I agree with GasPanic.
And we are talking academically for people going to do undergraduate degrees. No-one is saying that people who go to other universities can’t or won’t be as successful (whatever that means) in later life.
We all know that people with the highest grades at school and who have the best degrees from the most prestigious universities don’t always go onto have high flying careers. We also know that people from lots of different educational backgrounds can and do have very successful careers and things other than academic achievement are really important in that. However, we also know that in lots of very competitive fields, there are lots of Oxbridge graduates and people who’ve attended certain types of school. That’s why these issues keep coming up in the press all the time and broadening access is (rightly) a key focus.
There are countless different degrees and lots of different employers. In many jobs, people enter with a wide range of degrees. Most employers will not be experts in exactly which universities are top or in the higher rankings for each subject. So rightly or wrongly, RG is quite simply a known. Employers expect (rightly or wrongly) that graduates starting out with a degree from a RG university has a strong academic record. It’s as basic as that. And when sifting in the initial stages, lots of big employers might use that info, as well as some other basic metrics to reduce the pool of candidates.
And yes, that impact doesn’t last for very long, because quickly those graduates have experience in the workplace and when they apply for their next job, that experience will count for more. In some jobs, having trained at a particular prestigious firm, or having been to a prestigious university will still carry some weight, even if it’s not the most important thing.
In the end, people want to distinguish themselves from others. They want to gain an advantage and mark themselves out as different. And universities need to distinguish between candidates and employers need to distinguish too. Often, very blunt measures are used and no doubt, because if this, good candidates get missed. But if hundreds apply, it’s not going to be possible to interview all of them to find out all of their nuances.
If university attended doesn’t make any difference, why is it that selective schools work so hard and parents and kids are so keen for their kids to attend certain universities? If it doesn’t make any difference, why is broadening access so important, especially to those more difficult to get into universities? People know that some universities are a better or more likely gateway to further opportunities and want to have those opportunities for themselves, or their kids, or for groups that haven’t previously had them. And that’s not to say that there aren’t other really good universities that are equal or sometimes better. But knowing all the details is beyond most people, and they’d like to think themselves or their kid or the group they are trying to broaden access for, will have been somewhere that is recognised, which is why having a particular ‘tier’ is considered useful, even if it’s not always reflective of the best in all subjects. As GasPanic said, it’s an average. Averages don’t reflect all nuances.
I fully understand why people get annoyed about the RG label. Often it’s people who went to other really good and equal universities, who feel the lack of RG label is unfair, wrong and disadvantages them or suggests their degree is lesser. And often as we get older and experience counts for more and more, it feels daft and irrelevant as university becomes further behind us. All rankings and putting into league tables are debatable and change over time, but I suppose that people like simple groupings that help them benchmark and measure, even if it’s not always accurate or up to date.