To feel nervous - does anyone know what the 13 Universities facing closure are?

[josben]

DS1 and DS2 are both planning to start Uni in September, and I have just read this article which is very unsettling - does anyone have any idea of what uni's in the below article will be facing closure ?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53280965

I bet it will be some of the shonky London ones- University of West London types.

I love how I have got where I have with a C and 2 Ds at A level

shortsaint a C and 2 Ds when you took you’re A levels is not the same as a C and 2 Ds in 2020.

The thing is though, in my experience A Levels aren’t actually that hard?

Maybe for you they weren’t Cheeseislife2020
DD took hers in 2018. They were all linear and taken at the end of two years. They were not easy.

It is fair to say that A levels taken in say 1980 were different toA levels taken in 2019!

A 'solid' result then was CCC which would get you into say Leeds to do Geography (that was the offer they made me!).

Now you'd be hard pressed to get near that without ABB.

Kids haven't become smarter!

There was no A* grade in the 1980s so what was BBC then would be ABB now. In 1989 A levels were 100% final exam. A year or two later a coursework element was added which would definitely have made them easier for the group of able students who would have found the pressure of 100% final exam too much. In the last few years A levels have returned to being mainly final exam but there are coursework elements in some subjects eg 20% of geography is NEA. I think the new GCSE and new A levels are closer to what we had in the 1980s than what came in between.

Oops I mean BBC would equate to AAB in my post above

if you could go to Uni of Liverpool or Liverpool Hope, you’d be mad to choose Hope

But doesn't it depend on the course you plan on doing? Both universities may have some courses which are the same type of thing, but for other subjects it's one or the other.

I don't get the RG obsession on mumsnet. Not all courses are best served by RG. And RG is a self made group. It didn't ever exist when many MNetters were at university.

Oh for goodness sake - we've no moved on from dragging down non RG to the old as levels were harder in my day' nonsense too. And it's not even results day which is when it normally comes in full force.

Having seen a very up to date a level syllabus and paper yes they are. They are different but still hard. In some subjects it can be argued they're more difficult now.

And the whole changing grade boundary thing has been in place for decades. So actually the percentage of each grade is still fairly similar as that's the way our British system works. So a grade A now still equates to a grade A back in the day.

Why do we constantly need to make ourselves feel better by trying to pull down the efforts and achievements of current students?!?!

Aw, someone being nice about my 80s grades!

I think they probably are as tough now, but yes, I missed out on my BBC to get in for English at a 'proper' (no such thing as RG in those days). I suppose it would be AAB now.

Still had a LOVELY time at my - OMG - College of Higher Education. Ended up with a 2-1 and did OK in my chosen profession.

Different times now.

(NB in my day and you wanted to get into a 'proper' University you just choose chose an easier entry course. I had friends who went to Warwick and Nottingham and so on with Cs and Ds. Zoology or Sociology anyone? 🤣)

Hey! Don't knock sociology.....it's not done me any harm!

I went to a highly ranked university and there are very severe concerns about its financial stability. This is what happens when you try to run a business, acting like a business, pretending to be charity and run by academics who don't understand business.

Firstly, universities have always been businesses. Secondly, what makes you think that they are "run" by academics? Does it not occur to you that many of the people "running" universities are not academics? Many would say that the problem is often that they are run by business people who don't understand academia rather than the other way around.

It isn't just MN that is snobbish about RG universities. Schools are, and many employers are.

IMO it really depends on the subject and the university, and also where the graduate wants to work. Not everyone wants to work in a big city firm. DD was considering diagnostic radiography before she settled on biomedical sciences. None of the best universities for radiography were RG universities. None of the IBMS accredited biomedical science degrees are at RG universities. Not all medicine degrees are at RG universities (and as they are conferred by the GMC I can't see that where where you went to university matters, with the exception of Oxbridge perhaps). I expect it would be the same for nursing. All the graduates would have had to attain the same standard no matter where they studied.

Maybe the difference shows more with subjects that are widely available, such as history, English literature etc. Can you honestly say that a graduate with a degree in history from a university with an average entry standard of 196 UCAS points is the same calibre as a graduate with a history degree from a university with an average entry standard of 90 UCAS points?

And in some jobs employers do look at A level grades as well.

I previously worked at Sunderland. It's probably on the list. During my 5 years lecturing there, they acquired a campus in London that was nearly forcibly closed due to non compliance with immigration, they've closed most if not all admissions to humanities subjects and I believe from former colleagues that the severance scheme is still in operation. I'm pleased I got out when I did.

The money that was wasted in that place was eye-watering. For every academic there was an army of administrators and extremely frustrating nonsensical levels of hierarchy and duplication.

Hasn't Sunderland just opened a medical school?

I have no choice but to get a history degree from a lower ranked uni due to being unable to locate. I'm really, really hoping that won't matter once I've gotten my PGCE.
I wish I could go back in time and stop myself from dropping out of a very highly ranked rg university but I was completely miserable .

@Ginfordinner yes, they've expanded their existing facilities. There has been an awful lot of investment and it looks great but It's a risky strategy for a place that relies so heavily on overseas students. There's also a saturation of medical teaching in the local area. I don't think it was a smart decision.

I apologise @Beebityboo if my post came across as patronising. In many jobs this won't matter, certainly where I work it wouldn't.

That's ok Gin I'm just feeling really stressed about September and whether I'm making the right choice or not. I have a disability too so my choices are further limited by that.

Meh - no doubt the uni I'm at is in the list of potential suspects (it's definitely in the MN firing line usually) - I'll sit it out, see what happens, assume it'll take a few years to dramatically sink so I'll hopefully get my course finished or something will be done to sort out the students.

On a list of things to be stressed about I'm not going to put it very high up.

People need to remember that not all students are 18 with the ability or desire to move away to attend a 'top' university.
University can be transformative. It can literally change your life. For some people that can be moving away at 18 and getting a first from an elite university. For others it's attending their local university as a mature student as a stepping stone into a career. The snobbishness and judgement is uncalled for ( and really insensitive).

I used to work in marketing at a post 92 institution. Some of our subjects asked for really high entry requirements because we're leaders in the field - I got the occasional eye roll and the 'do you know who you are?' comments but they were from people who fell short of our entry requirements and thought we'd be easy to get into.

Enjoying all the snobbery. "The courses were harder when I did mine" is a particular favourite.

There was no A grade in the 1980s so what was BBC then would be ABB now.*

That's not how it works, at least it wasn't when it was introduced. Although grade boundaries change all the time, the A grade was (initially) based on scoring above the top boundary consistently for every exam/piece of coursework, so if you dropped down to the next boundary on one you wouldn't get the A, even if your overall average would be above the A* boundary.

The reason you can't do radiography in a RG uni (I think maybe Cardiff do it? Are they RG?)- is because radiography was, like nursing and physio, studied at a School Of.....

It should then have maybe gone to a Poly, as they are a 'higher level' vocational, but like everything else they ended up at uni, but at post 92 ones.

It's not York.

I don't, but I wish that it was known. A friend was due to go to a university when aged 18, the course was cut (this was 1981), and the resulting academic and personal difficulties I think stemmed in large part from this. And being blunt, young people seem more sensitive nowadays to any setbacks.

Bumping again to see if anyone suspects UAL is at risk. I had a look at the report posted but it meant nothing to me without actual names. London is going to be such a stretch for us, I need it to work out!

Asking about particular universities won't help. It may only make things worse as it will create a sense of concern which may not be merited. Public confidence is important here. It's like the old school notion of there being a run on a bank when customers worry about its solvency which then worsens its position.
London has lots of universities which would, in a worst case scenario, make it easier to transfer to a different one.