Russell Group versus highest ranked by subject and employability.

[Hassled]

Taking out of the equation variables like course content, desirability of location and so on, and looking at it purely in terms of future employability, is it better to have say a 2:1 in a Humanities subject from a Russell Group university, or from a university that is higher ranked in league tables for that subject?
As an example, Sussex (non RG) is higher ranked (in the Guardian league tables) than Birmingham (RG) for English Lit. Does that RG thing matter? Thanks.

The other thing league tables include are comparing apples and pears. If someone goes to University to read for a degree in the traditional sense then employment - while it matters in terms of survival afterwards - might not be the sole point to that student. Their course is being compared with vocational courses which, in many cases, have grown to fill the lack of apprenticeships available in the market and to gain employment is almost the sole reason for attendance.

As others have said the RG group has become a marketing smokescreen and started as a lobbying group. It became a lazy shorthand for quality amongst schools in particular to use in their marketing and that percolated to employers. The RG then cashed in, though only relatively recently have they exploited it as a marketing tool.

It is part of the perceptions employers build up and you may encounter an employer who favours RG but then you could encounter all manner of unlikely prejudice and perceptions. Who knows they may be a graduate of London met? I know one Oxbridge /Harvard hedge fund master of the universe who only recruits Physics graduates from Imperial. That is less likely to happen if a student is applying for an established and well run graduate recruitment process. In that case they will have developed more sophisticated methods of identifying the candidates with the qualities they need and the institution they attended will have a lot less influence. RG does include some good universities but even those will have some less good courses, and some non RG unis have some very strong courses so it is quite clear that any employer going on RG status alone would be being stupid missing out on some very good candidates.

The Open Days will tell you a lot. In particular matching up the course ethos and a student's interests is important. It is pretty much vital you get a 2.1 to have a good chance in the employment market and you are more likely to do that on a course you like. We were impressed by Birmingham, both the campus, facilities and what appears, since my DD is doing a Humanities joint honours, to be a strategy to be very supportive to students in facilitating them to develop the skills they need in the subject. My daughter decided that it was too much spoon feeding and that somewhere better ranked for research had an ethos she preferred. We actually went to Birmingham because of an unconditional offer but in the end Sussex came up with one too but neither the course, I seem to remember the English was very focused on modern literature and the counting full stops school of literary criticism, but may be wrong, or the somewhat desperate tone of the re offer letter was enough to tempt her there.

Of course now her departments though top ranked for research and full of students who were either Oxbridge candidates or missed their Oxbridge offers has plummeted down the Guardian table, so just as well it didn't matter to her!

Needmoresleep and other - ALL THE DATA IN THE LEAGUE TABLES IS HISTORIC!

It is all the same data though. The NSS scores used are those from final year students in 2013/14. The LSE was being rather creative with its explanation for its poor results IMO.

It's amusing how the Guardian league table is pooh-poohed as rubbish data and old data because it throws up Coventry as being up there with the RGs! They use the same data as all the others!

The problem with assuming improved competitors from less traditional Universities have played some sort of game to rise up the table is that you could one day turn around, realise they understood the market better and are actually offering good courses and be caught with your trousers down. That won't happen to good traditional places that continue to look at their offering and continue to produce the goods but it will catch out those who rest on their laurels.

titchy I hear what your saying but I just can't get my head around GLT to even take it seriously. What they are kind of implying is that Coventry is better than LSE for economics. Call me snobby but im trying not to be but I see LSE as being in the premiership league for economics and Coventry maybe in division 1 But definatley not premiership. But due to guradian using another set of methodology to compile the tables they have now being promoted to the premiership league. The (players) or students since I'm using football league as a metaphor at LSE are a different league of their own in terms of academics (a levels, gcse etc.) and mindset than those doing economics at Coventry. I don't know maybe I need to be a bit more open minded.

No they're not really saying that. The quality of the teaching at LSE, the contacts, the guest lecturers, the ethos and the reputation to prospective employers, are all things that will make that institution better than Coventry.

Unfortunately those things cannot easily be quantified so measurables are used and a score attributed to those measurables. The score is then ranked. Readers of the league tables should draw their own conclusions. But nothing in ANY league table says Coventry is better than LSE per se. Just that it scores better in a lot of areas.

One area is the National Student Survey - and you can without a shadow of a doubt say that Coventry students are far more satisfied than LSE ones are. But that doesn't necessarily make it better than LSE.

Look at the individual components and decide what's important to you:
If getting a decent job afterwards is important, look at the destinations data.
If being amongst a more elite cohort is important, look at entry grades.
If receiving good feedback on your assessment is important, look at that NSS questions.
If the name is important, look at what mission lobby group it's in.
If research profile is important, look at that.
Etc. Etc.

I think you have to ask yourself why you rank LSE above Coventry. On what evidence? I agree with you by the way - I feel the same - but that's because we are conditioned to think LSE and Coventry and in different leagues.

Yes, LSE might produce cleverer graduates - but they had A students joining them at the start. Coventry didn't. How would the A student have got on on the Coventry course? Would he have enjoyed it more? Would he have done better than at LSE because the resources and teaching were better? Does LSE produce great Economists simply because they recruit brilliant minds or because they teach so well that complemented with high ability they produce the best graduates. Its this latter comment which might be indicated by the falling in rank on the GLT. Or the GLT might simply be useless.

I do think we need to be a bit open minded here.

My evidence isn't national by any means as it is simply fuelled by my DDs experience. She chose a Mumsnet "waste of space" University but she was convinced they had the right formula to provide her with the skills needed for future employment. She turned down what would have been my preference (a Uni with "Arts" in the title and well respected and more oversubscribed than her course) but now her course has trounced them in the league tables. I have no evidence on the "Arts" course but have seen her progress this year and they are doing what is on the tin (and she has already had a paid commission). She also has one other experience and they are close to bottom of the table which comes as no surprise to her. The GLT ring true to me in this case.

As pointed out earlier the GLT misses out research. For vocational subjects this may well be irrelevant but research quality strongly affects the content and level of the courses in traditional academic subjects.

As somebody who recruits graduate mathematicians as PhD students and for a financial company, the content and depth of maths courses plays an extremely important role in my recruitment, and both are strongly correlated with the research quality of the institution. The CGU tables in maths look far more reasonable to me than the Guardian tables.

As titchy wrote, it is very hard to quantify every aspect of a university course but research level often correlates with the type of graduate employment students go onto. It is well known that it is harder to get a training contract in law from a lower tariff, less research intensive university but this correlation is also true for other fields.

As an example, Sussex (non RG) is higher ranked (in the Guardian league tables) than Birmingham (RG) for English Lit

The answer to that one is that they both have excellent English departments.

And that as others have said use the league tables with a --tonne- pinch of salt.

The Russell Group/non-Russell Group distinction isn't always helpful. Your DC would be better thinking about "research-intensive" as opposed to "teaching-led."

Or think about it this way: wouldn't your DC rather be studying with people who are writing the books that students use in the Library?

I work at an RG uni but sed to work at a non-RG uni. The non-RG could knock the socks off the RG in some areas and in all areas where they teach the relevant subjects, is a strong competitor.

RG, as others have said is an artificial distinction and lazy short-hand. I wouldn't ignore the likes of Bath, Sussex, Surrey, Brunel just because they aren't RG. There used to be a lobby group called the 1994 group of which many of the 'smaller research-intensive unis who were non-RG but strong competitors of RG', used to belong to but it disbanded a couple of years ago. Any of the unis who were members of that group are well-respected and dc would be at no disadvantage for attending.

apologies for typos above

Titchy. My point was specific. Historic data will not pick up significant changes that affect current students. When I was there LSE was a collection of converted office blocks and dead at night. Social life was in halls and non existent if you weren't. I think they had a squash courts somewhere. They happily admit up to a few years ago (perhaps when student satisfaction data began to affect rankings) their non academic offer was not great. Now they have a lovely student centre which creates a de facto campus centre.

So yes. Data is historic. But as with school data, it reflects a previous generations experience, and can only indicate what a future experience will be.

There is also a big difference between an individual likely satisfaction and an overall group one. Low ratings might obviously reflect something wrong with the course. Or maybe a more demanding 'customer'. Or

Yes but needmoresleep the point I was making was that the students surveyed in the new Guardian tables have enjoyed the new buildings etc that LSE has built. But they're still not happy for whatever reason.

The LSE's modernisation programme is a good few years old.....

Up the Chimney - two of the four lecturers at my DDs Mumsnet "waste of space" Uni have written books in the library. Maybe these institutions are employing more qualified staff now - now the ante has been upped by survival of the fittest?

I know Upthe's comment about having written the books in the library is partly shorthand, but I was uncomfortable with it too. I'm an unpublished temp lecturer and I do worry that students will feel short changed - but I work really hard for them, and I am interested in what they say and in how to give them the best insights into research, and I do honestly think that is useful too.

I think this is where Open Days come in handy. I know you can't talk to the whole department, but if there are people there who seem excited about teaching, and interested in research, that's a much better sign - to me - than rankings on a table.

I am probably being a bit chippy, though.

Titchy, when was survey carried out? Was it graduates or current students. It's a bit of an obscure illustration which I using to respond to earlier posts querying the relative positions of LSE and Coventry. The Saw Sweet Hock Centre only opened in Oct/Nov 2014 and presumably will have most impact on first years who now have somewhere to congregate. There is masses more building underway. It seems league tables/ student satisfaction data is taken seriously by Universities, as competition for students becomes more overt and facilities are seen as an important part of the offer.

Well an Economics degree from LSE has to have one of the strongest brands internationally of any course in the country. It is a bit like David Beckham, rock up to a yurt in the middle of Mongolia and there will be a picture of David and the precious son will aspire to study Economics at LSE and I am only half joking. That is why, certainly in the past it has been the course with the highest number of applications overall. Coventry does not really compete on those measures either.

And perhaps only expresses complete satisfaction if he meets Becks, Prince Harry and Mr Bean?

Plus lands a job at Goldman Sachs.

Presumably satisfaction depends on initial expectations.

Exactly the point I made.

Guardian and complete guide use NSS results from spring 2014 survey. Times will use 2015 when published.

Employment data used is from those who graduated in summer 2013. To put this metric into context, the current guides are aimed at those who will be asked about their own employment after graduation in 2019.....

Needmore indeed, and has got himself on the "Chinese students asleep in the library" Facebook page.

Yes, sorry, posting in haste, back-tracking at leisure shirking marking

"Writing the books in the library" is shorthand for 'research-intensive.' And I know that in teaching-led institutions there are what HEFCE called "pockerts of research excellence."

But from friends' experiences (I've only ever worked in big research-led places), in post-92 universities (ie former polys), the researchers who do research at REF 3 and 4 level are the exception, rather than the expectation, as at my place (and others like it) where we are all expected to be working/publishing/getting grants at the level of REF 3 and 4 -- this is in an Arts/Humanities Faculty.

And, BTW, as the senior professor who does all that, I also teach one of the First Year introductory courses (and get whinged at by snowflake 18 year olds who know nothing & resent my knowledge, for my pains).

So it's aways shades of grey, isn't it?

And yes, the Russell Group was a grouping of VCs of various universities who met in the Russell Hotel (it's a very nice place to stay ). But it wasn't just marketing: they met originally to form a lobby group for research-intensive/ research-led universities to protect the vital R&D that UK universities feed into the economy. So self-selecting, but really not only about arrogant self-selection or assumptions about status based on nothing. It was to do with protecting the UK's research activity in the university sector (as industry does less and less).

The thing about being taught in a department where all academics are expected to be research active at a high level of excellence is that undergraduates get engaged in the creation of new knowledge from the start. They see how it's done. My undergrads do it themselves, and in one course, they produce original work, the best of which with a bit more polishing and time could be considered for publication.

If you're taught by people who keep up with the scholarship, but don't produce it, then I don't think the quality is as high, I'm afraid. However, "student satisfaction" often plumps for what they 'enjoyed' -- they really don't know yet the value of what they've learned. And someone posted a link on another thread about there being a possible correlation between satisfaction rates being lower for tougher tutors who pushed students, and students who then went on to do better in subsequent courses.