is very different from the " you need to justify every mark they lose" advice I was given at when teaching at a US university.

I have complete faith Doom.

I agree about the MN obsession with RG but I don't think it can affect the regard in which certain 1994 universities have been held. The main thing is that many, many people haven't been aware of the two different groupings; 'RG' has simply been used in ignorance or as a shorthand.

It would be have been very shallow for a student to pick a less good RG English or History department rather than Durham (say) simply because of the label. Far easier to get in though, no need for a huge tranche of A*s. The most competitive employers are well aware of the strengths of individual universities, they've not been repelled by lack of a label.

To be honest i don't see what the hype is about being RG or not. Many students when they apply, don't even bother about whether a uni is or isn't in a particular group and go on the university's merits alone. For example, Durham has always had high performing departments (even coming out higher than Oxbridge with certain subjects in some years) and entry grades for most subjects have always been 3A's... now including A*s in many cases.

Exams vary with different unis, the main reason being that for a uni with students all coming with A's from A-level, normally the syllabus starts from a higher standard to begin with as they assume the students come with more knowledge from having understood more from the A level. And further more, assume that they can push this students to understand and learn more in the 3 years. Having graduated from maths, i know that some of the material in our 2nd year, constituted to material in 3rd year for some other unis that had acceptance grades of Bs. Therefore, a 2:1 from a degree that has more difficult modules can be seen as a better result than a 2:1 from a uni that didn't cover higher topics. Though you can't really compare degrees in different subjects... thats like comparing apples and pears!

@Doom tell your students that if they are up for a job against a photogenic woman with a 3rd from Sidney Sainsburys they don't stand a chance.

If a student can't tell whether Durham is a generally better regarded university than Cardiff or Birmingham then honestly, that student has bigger worries than the fact that some institutions may be a little bit inconsistent.

(Incidentally my DD1 is planning to apply to both Cardiff and Birmingham when the time comes, because for what she wants to do, both are excellent places to go. Durham would be rubbish, for her. This doesn't change the fact that Durham is a generally better regarded university than either).

So, sorry, what is the point about Carol Vorderman? I should tell all my students to aspire to be like her because there are thousands of jobs as a TV presenter out there?

No, I don't think so.

@Doom I am heavily involved in recruitment. So yes. I have noticed thanks. :)

I wish I had your faith, yellow.

I do believe that these universities are good, and were good before they joined the RG. But that's not the point to a lot of people. People do make daft judgments. Read any MN thread about HE, and you will find people saying 'well, I/my DH/my boss/my company count CVs from Oxbridge/Russell Group/Oxford and LSE as better than everywhere else.

It may be they're misinformed, or lying, but I think in the current circumstances, it's not surprising students will worry and will feel they need an honest answer about whether this stuff matters. And if a university is one day insisting no, RG is not important then the next day jumping for joy because they've been invited in, yes, that is tough for students to interpret.

red exams are marked differently at different institutions. A 2.1 from Oxford or Cambridge may be worth significantly more than a 2.1 from elsewhere.

redspottedfrog.
I get that. I was making a wider point really about what we value as a society and perhaps how things like the RG inadvertantly perpetuate our pre-ordained ideas.

Yy, doom. The much vaunted small ratios and high entry standards shouldn't leave that much room for 3rds. (special circs excepted)

Doom the university itself is what counts, not a super-imposed group label. The RG universities aren't cloned and applications to Durham and Exeter are enormously healthy.