To think university snobbery must stop

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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.

@JillCrewesmum - I would actually disagree that if you just want to learn and create it probably doesn’t matter. I said at the start that I don’t think its about RG/non-RG but I think some unis foster that learning and creativity so much more than others. Doing a course at a uni that has close ties with the industry and has real hands-on approach is obviously going to be vastly different to doing the exact same course content at a largely indifferent department elsewhere and that is not student-dependent. I’m not sure that saying that there is variation in quality of teaching is controversial at all.

‘You talk about these universities as though they are expensive private schools teaching soft skills. They don't teach anything other than academic work.’

I disagree. The methods of teaching the academic work will vary and that will in turn affect skill development. Small tutorials at Oxbridge for example get you used to defending and debating a point of view. If you are required to present every week, you’re going to get better at doing it. The number of essays etc required varies across course and institution and higher volume of work seems to set students up better for juggling priorities later on. There are differences in how much students are pushed and the expectations of their work. There are different ways of prioritising exams v essays in marking schemes which again will make a difference to time management and planning .

Aside from the academics, the strong encouragement to get a society officer position etc at some universities does build soft skills. The careers advice varies as do the sessions sponsored by employers on soft skills.

I do think people are way too snobby and to be honest people just need to mind their own business BUT it did annoy me that I got a 2.2 in English and linguistics from a top 10 uni last year but can't get on to any grad schemes when my friend got a 2.1 in sociology from the 5th worst uni in the country and got on to a decent grad scheme, the second one she applied for. Bit unfair seeing as she got CEE at A-Level and straight C's in her GCSEs. Though I do wish her well in life and she seems happy so that's good. I'm just slightly bitter about it.

I mentored a student who was determined to go into a particular career, with only one real employer in the country. She was being pushed by uninitiated school teachers, and the uni itself, towards a course of the same name, at a low ranking ex-poly, yet when I spoke to contacts very much in the know, and researched properly, we discovered that they refuse to recruit from that course, and only take people with mainstream science degrees (and preferably higher profile unis). That poor student, who had enough barriers to overcome, was about to get into major debt for an entirely useless degree.

Similar issues in my own former field with accredited courses leading to the professional accreditation needed for a job in the field, but people who went to non-accredited universities had to then do a ton of post-grad experience before they could even apply for the professional roles requiring the accreditation.

I am late 40s as Is my DH. He went to heriott watt with a third and works in a top 5 of the world's companies as head of dept. I went to a red brick and am a regional director for a Fortune 500 company. Our degrees meant v little, in fact his third was a hindrance, but our flexibility and luck got us much further than anything else. We have eclipsed anything our families have done, including a gaggle of mine who went to Cambridge. An important success marker, that is rarely discussed on here, is those who are prepared to travel post qual.

@Moreisnnogedag did you mean me?

I have to say for me when I was at university I saw the university as a resource not a place to be spoon fed. I had access to all the academic journals the library was subscribed to and almost any book via the interlibrary loan system (which I used). I had my courses to use as excuses (and did) to contact academics at any institution in the world and get involved in small ways in projects that I was interested in. I could participate in conferences on the back of being a student and had access to all sorts of things I still miss now. Nothing needed to be fostered because I was choosing off my own back to learn things that interested me (often wildly unrelated to the modules on offer or even my subject, there’s a reason I switched subjects 3 times lol). So I think you’re wrong. University gives you access to massive resources for learning and it will do regardless of the teaching or what the environment fosters - if learning is why you are there (and plenty of people are just there for 3 years of drinking and a hope of a slightly better job).

Are poorly performing universities dishing out more firsts, then?

I remember the drive when ex-polys suddenly promoted masses of lecturers to professor level to increase their academic appeal.

Maybe this is part of the same strategy.

Are poorly performing universities dishing out more firsts, then?
Not sure but I've seen people with firsts from one provider who know less about the subject than my GCSE class.

