To think university snobbery must stop

[Staceystace]

I was telling a friend about my nephew who is off to University. I said to her he is off to x uni to study English, she said oh I didn’t even realise that was even a uni. She then went on to emphasise how her daughter is off to a top 20 uni, she went on to say how she wouldn’t have gone if it was not a Russell or 1994 group as she does not think it is worth the debt. I just got the vibe she was looking down on my nephews uni. Aibu to think this sort of snobbery about unis is terrible and needs to stop. My nephew is not the most academic, but surely not everyone is capable of going to a russell group.

Anyone wanting to get into a very narrow industry should take serious steps to find out what routes will be accepted and no one should advise them unless they know for sure about that.

I wish I'd had better advice when applying for work post-graduation. Someone should have said that library work was a severely threatened sector and that publishing was tiny with 'entry level' jobs being mainly given to trust fund girls whose daddies knew the boss and who could afford to work in London for pocket money (e.g. Sarah Ferguson in the early 80s). If I'd been presented with likely numbers I might have adjusted my expectations a bit.

I'm genuinely confused as to why you think student satisfaction is a bad thing? If you were paying in excess of £27,000 for something wouldn't you want to know about the quality of different aspects of that product so you could make an informed decision?

Quite, GallicosCats.

I heard a Woman's Hour on careers, and someone was saying how she spoke to so many girls who said they wanted to study Journalism. She asked them if they bought glossy magazines, and most admitted they did not, nor did they buy or even read newspapers.

Young people should give their career a "health check" as the jargon goes. Although it is a bit difficult to predict the future. What seems sensible today may not even exist in twenty years' time.

At some point I guess there will be a small top tier of billionaires - and the rest of the population will be wiping the bums of the vast numbers of old people.

My neighbor son went to respected RG uni after gaining AAA in alevels for Maths/physics/ Chemistry and just scraped a 2.2 and no job after 2 yrs, his sister went to an ex ploy for law and has now a training contract with a good law firm so I guess it is work ethic that counts wherever you study.

Slightly off topic but still on the subject of student loans.

There was a girl on my course last year, a mature student like me.
(I now work full time and already earn well over the repayment threshold)

Anyway, she told me how she got full maintenance/ her course tuition paid but intended to have children with her partner post graduation and stay at home got a few years before taking up part time employment and would probably never pay back the loan.

I know a lot of kids will never pay back their loans, perhaps I won’t fully. But to go into uni never intending to pay it back and use the mantinence as income, I can’t decide whether that’s awful...or actually quite smart 🙈😂

*Her bf also had a full time job and she worked PT so they were just using her maintenence to save a deposit for their first home.

*this was at an ex poly btw

It may be worth checking if student satisfaction is anomalously low compared to similar institutions, but we came to the conclusion that some cohorts of students might have higher expectations than others.

Student satisfaction shouldn't be looked at in isolation and you're always going to get cohorts with exceptionally high expectations or even a group of students who take issue with a particular member of staff ( happened once in an institution I worked at) but it's good to look at alongside other factors. If a course had consistently low NSS scores you'd want to investigate further.

Topcat
Further your comments regarding A levels and the first two years of undergraduate degrees at Ivy League schools.

They are like A levels, the depth that is covered in degree level in the UK at this undergraduate level is not achieved by those in these years in the US. Its easy to prove, go look at the first two years curriculum, for the first 3 semesters the content in many courses is exactly the same as A level and only starts to move on after this. Its also continuously assessed with less emphasis on the terminal exams.

Au contraire, A levels will at most get you a bye for the first semester, the same as AP coursework in a US high school. And yes, I am familiar with the way the GPA system works. US high school students who have GPAs of 4.0 or higher (weighted averages) demonstrate consistency and discipline across a wide range of subjects from their first day of high school. Same goes for US students in universities.

In the highly selective universities they will get you nowhere, because core coursework is designed to set every student on a level pegging. You will not get your teeth into 200 level courses until you have done the spadework.

The University of Chicago explains the rationale behind its Core:
All students in the College begin their undergraduate education at the University of Chicago by taking courses from the Common Core curriculum, an integrated, often interdisciplinary, sequence of courses that are designed to establish the habits of mind and the critical, analytic, and writing skills that are expected of an educated, well-informed member of modern society.

The “Core” is intended as an introduction to the tools of inquiry used in every discipline—science, mathematics, humanities, and social sciences. The goal is not just to transfer knowledge, but to raise fundamental questions and to become familiar with the powerful ideas that shape our society.

Not only does the curriculum provide the background for any major and for continuing study after graduation, it also provides a common experience for all students in the College. All students have taken the same sorts of classes and read the same kinds of texts, struggling and triumphing over the same sorts of ideas. This gives every student a common vocabulary of ideas and skills, no matter his or her background before coming to the College.

Students are expected to focus primarily on Core requirements for the first two years, and many students may take nothing but Core Curriculum courses for their entire first year of study.
college.uchicago.edu/academics/college-core-curriculum

The point about the funding? Well that was down to the fact that if people above the average income( up to 154% ) higher are expected on average to contribute 0 and 10 percent.

