To be upset about ‘university blind’ recruitment

[Newname576]

DS has overcome so many challenges and has an unconditional offer from Cambridge after achieving 4 A star last year. He has worked so hard and we are so proud of him! But I was upset to learn that so many companies are recruiting “university blind”now - what the hell is the point of going to a top Uni if no one will know about it! My younger child says she will apply to Manchester Met and have a ball even though she too is predicted stellar grades as there is no point going to a top Uni

AIBU to be sad that companies are recruiting blind?

@FarmGirl78 oh come on here - have the good grace to admit you completely misread OP’s comment ‘Mumsnet honks’. You need to retract your slur btw rather than justify it but you don’t seem like the kind of person who will……

I didn't misread it. I read it exactly as its typed.

If the OP didn't mean it to be racist, then so be it, but I think she needs to be VERY careful in using language which has racist undertones and could be interpreted as racist. The old "but it wasn't meant in a racist way" unfortunately isn't sufficient these days in multicultural society, regardless of race.

I just looked it up. Are you American@FarmGirl78?

I don't think that this expression is known or used in the UK at all, so don't very much that OP had any idea she was using a phrase that could be construed as ambiguous.

Also, the racist slur against white people that you are referring to is not "honk" or "honks" though. It's a similar but different word.

@FarmGirl78 so we can’t use the word ‘honks’ at all now? We have to say ‘stinks’ instead? That is your argument? Seriously!

DH just come back from a run. He honks. Is that racist @FarmGirl78 ?

I think it's good.

I used to work in the Civil Service and pretty much everyone in my dept was Oxbridge (not me, though).

They were quite open about how they recruited their own. Blind recruitment would put a stop to this.

Don't worry they will get lots of other privileges in life

But all degrees aren’t equal @NeverDropYourMooncup - someone who gets a 1st from Cambridge has covered a lot more than the equivalent degree from uni of Hertfordshire!
How could you possibly know that ! Can you link to your source and course details

So while A level grades at 17 or 18 tell you a little about those DCs entering university, they tell you precious little about the student exiting university 3 or 4 years later.

Exactly.

God alive.

If the OP was Do all University courses demand the same rigour? Or Are some University courses harder than others?

We'd all know the answer.

But since it's about what happens after that university course.ie will graduates be most suitable for jobs because of where they went to Uni etc it's much more complex.

And it turns out some employers don't think the university is particularly relevant.

That's up to them surely?They know their criteria and stand or fall by it.

It's pointless to be upset by it. And missing the point of the education.

Except it isn't. Yes I learned about wave-particle duality and the photoelectric effect at A-Level, but I didn't learn about the time dependent Schroedinger equation, density functional theory or elements of quantum symmetry until I was an undergraduate and beyond.

The point is that one can study the same area at different depths and complexities at different stages of your education.

To be fair though, whether you study Shakespeare or quantum mechanic is irrelevant to the average graduate job. I do think the fact that oxbridge students have to argue their case in small tutorial groups is key. These students will probably do well at interview as this type of group dynamic won’t phase them. Whether that actually makes them better employees is debatable though. If they will regularly be in these situations yes, if they need to sit in a back office doing tax computations not so much.

Qualifications are used as a proxy for "Merit", in the early stages of a career, because it would be unfair to expect a 20 year old graduate to have gained much industry experience in many cases. Not all universities are equally rigorous. They have varying teaching/assessment methods and standards. My ex's Dad lectured at Roehampton. He was quite open about the standards there not being as high as Oxford (where he had studied).

You need to be VERY careful triggering a debate on racism without understanding what the word means. (And without understanding what the word you mislabelled racist means either).

What are you saying? I responded to a post on quantum mechanics with a post on quantum mechanics and then a poster decided this was comparable to reading Romeo and Juliet.

I didn't say it was comparable to studying Romeo and Juliet.