I do Die and I’m sorry I do disagree. Exceptional people will (almost) always do well but I don’t think we should use that as our yardstick. For me, it leads us down the path of holding up individuals and saying “Well, if they could do it, you should have been able to as well”, ignoring the very real barriers that are there for them.

Take the example given above by Pollaidh - that was a driven student who was being misdirected, and potentially could have been really set back.

There are groups of students who face enough difficulties without being let down by their universities and being told that they are the ones with the problem. In actual fact I think spoon feeding is the biggest disservice unis do to students when in fact they should be shoving them in to the library and told to find out, research and come back with ideas and further plans.

Well I appreciate the implication of that statement that you think my activities were exceptional, but I ceirtainly didn’t do well (in fact my anxiety based procrastination led me to doing incredibly badly because I did my dissertation in 2 days after not sleeping for 2 weeks). But as badly as I did, both in terms of credentials and career (only job I had after uni I quit to become a housewife when they refused to put me on PAYE) I can absolutely say I learned things and got the chance to develop ideas and work on projects and yes even create products.

And the case of someone wanting to get into an industry so narrow there is only one employer being fooled by an institution that employer rejects is hardly standard. 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. Seems far more an issue with the careers advice they have access to (which is regrettably atrocious in much of the state education system) and not with ex-polys in general.

RedPanda highlighting the entitlement that you lot help perpetuate.

Maybe she's actually just a better candidate than you

And whilst I can appreciate the value that your uni education gave you, it is just so expensive nowadays. I was fortunate to be able to swan off in the middle of my main degree to do another unrelated one because I got itchy feet and all I cost me was a grand extra. I loved going to that second uni because they were so encouraging and really broadened my mind (wow that sounds twee) in a way that my first uni just didn’t encourage.

I don’t think ex-polys are bad at all, there are a large number of degrees that are much better there than the by-rote RG unis. I just think that where you study is important, whatever the background of the uni, and that some deliver higher quality content and ethos than others. I would want my DSs to go whichever uni delivered what they wanted and needed from it, and if they couldn’t go to one that did that, to not go to uni at all and look at other options. I don’t think there is much value of saying that you have X degree if everyone (including yourself) thinks its a bit shit.

Doesn't it rest in outcomes - where the course leads and where you are aiming for? It is an end in itself in that the uni experience I want my dd to have rather than going straight into an apprenticeship but only if the financial and time outlay is worth it. Me and my siblings were first in our family to go to uni (we are between now 30 and 40). My brother went to Huddersfield - then a poly but with a year out in industry - he still works 20+ years later for that company at a higher salary than mine - he graduated with a 2:1. I went to oxford - graduated with a joint first - 20 years later that still has a value within my chosen field which is law (not the subject I studied). My younger brother went to Warwick and again has a job on the same level as ours but like my brother not in a traditional discipline - he is procurement and mainly through their contacts in placing in a global company he has worked in since graduation. Advising my dd - I would ask where she wants to be and work backwards from there. Snobbery I'm not convinced by - the demands of my degree where considerably more than my brothers and if academia was my aim - their choices would have been wrong. Equally if my aim had been where they are a theology and philosophy degree at oxford would not have got them to where they are nearly as quickly. I now do a lot of graduate recruitment and I am picky about where people studied to a certain extent - law is offered across the board but the candidate quality depending on university is quite different.

I was never taught by a PhD student - more terrifying professors with years of research and publication...

But universities aren’t equal and they never have been. A degree from Oxbridge won’t be viewed the same by other people-particularly employers, as a degree from an ex-poly

^I agree with this.

I think it's fair to say all universities are not equal. However, some ex polys are far better at practical, highly vocational courses than RG unis. I dislike the snobbery around it though. If you wanted to work in computer gaming for instance, you wouldn't chose Oxbridge as they don't offer gaming courses. My DS and I have been researching it and one of the leading unis in that particular field is actually Staffordshire Uni. (It probably wouldn't be my top pick to study Law or Classics there though!) The quality of the degree depends on the course, not the establishment. That's why it's so important to visit open days and get a feel for each place before choosing. It's a shame some people just go on name alone as an indicator of quality.

