To think that universities giving out unconditionals/nominal offers to everyone just devalues even going or having a degree

[Saygoodday]

DS is applying this year. He’s applied to and got offers from a mixture: 2 RG’s, 2 that require BBC and one post 1992 university that has given him an unconditional offer. Obviously not everyone can be ultra academic and there is a place for vocational qualifications and courses with lower entry requirements within the university system, this is not a case of snobbery or advocating that all universities should require four As. However, Lincoln this year has seemingly given out unconditional offers to literally anyone who has applied, I recently saw another university that would make offers for LLB (hons) Law for 64 UCAS points, etc. Lincoln in particular, it’s about an hour from me, has become a favourite for kids who’ve done no work for their a levels who know they will still get into uni. It’s not just Lincoln there are a big number who will take students basically with any results. To me it doesn’t feel at all fair that those who’ve done no work should get the same qualifications as someone who gets A’s. It feels like it just devalues the whole idea of going to university and getting a degree if you can just get one despite being on for terrible grades in your a-levels. Aibu?

@Jagoda That's the one :) I quite liked it the last time I went too (2019)

I’ve changed my name for this as totally outing.

I have skin in the game on two fronts here. Firstly I’m a lecturer at Lincoln, though on a course asking for BBB equivalent UCAS points and our course never makes unconditional offers unless they already have the grades. Secondly my daughter studies here and was made an unconditional offer.

People do love to sneer about Lincoln, really not sure why. A lot of its courses have a good reputation, good student satisfaction, there’s great student support and I see really good teaching. I have either attended or taught at 7 different universities inc RG and I genuinely see the emphasis on interactive teaching methods really highlighted here. The whole vision of “student as producer” really means something. Coming from a university where the teaching was far more didactic this has been refreshing.

Remember that universities are accountable for their degrees and are scrutinised. They can’t and don’t just hand out 1st and higher 2nd class degrees. My course had a genuine blip one year where grades shot up and we had to explain what on earth was going on. If that was a reoccurring theme it would be taken seriously and addressed, I have no doubt. The university are proactive and serious in maintaining standards.

So my daughter had to attend an interview for Lincoln and had to take her portfolio. Her predicted grades were BBB which mirrored the course requirements. She had to take a portfolio to her interview. So I guess the combination of good grade predictions and a decent portfolio meant she got an unconditional offer. Certainly not everyone on her course got an unconditional offer.

Lincoln was always going to be her first choice due to health problems and she actually spent quite a bit of Year 12/13 in hospital and had 60% attendance for her A levels. Think she got BCC in the end, so for her the unconditional offer was a life saver. Lincoln have been supportive with her ongoing health issues and it looks like she will come out with either a 1st or possibly a 2:1 (waiting on dissertation results).

She’s going to work next year in industry while applying for her Masters. Cambridge is top choice for her Masters and she feels she has a good chance of getting in. Bath is 2nd choice. She’s only leaving Lincoln as she does now feel she could manage moving away and wants that experience of something different. She has been applying for jobs (related to her degree) with companies for the next year and has had offers from a couple of good ones already and is following up another lead currently.

For her Lincoln has been excellent and certainly nothing to look down on or sneer about.

They do it because universities are now a big money making machine at undergraduate level and it is all about bums on seats as opposed to academic integrity and standards. They need to fill every space on every course to hit their financial targets.

I am an ex-academic at a RG university. This is one of the reason why I left academia as every year it became less and less about my research output and standard of teaching and more about making money for the uni at any cost.

I'd add to this excellent post about Lincoln, and other unis mentioned here, to point out that the endless resits point upthread is also incorrect. The policy of condoned fails is not one Lincoln has.

Some universities operate this on a case by case basis and this is not confined to those 'inferior' universities on this list.

I agree that Hull suffers from its location - many students wo are there love it. But of people to slag it off suggests they don't know it is a long established university. Philip Larkin was librarian there ad its politics courses are renowned in Westminster.

Hey ho. So much snobbery. Oxford Brookes is also post 1992 with some low entry offers. Funnily enough, it has one of the highest rate of private school undergrads and no one on here ever seems to tear it to shreds...