This was the post:

Lol, I did quantum mechanics in A level Physics and you think that is Uni level
I studied Romeo and Juliet at 14 and at undergraduate. 🤷‍♀️

I was challenging the (fairly silly) idea that studying a topic at a lower level automatically means that studying the topic at a higher level is the same, especially when it seems to be to dismiss someone else's study.

It could be quantum mechanics, or Romeo and Juliet or the works of Bach, or the anatomy of the heart for all I care.

Using the aww bless someone thinks their university topic is difficult but I studied it at A Level is a fairly flawed argument. Many topics in many disciplines can be studied in varying depths.

Bet this was the British Diplomatic Service.

I was stretched to the limit on my socialising and clubbing activities at Manchester Poly. I had a wild time.

l would have hated Oxford which l viewed as staid and boring.

l still managed to live a successful life.

Lmao in my head when I read this post I imagined honks to be farts. (Idk what honks meant before btw)

I find this whole conversation bizarre. I have always worked in technical industries. The top companies don't just recruit based on your alma mater. Some specialist companies only recruit from one optional course.

From my experience, blind recruitment seems to be favouring being egalitarian over being exception.

Modern racism is based entirely on the perception of the victim, not the intention of the perpetrator. If FarmGirl78 feels racially offended, she is the victim of racism.

E.g. the CPS definition of hate crime.
"Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person's ... race or perceived race"

https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/hate-crime#:~:text=%22Any%20criminal%20offence%20which%20is,orientation%20or%20transgender%20identity%20or

It's mad, but I don't make the rules.

I recruit graduates and blind recruit. It will actually do your son a favour in the long run, as some hiring managers may roll their eyes at Oxford and Cambridge graduates - especially if you are looking at the likes of Boris and Truss being educated there. They are not great examples of what these institutions have produced.

When looking for a graduate, I want to see that they have some life skills, so a part time job, volunteering etc. I also want to see that they have completed a year in industry or a summer placement and can talk about the benefits of this. 3 years at ANY Uni without any of this won’t get past the first sift for a shortlist at my organisation.

Sure @TreadLight - but ‘honks’ is not a racist word. @FarmGirl78 is at fault here for misunderstanding what OP said. OP said nothing wrong - unless u are saying no one can use the word anymore which would be a shame as I use it regularly (my son’s feet honk a lot!)

How the U.K. criminal justice system frames any offence is quite distinct from discussion of the issue itself. - Racism is a global phenomenon it’s not defined by the CPS.

@Mirabai , that great philosophical question put so eloquently by Humpty Dumpty:

"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean. Neither more or less." Alice responded to Humpty Dumpty, "The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things?" Humpty Dumpty retorted: "The question is, which is to be master? That's all."

Standards do vary. Once I was helping a transfer from Oxford get settled in to our Y2. Her tutor had sent me copies of her Y1 exams, for context.

Even though we are in the tier just below COWI, I am sadly confident that the majority of our Y2 and Y3 students would have failed the Oxford Y1 exams. (Because of course organisation, our students do not get all the material until the first term of Y2.). Same material, different level of sophistication.

Similarly our exams are more difficult than those we assess externally for other universities. Yet our students do well with blind admissions, because training shows. That is the point.

I beg to differ. Plenty of universities have placement years. And there's a big emphasis on work experience (internships etc) in top universities.
A CV with none of that would fail our first sift. Oxford or Oxford Brookes.

And for those whose CV looks good but only manage to give me 'group work'/'personal life' examples in the final round of competency interviews... instant fail. I've had better discussions with our school leaver recruits than some graduates and usually these are from top unis. I've rarely had similar failures from 'lower ranking' unis. But that's because they know they have to work extra hard anyway, so don't coast off reputation.

'Most' jobs don't require academic rigour. Which is obvious when you look at the top performers 10-20 years down the line. Especially as large companies have standardised assessments, anybody who passes is deemed capable on the 'technical' side. It's the other skills - resilience, communication, willingness to learn etc that are more important.