Tbf if you want to work in computer gaming you’d be better off doing generic computer science, specialising in graphics maybe. Or just do straight maths. Can’t go wrong with a maths degree. I’m not sure how well received special computer gaming degrees are and the field is very competitive because every nerd and their dog thinks they want to work on computer games (for the same reason the salaries are way lower than you’d get with the same skills in basically any other part of the computing industry).

Sorry DieAntword but a degree in maths would not get you into a computer gaming job alone. Yes, you need to be good at maths to program well, but you need to be able to program in Unity and Unreal in the gaming world. A maths degree won't teach you that. The gaming industry body TIGA recognises a number of computer gaming degrees, most at ex Polys - none in maths.

It's not necessarily snobby. All universities are not the same. Some ex polys can be good for some courses (and some RG uni's can be bad from some things too). It's different to a levels - an A from any school is the same. Degrees are not like that. Especially for non vocational courses such as English, where a degree from a less good university may turn out not to be worth bothering with. A good way to tell is look at the entrance requirements. If they are letting poor quality students onto the course it will not be as good. If a student can't meet the demands of a good university they probably shouldn't study the subject. Sadly some capable students from non university backgrounds can feel they should go to the ex poly or their local uni, and no one advises them any different.

I went to stay with a school friend at a former poly during my honours year (I went to a long established RG institution).

Her flat mate was doing the same degree as me and was in the same year.

I was slightly perturbed to discover how different our work was - she was reading textbooks whereas for that final year most of my information came from journal articles - I used to spend a fortune on photocopying. Now I'd just download loads of PDFs! She had never even heard of Nature! Which when you are doing physiology is a pretty important journal.

It was a real shock to me!

@DarklyDreamingDexter you don’t need any degree to learn how to program or use specific game engines. Look at the technical jobs advertised on that TIGA site. Not one requires a specific gaming degree. Many don’t even ask for any degree (just years of programming experience) and even for senior roles familiarity with unity or unreal is in the nice to have not the essential to have section of the candidate requirements because if you have aptitude and real world development experience you can hit the ground running with new programming languages and engines.

A cursory look around at jobs sites will show some will request computer science or computer engineering “or equivalent professional experience” - if you have a maths degree and one programming or development job (done say on your sandwich year) you have that covered. In fact if you have maths and a long standing hobby of computer programming you can probably talk your way into a claim of equivalence despite the lack of “professional” in your experience. Computer science is not of course all programming, but a lot of what else it is can easily be covered in maths: Combinatorics, category theory, topography, algorithms, linear algebra etc.

I mean the way your talking you think a maths graduate would find it hard to get into the industry, honestly having a computer science degree myself and knowing lots of people in the industry that’s laughable. There may be some jobs you can’t get right away but once you have one year development experience you will be a more sought after candidate than someone fresh out of a computer science degree. And that first job will not be hard to find with a maths degree.

I agree with your friend to a certain extent but I would never be as rude as to say so.

In this day of high debt I wouldn't really want my dc to do English at a low ranking university either

Well I'm pretty sure this particular brand of snobbery has been going on since the 1300s (or whenever the first universities were founded) so you're probably on a hiding to nothing OP.

It's no kindness to pretend that a degree from a poly is as likely to land you a job in your chosen profession as the same degree from a Russell Group university if that's not true, and it's often not true. We got that soft pedalled bullshit at school (90s, failing school in a rough part of Glasgow) and it was only luck that I met someone who had experience of the whole system but was also honest enough to tell me that if I could get into a red brick or a Russell Group university then I should. I worked in the pharma industry as a development chemist and in 15 years and 4 companies I never met a single person working in a scientific role who had gone to an ex poly. I'm not saying they wouldn't have been absolutely capable to do the job but they just didn't get recruited.

I think that goes even more so for a degree like English. I mean maybe the boy knows what he's doing but if I was his auntie I'd be saying to him, you find out what the graduates of this course are doing 5 years after it finished, and see if that's what you fancy doing for your life.