Thread 19 - Corona Cohort, Enrolling on Year 13, hopefully NOT unlucky for some

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Rather depressing article in The Times this morning about universities staying online so they can cash in on overseas students.

UK-based students suffer as universities focus on lucrative overseas fees

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/19cb6002-1317-11ec-a8a6-db0b408d06d6?shareToken=d84593ad10e07b5f49852ad62f887c0c

Zanda so sorry to read about Dd

I do always find The Times so depressing in its education reporting ....

DH insists on getting it for the sport!

Sorry to hear that @Zandathepanda. Sending love and get well wishes to your DD

@Zandathepanda - your poor DD. Thinking of you and her.

I have just looked at the guardian table. I’m sorry it is just silly. Who here believes that on any sensible measure Chichester is overall a better university than Kings College London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester to make but a few?
Do they not get results like that, and think “Hmm. Perhaps our methodology requires tweaking”?

@Zandathepanda

Sorry to hear that @Zandathepanda I've said before that ds3 was diagnosed with epilepsy age 3. Though he's grown out of it so far 🤞 I know how scary it is, it is always in the back of my mind especially as I was told it may return when he hits puberty (he's 12) I hope things settle 💐

So much love for zanda on this thread. I hope she is still reading.

The Guardian league table definitely has some bizarre quirks and is very odd at subject level sometimes. However, I do find the staff : student ratio stuff and the spend per student enlightening. As DS pointed out, the feedback scores are always low!

Looking at just comparing Birmingham and York for social policy yesterday it was actually inexplicable even just using their stats why York languished many places below Birmingham.

@Zandathepanda Sending you both all my love

@Zandathepanda How frightening for you all. Sending best wishes.

@Delphigirl

I have just looked at the guardian table. I’m sorry it is just silly. Who here believes that on any sensible measure Chichester is overall a better university than Kings College London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester to make but a few? Do they not get results like that, and think “Hmm. Perhaps our methodology requires tweaking”?

My favourite is University of Suffolk third best for history, ahead of Cambridge - I like to annoy my Cambridge history graduate nephew with that one It is bizarre and nowhere do you get an assessment of the teaching (apart from by students, useful though that is) or really any idea of which is most useful to have on your CV.

Lots of love to you and your DD, Zanda.
I hope you feel able to draw support from us when you need it. X

I don’t expect Cambridge is losing much sleep over that one.
We can raise an eyebrow and ignore it but actually these are some of the more accessible rankings from a quick google, and a clever but 1st gen A star kid without good school support who is trying to fill in their UCAS choices might be relieved to see that U Suffolk is ‘so good’ as it is small and local and not scary, when actually if they could see that it was in fact the 57th place they should choose, might well put down Cambridge or Durham or Sheffield instead.

@Zandathepanda that must have been very frightening. Pleased to hear you are home and thinking of you both.

I think the issue centres around the NSS, the questions it asks, the methodology and how much weighting this table give to the NSS scores.

The most useful thing to do with the tables can be to put them side by side : then you really do spot the decent unis on the slide , or ones that may be excellent but clearly aren't that good for a subject. Edinburgh is strikingly low for English on both tables for example : so that might mean a very bright student for whom Edinburgh has allure might look at a different but equally good uni which is by all accounts better for English. Hull is the other uni which, whilst not in Edinburgh league, was always popular. It has been interesting to note its slide down all league tables over the last 10 years. It does seem to be reviving a bit.

Soem subjects are so conflated as well. it is impossible to trust either league table for something like film or journalism or media since they bung them together in odd combinations!

Uni of Suffolk has done well for history for years on The Guardian league tables. It is an oddity. If choosing a lower tariff uni for history, I'd be targeting Winchester with its rich local history , and where Alwyn Turner lectures.

My local uni has managed a spectacular bottom place again...

Suffolk is also 8th for English!

The "value added" thing is weird because it compares degree results to entry qualifications to show how effectively people are taught, but aren't degree qualifications entirely in the gift of the universities? A university which admits people with CCC and hands out lots of firsts will presumably do better than Oxbridge by this measure, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality of teaching.

York gets routinely hammered on VA. It scores 1 for film and media! DS opined that The Guardian has it in for York! I mean, it's an entirely harmless institution!

I live in Suffolk and not even heard of Suffolk university. I shall google it. I'm assuming it's in Ipswich.

It's in that nice waterfront area. Mind, there is a bit in Gt Yarmouth.... I really can't think of too many places I'd less rather be a student...

To be fair to Suffolk, it has good staff for history and you do need BBC which isn't rock bottom. I think a student on that kind of level, who wanted a small , approachable department could do worse.

A lot of students I teach who suffer from anxiety choose big brash unis and drop out or obsess over Russell Group and get swallowed up. The ones who have selected Winchester, Chichester (never had Suffolk), Lincoln, Anglia Ruskin etc have been more successful. York is another place kids who want to manage anxiety levels head for and seem to prosper.

League tables are trying to constrain a multi dimensional set of data which is not always comparable and won't be relevant for everyone. I think student satisfaction is the most important, then employability. I would like to see contact hours, both large and small group, but nobody publishes that. We found DiscoverUni good as it helped DS see that Sports Science would not take him to an income level he would be happy with!

@Piggywaspushed I live in Suffolk on the border with Norfolk. I've never actually been into Ipswich town. Ds2 used to play football and we've visited football pitches around the edge of Ipswich. But I've never been into the town.

Ds1 is at UEA. That is way down that league table for biology. Number 48.