Using the average grant given ( 56,000) and these numbers you can quickly arrive at the conculusion that most of the grants are given to students whose parents earn more than the national average.

Quickly arrive at your conclusion? Only if you are not used to arriving at conclusions based on facts provided. FYI, those with incomes below the stated threshold are expected to contribute $0. You have completely misread the information you found.

You don't do your pov any favours here (or your claim to have taught in an Ivy League institution) by your lack of insight into finaid, or your breathless relaying of the info about the average income of Ivy League students, with your apparent failure to take into account the fact that the Ivies attract many extremely well qualified and often fantastically well off students from outside the US. Also you keep on using the word 'denizens' where you mean dens.

That quote you provided doesn't disprove the point I made about A levels and the first two years of an undergraduate degree in the US. They are about the same level. Look at the curriculum for the first 3 semesters and you'll find I'm right. Someone with great A level grades would not need to do this - which of course is demonstrated by the fact that good A levels are enough to start on medicine and law courses, unlike US where they must have undergrad degrees,, with no disparities shown between the level of professional abilities once qualified

My "breathless" repetition of the Harvard median household income is support for my point that Harvard and other Ivy League institutions are places of privilege, which you attempted to refute with the statistics about how many people are on aid. My data certainly refutes that point - even the privileged get aid, with the average amount paid and the average amount contributed from those with significantly above average income testifying to this.

You certainly don't just have mathanxiety, you can't do the math.

Further more other data proves that at Harvard:

67% come from the top 20% of incomes, whilst just 4.5% come from the bottom 20.

Which again backs my point that even if 55% of families at Harvard get aid, the vast majority of aid is paid to those in privileged positions.

You never addressed btw the point I made about the US state education system and the disparities in funding and opportunity which make it far more likely that students from lower income backgrounds won't even be able to meet the criteria for an Ivy League school, especially with the extra curricular aspects needed.

No comment on the data regarding RG and non RG earnings disproving your point about institutions and large disparities in earning outcomes?

Fair enough I used a word incorrectly, but then you've attempted to link to evidence which doesn't say what you think it does, actively disproves your points, and in general failed to respond to the more difficult points made.

BTW I taught economics at Brown.

Why are you arguing about Ivy? And financial aid?
Better count how many students can go there 😏
And what back ground have they got.
Most likely it will be Eton, Harrow or Westminster (top privet schools with 30+k a year).

I going to say that I should hope your pants went wherever you did

In university days, quite possibly not

Stupid autocorrect!

We were arguing about Ivy because Math started to debate going to university and social mobility and used it as an example.

I said that the Ivy league were overwhelmingly privileged and she said that many got aid. I've p[roved that the aid goes to those from privileged backgrounds rather than non.

Math also claimed non RG graduate earned significantly less so it was pointless going, that's not true either.

Lets face it her snobbery isn't based on the facts.

Lots of different points on the thread. I don;t have any kind of bee in my bonnet about satisfaction surveys. My main issue is that some teenagers put too much store by the wrong things that will matter to their careers. So what if you're not happy on your course because they make you work very hard and you have a lot of exams? Putting up with difficult things is a really useful life lesson. Or you might just be on a course with moaners who are spoilt.

Instead look at what career you want and work backwards.

Meteor's comments on loans : yes. It is the risk i take in funding mine without loans. I suppose at least I am giving the state a massive present so I should win some kind of Corbyn Socialist Prize for services to the state.

Some kids will be dissatisfied if the course isn't making them work very hard!

@xenia again, these aren't teenagers .They're adults of varying ages across the sector....the youngest will be 21.

You're more likely to get students complaining they weren't pushed enough or didn't have enough contact time. The survey covers the whole student experience....including teaching, assessments and support services.
Dismissing it as the ill-informed views of teenagers does it a huge disservice.

I would have been livid if I hadn't felt stretched by my course.

Dd may not be looking at stellar grades but even she wants to work hard and be proud of what she's done. I doubt all students just mark a uni up for the beer. Especially now they are paying for the privilege of going there.

I don't use SS as the be all and end all, but if that grade is particularly low we do take notice of what students are trying to tell us!!

Actually the evidence shows that current students of both school and uni age are taking things a lot more seriously than those who went through the system years ago.

Generation sensible is what they call them.

I certainly would not put the surveys at the top of why to choose a university. However anyone can use whatever criteria they want. Plenty of teenagers choose based on where their friends go or where their boyfriend is and all kinds of pretty dodgy reasons.

I never said they were the top reason to choose a university but they shouldn't be ignored.

As a former careers adviser and someone who worked in student recruitment for over a decade I'm well aware of how people choose a university. Yes, some people choose a university for not so sensible reasons but as PP's have already said students nowadays are particularly savvy and often make very informed choices.

As the data shows that the difference between non RG graduates and RG graduates is fairly low, I don't think it matters.

It also shows that all graduates on average earn higher than non.

Also, all graduates ( regardless of institution attended) are less likely to be unemployed. Any periods of unemployment are much shorter in duration than non-graduates.

Children have more information now because of the internet. They can find all sorts of articles, reviews and opinions from first hand.
Their options are more open than we had at their age