Three students I teach have unconditional offers this year - two for Lincoln. Two of the three had interviews. I also teach three students with conditional offers for the same two universities.

You say 'less and less about your research output and standard of teaching'. When I went to uni on the early 90s there was zero focus whatsoever on standard of teaching...

I studied at two different Unis. The first was a top 10 uni and the other was a lower ranked newer university. The academic standards were completely different. I had to work pretty hard to get 2.2s in my assignments at the top 10 uni. Whereas, at the lower ranked uni I was easily getting 1sts and 2.1s.

Lincoln certainly doesn’t allow endless resits. One resit per assignment and only two per academic year. So you can’t even fail every module in a year and expect a resit.

I got one from UCL back in the day. I suppose they must have wanted me on their course.

Wheras I failed two level 7 PG assessments at Lincoln. Thankfully passed the resits.

then did another level 7 course at an RG university with inferior teaching and got 85% easily. 🤷🏻‍♀️.

lincoln is the only university I’ve failed assignments at. It also wasn’t my first level 7 course so I can’t use that as an excuse

Do graduate jobs not still ask for a-level grades as well as a degree? I know mine did.

Mine didn't. Didn't even ask for GCSEs in Maths and English.

I had to do a Masters at another University Group to conceal my degree in Engineering from Plymouth.

It worked but if I knew that Uni of Plymouth would hold me back on my CV - I would have applied elsewhere for a degree

A friend of mine got offered 2 Es from Cambridge!

They decided she was awesome and wanted her.

She got four A grades (1990s so no A*) and graduated with a 1st.

I guess some kids are lazy at school but turn it round at uni, as you still have to work hard.

Sometimes a focus on ‘teaching quality’ generally measured as lots of activities and good student satisfaction scores can mask a problem with curriculum quality. Certainly, IME as a (former) academic, there was a big variation in the latter. And the university I worked at where people obsessed over ‘teaching quality’ had an enormous issue with the quality of the curriculum and some of their staff’s understanding of the subject matter.

That same university did - objectively - just have much lower standards than others I’d worked at. I had to learn that the mark I needed to give there to fit with what others were doing was ‘what I’d have given in other posts + 15’. And still I’d be looking at colleagues teaching the same students - who I knew didn’t understand basic concepts and couldn’t reference, even in third year - awarding firsts and 2:is across the board. It wasn’t the brilliant quality of their teaching (because i knew that these students came into my module the next semester and genuinely did not know the basic stuff they were supposed to have learned in those modules), but the staff involved most definitely insisted it was.

Interestingly, several students who graduated from that programme having been ‘high flyers’ had the experience of going on to MScs at the higher performing (and, yes, RG) universities in the region got a huge shock and realised that they had not been adequately equipped to meet the basic expectations of those courses. I know (because I’ve worked in comparable institutions) that the problem was that they were not performing as well
as the strong 1st year undergraduates at those universities, but needed to be performing at masters level. It’s not easy to do that when you simply have never learned the really foundational stuff.

This was a part of why I left academia.

This is a simplification. The drive to increase the number of degree holders (massification of the HE sector started in the 1980s and way before Blair - see the 1992 changes to the old polys) was because data showed the most economically successful countries were those with the most numbers of people who had been in higher education. It’s was to drive economic growth and not based on graduates getting better paid jobs.

That said I think the sector is going to face huge changes with the introduction of degree apprenticeships.

Well, quite.. This is the unspoken truth.

An average BCC student (or whatever) may study the same subject and get the same grade as your triple A(star) Oxford student but they are just not equivalent.

A lot of the discussion is anecdotal here. Of course you get kids who didn’t do well at A level through sickness/bereavement etc. and university unlocks their potential.

But anecdotes make poor statistics.

Haha those 'shit' degrees you talk about often have really excellent graduate outcomes because they lead directly to a job in a specific industry.

Not all young people are so binary that they are either very academic or practical. My DS had zero desire to do anything vocational or practical at 18 - and zero proficiency in any trade or practical type career path. MN never seems to realise these types of 18 year olds exist, and they do in abundance. Not one of the degree apprenticeship type pathways (good as they are) were suitable for him. They also aren't an easier option. They are highly competitive, many are harder to get on to , and offer grades are just as high.

What he liked, at the time, was politics and Spanish. He had as much right to HE as someone with A*s. Not sure what else MN wanted him to do. You definitely would not want him round yours attempting plumbing. He breaks things just glancing at them.

Where I am it’s the University of the West of Scotland. My niece studies nursing there.

Students get unlimited attempts at assignments if they apply for mitigating circumstances ie a “sick line” to say their performance was impaired by x, y, z etc only now they don’t need to get a doctor’s note at all (that was seen as unfair because some doctors were charging and others not) so they only need to self-declare it.

So a student can take say 5 attempts to get 40% in an assessment and still pass and get a nursing degree. So that student nurse can not know 60% of what was asked and still pass.

Additionally in the post covid era, there’s so many more essay type assessments and open-book exams, done at home and therefore easy for the student to get help.

My niece says there are students in her class who start the nursing course then start working as a health care support worker in the local hospital. They hardly ever turn up for the few face to face classes (most online now) as they are working. Also getting £10k bursary - so added to their wage, up to about £35k a year. They seem to do enough /get enough help to pass their modules (only 40% needed and of course multiple attempts) so it can take ages to get them off the course for “non-engagement” aka poor attendance as they know to do just enough to play the system.

The whole University system is now a bit of a shit show - a bit like everything else in the U.K. it feels!!

Some of the universities with low academic standards have high entry requirements.

The one I taught at was asking for the points equivalent of ABB as a minimum.

It’s really not easy for people externally to
judge the quality of a degree. Even other academics get taken in by the ‘oh, they’re so good at teaching’ rhetoric deployed by many mediocre institutions. But… in some cases, there is great teaching. And high standards. It genuinely is hard to know.

Conversely, I would generally suggest that applicants really think about the employment outcomes for a degree. Not just the percentage figures - the universities DO game this by offering unemployed graduates a free PGDip course etc, so they appear in the %employment or further study stats. Actually finding out what the destinations and graduate salaries were. The programme that I had the misfortune to teach on had awful outcomes.

The students were actually less employable afterwards than if they’d not bothered at all. The university was good at hiding that. But asking good questions at open days would have uncovered that a significant portion of graduates went into minimum wage jobs - and often had to get FE qualifications (level 3 at that) to even get those jobs. The ‘success stories’ were all students who had gone on to train as teachers or social workers. But that success was not attributable to their undergraduate degree.

@Piggywaspushed

Agree. I have a niece who is highly practical. Unfortunately she didn’t get many GCSEs although quite disadvantaged with dyslexia, dyscalculia which made her very disengaged by year 9. She’s 18 now and has successfully completed a work place construction apprenticeship but that still wouldn’t be suitable for my child who is definitely not practical like that or indeed highly academic.

In England.

Kids in Scotland sit the exams university entrance is based on in the year before they leave school - their penultimate year. Most of them, anyway. So when my DD applied through UCAS this winter she already had her Higher grades in the bag. So is sitting with unconditional offers because her offer is based on past performance not a future prediction.

Lots of Scottish kids apply to universities in England and will have similar unconditional offers. As will mature students who sat their A-levels years ago.

What makes you think they’ll do any work during their degree if they didn’t do any during their A Levels?

This.

I actually think everyone who wants to should be able to access degrees. Some kids don't do well at GCSEs and A levels for whatever reason and it's elitist that only AAA children can get a further education.

DH for example. Failed every single one of his GCSEs. He was rubbish at schools and exams. He went on to do some vocational work and college and then did an access to higher education course and got into uni (law, which he completed). At uni he was diagnosed with severe dyslexia and has the memory recall function of an 8 year old. Suddenly all the failed GCSEs make sense. It was missed because he was good at masking it and it wasn't presenting in the traditional "words move around the page" way. But by your view DH is the type of person who devalues degrees 🙄

People not doing any work during their A Levels isn't confined to those with lower offers and unconditionals, believe me...