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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think concealing institutions would promote equality

61 replies

ChilledBee · 28/09/2019 11:45

Imagine if when you applied for a school, university or job, you could only put your expected/achieved grades but not where you got it from, do you think it would improve equality?

If you/your child went to/attends a "top" institution, would you care if you/they couldn't state that on their applications?

OP posts:
Endofthedays · 29/09/2019 20:50

Another element is that many people can only go to their local university , regardless of its ranking.

Teachermaths · 29/09/2019 20:53

Top ranking prestigious universities accept students from a low socio economic group with lower grades than their normal offers. This is to counteract the effects of being from a poorer background and access to schools, private tuition etc.

Leaving institutions off your application in these cases would not help students from poorer backgrounds.

ThinkAboutItTomorrow · 29/09/2019 21:00

We already do this for our grad scheme. It's totally blind of all but the results.

We also don't do a standard interview that would be easy for people who've been interview trained or just the sort of background that gives natural confidence and interview skill.

We do an aptitude test in a game form and a team exercise to see personal style and teamwork.

So far it's got us an amazingly diverse group. Such an improvement over the standard mini me's we used to recruit.
The only downside is by not interviewing we aren't able to get a sense for their interest in working in our industry. So we've had a few good people drop off the grad scheme to do something totally different because they just wanted 'any job' and it turned out ours wasn't for them. Which is frustrating.

ChilledBee · 30/09/2019 08:01

@Benes

Because they think top universities aren't a realistic choice. They assume they won't get in and hey, they aren't exactly lying to themselves.

OP posts:
woodchuck99 · 30/09/2019 08:57

I think that whatever system employers use, it won't be fair to someone. It is true that degrees will be harder at the "better" universities but at the same time, whether or not you get the A levels to get in is dependent on your school and teachers. You can't really even things out as there are good teachers in socioeconomically deprived areas and visa versa. I went to a comprehensive in a deprived area but it had good teachers and looking back I think I was at an advantage because A level classes were much smaller than in the grammar schools were I now live.

I think that some larger companies do now conceal institutions though and use their own tests to decide who to employ. This is perhaps the fairest system.

Teddybear45 · 30/09/2019 09:16

Many institutions already anonymise CV’s from some applicants, removing dates / institutions. That’s why they have the ‘were you on benefits’ ‘did you go to private school?’ type of questions at the beginning of the application process

woodchuck99 · 30/09/2019 09:43

Many institutions already anonymise CV’s from some applicants, removing dates / institutions. That’s why they have the ‘were you on benefits’ ‘did you go to private school?’ type of questions at the beginning of the application process

Why would they only anonymise for some students?

M3lon · 30/09/2019 09:48

chilled in terms of Uni applications, we use the information about background and schools in order to identify people who have great potential to achieve but do not have A-level grades that indicate it.

If you anonymised that information, we wouldn't be able to take into account background when making offers and the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds attending top Unis would plummet.

Walkingdeadfangirl · 30/09/2019 09:48

FFS is this another proposal from Corbyn to make everyone 'equal' at the bottom?

What a stupid idea.

YobaOljazUwaque · 30/09/2019 09:52

Standardisation is possible for GCSEs and A-Levels because there are higher academic authorities than schools who are able to oversee and moderate the examinations. These are the Exam Boards - many of which have their origins with Universities (e.g. OCR) to whom all schools must defer.

Universities do consult one another about standards by using an external examiner from another university as described above, but this is by agreement between equals not by one having authority over the other.

To make an analogy - if we didn't have the weights and measures act and each pub in the country could decide for themselves what a pint is, with no universal standard, you would find that neighbouring pubs within walking distance of each other would tend to use a roughly equal measure for what would be considered a pint because if there were dramatic differences the locals would drink elsewhere, but you can be 100% certain that as you got into the centres of the more expensive cities, the measure being used for a pint would be very different from what it might be in a rural market town, and probably the isolated pub in the middle of nowhere with no nearby competition would also be able to be different. It is only by placing a single higher authority over all such businesses that the law is able to impose that a pint means a pint and that is 568ml.

It is possible to have a standard for a Maths GCSE because although there is more than one exam board awarding the qualification, there are few enough that they can work together to ensure that the standard is the same across all six.

There are 130 universities in the country and they are all independent, authorised to make their own decisions about what standard to expect of a student to be given a degree. There used to be a category for tertiary education providers who didn't have this level of trust and independence and which had to defer to a more senior academic body to confirm the standard status of their degrees - these were the "polytechnics" and this concept was abolished in 1992, with all the former polytechnics being uplifted to independent university status. When they were polytechnics, each one used to have a "proper" university overseeing their standards and telling them if they were getting it right.

You simply cannot get the representatives even for one single academic subject across 130 institutions to all agree on a single standard without placing some in authority over others.

Placing some in authority over others would destroy the very fabric of the meaning of being a university.

So, it can't be done without destroying the meaning of University education.

You certainly could, if you so chose, create a new kind of qualification, to be taken 3 years after A Levels, which was a standardised national examination overseen by a central exam board. It would not be a Degree though.

Benes · 30/09/2019 10:03

It's partly that chilled but it's not just that they think they won't get in , it's that they think they won't fit in....so they apply somewhere they think there will be 'people like them'

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