Is the whole ‘russel group’ thing just snobbery?

[MrsPBlotto]

DD is 17 and has applied to university this summer. Granted her course is very vocational so perhaps this bias only applies for academic subjects. All but one of the universities she’s applied to are post 1992 and the one uni she has applied to that’s not one is not an RG. I’m not bothered in the slightest as for the field DD wants to go into a degree is a degree and I’m far more concerned that she’s happy at the university she goes to.

However, I’ve seen a lot of posts here and comments from other parents saying that an RG is the best of the best and almost implying russel groups are the only universities worth going to. I’m not sure this is actually true as I know a lot of people who’ve gone to ex poly unis and been far more successful in life than those who’s gone to RG’s (granted that’s anecdotal). And I really don’t understand where this bias comes from that somehow a self proclaimed group of 20 or so universities are somehow the best of the best and any others (especially if post 1992) are not worth the money. Is this just snobbery and people trying to set themselves apart or is there any truth to the idea russel groups are inherently better universities?

Do the recruiters look at potential employees Linkedin?

Increasingly, personal information such as name, DOB and sex is also removed from applications ahead of the sifting and selection process in an attempt to reduce bias on those grounds.

I’d imagine there probably will be high representation of particular subjects and RG universities on a Big Four graduate scheme, but it would be difficult to establish to what extent that’s because those universities produce the best candidates and to what extent the in built element of self selection: if you already know at 18 that you’d like to go into accountancy or finance services more broadly and your goal is to do so with via one of the Big Four then you’re probably more likely in the first place to have chosen to study e.g. economics, business, maths, PPE at one of the universities like LSE, Oxford or Warwick highly rated for those subjects, than you are to have chosen to study fine art at Falmouth, biosciences at Loughborough, or media studies at London Met, so the former will be “overrepresented” for want of a better word on a Big Four graduate scheme simply because the latter are relatively unlikely to apply as their aspirations are elsewhere.

Power I am from Necastle and my father and uncle studied medicine up there (although not at Sunderland). I am certainly not in an ivory tower of any kind.

Someone said I didn't approve of non RG universities. That is not so. RG did not exist when I went. It has never been a group on which I have views of that kind. I just think on an individual basis the better the university and school where a child can go the better for that child.

The blind recruitment is interesting and I have also never said I was against that. Given 3 of my children have had to train with me and a 4th graduate child drives a van for a living, may be they would have done much better in a world where an employer knew nothing about them until an interview day!

That makes sense @ComtesseDeSpair

I'm sorry, but I'm chuckling at Xenia's mentions of her van driving son as it reminds me so much of the Queen Mother saying that she felt she could look the East End in the face after Buckingham Palace was bombed.

No - our cv blind recruitment doesn’t use LinkedIn profiles - at graduate level it’s not very interesting as they haven’t any experience which is useful for an employer

Fir every 'blind' recruiter, there arecan awful lot who DO check out an applicant's SM!

This thread is very 'employment' centred.For me self employment has always been the goal and wild horses would not drag me to work for someone else.Building your own business you can earn good money and have good satisfaction in almost any field.

You do understand that some nonSTEM oxbridge courses are really not that hard to get into?

Lots of universities support students with this goal. Many have teams supporting student enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Some of the wealthiest people I know of in the city I live in run their own business and I don't think any of them went to university.

Many are in retail or restaurants or own a few hairdressing salons or pharmacies. It never seems that much on paper and it's made me think it's all in the tax avoidance opportunities (not tax evasion mind).

I cannot answer the Oxbridge question because I didn't try for Oxbridge and nor did my children. I doubt it is particularly easy to get in for any subject there.

My advice to my kchilren is pick work which is intellectually interesting, which is well paid and where you could set up on your own. Law has given me al that - work for myself etc. The being able ultimately to work for yourself is a key part of my advice (not that anyone necessarily listens to my advice!).

I mentioned my son is a van driver - that was not a Queen mother point as suggested. It was simply to show I have no skin in the game - my children can do what they like (he has a postman for 3 years before that). However you tend to have more life choices if you earn more.

@boys3 can I ask where your helpful graphs are from?

@Era created from some of the Sunday Times league table datasets.

No one has said RG is educational utopia. I tink the top 10 universities are better than those below them but nothing is every a utopia. Drop out rates is a good metric to consider when choosing too as well as whether this is one that will challenge me to get high A level grades to get into.

I'm pretty sure that if we did not have the two, elite, world class institutions then nobody would have seen the need to set up the Russell Group. It is all about getting in with the big guns and saying: "We are all equally good within this larger group". The problem is that it is graduates who have not studied at the two top institutions who are the most invested in promoting the group as a whole. Now why would that be? 🙁

With regard to top 10 universities it depends on the subject, as has already been pointed out many times.

Degrees accredited by professional bodies won't be any different in quality wherever you achieve it from.

It would appear that only a very few organisations really care where you went to university.

It’s obvious from this thread that people have different criteria as to what is classed as a Top 10. DD and DS had very different definitions. DS had a career plan and knew what it would take to achieve. DD just wanted three years of a good social life!

I don't think there is (nor ever was) a 'top ten'.
There is Oxford and Cambridge alone at the top.
Imperial, Durham, Edinburgh and (possibly) Bristol in the second tier.
All of the 'older' universities in the third tier.
All of the 'newer' ones below it.

May be
Oxbridge, Durham, LSE, Imperial, Edinburgh, Bristol, perhaps Exeter and Warwick and York? Would that 10 do?
Anyway people can use any metric they choose and decide accordingly.

Durham wouldn’t be in my top 10 - poor for pastural care

Given the RG are to quote them research intensive taking the European Research Council funding database which on open access goes back to 2007 UK universities do pretty well. Or rather did pretty well.

the RGs overall took the lions share - fitting the research intensive tag.

Within that group though:

Two universities got one-third of the RG funding total. They would be Sir Humprey’s favourites.

a further 6 took the next 40% UCL, Imperial, Edinburgh, Bristol, Manchester, Kings.

add in Exeter and 9 universities took 75% of the awarded research funding. O and C individually both received 5 times more than Exeter.

playing along with the top 10 game Warwick came in a fairly distant 10th, fractionally squeezing out Glasgow

Going back to just the top 9, the other 15 RGs, ie near 2/3 of the membership, squabbled over the scraps.

In many STEM subjects the top tier is COWI. The second tier is a subject of discussion. Edinburgh would be on everyone’s list. Few would include Durham, Exeter or York. Bristol would probably make the cut but Bath and Lancaster would arguably be viable and they are not RG. The contrast with@Xenia ’s list illustrates@RampantIvy ’s principle that subject matters

I don’t think Bristol is top tier any more. I would put Edinburgh, Durham and Imperial in there. I don’t think there is any real consensus.

What makes a university "top tier" though? What are the criteria?

According to the complete university guide (is this a reputable source?), the top 10 in the UK is as follows:

Oxford
Cambridge
LSE
St Andrews
Imperial
Durham
Loughborough
Bath
UCL
Warwick

This looks about right to me. They explain their methodology, and it seems more relevant to undergraduate concerns than the QS rankings which always seem more narrowly relevant to STEM post grads.

www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings