Differences in degree outcomes

[senua]

Recently released research from the HEFCE backs up what those-in-the-know have tended to say on MN.

"State school students tend to do better in their degree studies than students from independent schools with the same prior educational attainment."

[JaneinReading]

I was content with the old system - bit of discretion to entrance tutors which operated for decades. The current attempt at more social engineering goes too far and can be just as unfair as what it is seeking to over turn.

I am in favour of the research - it has apparently found if you are not white or if you are male or if you go to a private school then you don't do as well in your degree. So what is the solution? More support for private school pupils at university or for men or for people from the bad post codes or for non whites?

In a sense the headline of the thread it totally wrong. The research says pupils from bad post codes do badly at university. It does not say all state school pupils do.

Not sure if it is in this report but one plan is that if one of your parents went to university that is a demerit point even if they got there through the OU or from the worst school in the land because they really worked hard. It all seems a bit unfair. But yes let us carry on with this kind of research. I'm not against it. They should try to plot careers and earnings. They should look at how many of the women who are doing so well give everything up and end up on minimum wage jobs for life or no career - what % are they 10 and 20 y ears down the line compared with their worse performing male university cohort?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Mmm. I think there was always social engineering, really. I've heard some truly hair-raising things from retired academics - I can think of two off the top of my head who sincerely believed women were thicker than men, and so they did discriminate. That's the sort of social engineering we can do without! But given we all have biases we're not conscious of, it's important to think about it, and I think that's what the study is doing.

I think it's too simplistic to assume everyone can assess without bias, and that any investigation of bias (whether in the admissions system or in education prior to that) is 'social engineering'. But maybe I'm misunderstand what you meant with that term.

I do think that's an important point about parents and university. And about women ending up with no career.

I also wondered about students who don't quite fit into the 'mature student' category but who had some time out (I know someone who's just started her degree aged 20). Because that is presumably an in-between group they can't easily generalize about. She seems so much more motivated and mature to me than the others ... but perhaps that's just individual.

[phonebox]

"The second difficulty is that it cannot be assumed that our measure of
higher education (HE) achievement (in most cases, proportion achieving a first or upper second) is standardised across higher education institutions (HEIs), and students from independent schools tend to beover-
represented in certain HEIs."

That admission from HEFCE is interesting.

I've thought for a long time that degree classification awards between HEIs should be standardised, just as A level/GCSE etc. grades are. You cannot, for example, reliably compare a state school pupil who gains a 2:1 from East London University to a private school pupil who gains a 2:2 from Cambridge. There are too many confounding variables.

They should have kept the study simpler, and compared state vs. private pupil results within individual degree subjects within individual HEIs.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Might that have made people reluctant to participate? It seems such a sensible thing to do, I'm wondering why they didn't.

[phonebox]

It certainly would raise some uncomfortable issues.

Standardisation of degree classification awards would be difficult to implement as well. Everyone knows that some degrees from some universities are less respected than others. And what proportion of state school pupils go on to do the more "devalued" degrees compared to private school pupils would be an interesting study to do.

This is going off on a bit of a tangent, but I'm sure that the elite Universities would be keen to hold on to the prestigious nature of their degrees and not have their students marked on the same level playing field as those universities at the bottom of the league table (if we exclude research prestige from the equation).

[UptheChimney]

I was content with the old system - bit of discretion to entrance tutors which operated for decades. The current attempt at more social engineering goes too far and can be just as unfair as what it is seeking to over turn

Discretion really isn't good enough now. Decades of research shows that A grades (and educational attainment generally) maps onto socio-economic advantage in a frankly disgraceful way. Individual tutors cannot be responsible for adjusting that (we have around 500 applications each year for example & a lot of larger departments have many more).

And long-term research in all sorts of areas also shows that, even with the best will in the world, individuals will tend to appoint/recruit those who look like them (read "look" as a broad metaphoric term). So privilege replicates itself.

I think it's only right to require that those who have bought privilege have to answer to higher standards.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Yes. What you said!

[phonebox]

I broadly agree UptheChimney, but positive discrimination in its current form unfairly discriminates against poor pupils from independent/grammar school pupils (I was one on a scholarship, for example).

There are those who argue "oh well there aren't many poor pupils who have access to such privilege" but that view just highlights generalisations and unfair discriminations.

Access to HE should be given on an individual basis...the only way round that is individual interviews/unbiased and objective references I guess, but who has time for that?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I don't believe that would work. I mean, Oxbridge has had interviews for donkey's years(and I don't mean any criticism of admissions tutors, I just think it is impossible to correct all previous disadvantage in one interview). It hasn't resulted in perfect equality.

What is positive discrimination in its current form? Excuse the ignorant question.

[phonebox]

AFAIK the main tenet of positive discrimination (please correct me someone if I am wrong), is giving pupils from state schools lower grade offers to balance out the fact they are less likely to have had as much tutoring/cultural experiences/small class sizes/a supportive home life etc.

That's a broad generalisation, but if I think that from my quick scans of the media articles then I'm sure a lot of others would hold that view too. If the system is much more intricate and effective than this, then HEFCE/The Sutton Trust need to publicise it more - as currently positive discrimination seems to have gaping holes.

[JaneinReading]

It's not fair just to talk about those who buy privilege though. There are state school parents who read to their children (most I hope) and talk to them and help them. That is conferring privilege. Should that be discriminated against too?

My children's school has a lot of very very hard working not very well off parents amongst the parent body - you might get 5 adults in a local Asian family putting every last penny into the education of one child. It's a bit unfair to allow those children to be discriminated against in favour of some rich posh other family where one parent doesn't work and uses spare money to spend on her new car every year even though she could be paying school fees.

So we need quite a complex test to be fair - the child has to come from a poor post code area plus neither parent been to university plus his or her A levels are much better than is usual for the school they are at and then a bit of bias is fair enough. It's always been hard. In the days of the 11+ where girls always did a lot better than boys they simply did a 50/50 split of boys and girls, utterly unfair on the girls who were doing better in the exams than the boys. Now that girls exceed boys in A levels (and degrees) too we don't make allowances for boys at 18 so 60% of graduates are female. mind you only 20% of the get positions of power so girls are not exactly doing at all well.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Who is talking only about those who 'buy privilege'?