Sadness of Open Days

[Gemauve]

So on the stand this morning at 0905, I was approached by a charming woman and her keen, enthusiastic daughter. It's the first university they're visiting, in fact the first university that either of them has ever been to, but they're really looking forward to ... and they reel off a list of good places. Daughter really wants to do our subject, and has clearly checked out the top places.

And what A Levels are you doing?

Ah.

Well, you can't come here, and for what it's worth, we're slightly more relaxed than the other places you've named and I know that you won't be able to go to any of them to do our subject or anything even vaguely related. I didn't say "and on past experience from when we were even more relaxed to the point that we might have admitted you, you would almost certainly fail, and the last cohort where we did that less than 5% of them made it to finals". Sorry.

"My school said these subjects would be ideal".

They're catastrophically wrong. Did you look at any prospectuses before choosing your subjects? No. And off they went, their hopes destroyed by 0915.

What the fuck are schools playing at? Why do they let children who don't have middle class parents get into this situation?

I don't think titchy is saying young people from poor families or ethnic minorities shouldn't apply to top universities because they won't fit in and it's not kind to make them try. I often see reports here of teachers saying stuff like that, which is worrying, but that's not what titchy is saying.

She is saying something more nuanced and which I believe is supported by the universities themselves: the culture at many of the top universities can be challenging if it's very different from what you're used to. If you find yourself living in a small town where there is hardly anyone else of your religious persuasion that's potentially a bit tricky. If all the freshers' week events are based around alcohol that's offputting to a lot of Muslim students.

I don't know what the dropout rate from top universities is. I'd bet it's a good deal lower than from places like London Met. However, I'd also be unsurprised if it turns out that the dropout rate is higher from BME and poor students. The answer to that is to work harder at making the top universities welcoming places for everybody who is clever enough to meet the entry criteria. I would imagine we're all agreed on that.

I'm glad you were happy there spinoa. I was agreeing with titchy's earlier comment about it seems that only Oxford / medicine. RG is acceptable.

" should schools allow children whose parents have had no contact with higher education to suffer because their parents aren't necessarily in a position to help?"

No, I quite agree with you. Not everyone is au fait with university and what you need to do to get in or even to gather information.

Nursing wasn't about setting my sights lower Spinoa, just wanted it more I guess, but I agree careers need to change in the science world to make it easier for girls to compete there.

It's sweet of you to try to pick up the prices of my broken heart Gasp0 (and I know it's not all about me - Oh, wait ...) but nothing about simply being from an ethnic minority, or from a council estate, or having a single parent, or having a parent who is a cleaner (and surprise, surprise they don't all inevitably go together ...) guarantees that you won't be able to cope with fresher's week drinking.

pieces not prices. Though a broken heart is a costly thing to carry around.

It's all about choice. Generally speaking, the more choice and control over our lives we have the happier and healthier we are. If a very clever student ends up getting a degree in a less prestigious subject from a less prestigious place, that is fine if that is his/her choice and a fully informed one. The student may go on to have a fantastic life on the back of that degree, either by chance or as a direct result.

But if the same student ended up there because they and their family didn't realise they could have gone somewhere else and/or the student didn't have the right subject choices, the outcome might be less happy.

And as well as ZFD's excellent point, we aren't "sneering at their choices." We're lamenting the fact that they have choices removed from them by poor decisions made on their behalf by other people like, presumably, you which have the effect of limiting their options. Someone with traditional A Levels can do any degree they want, both at Oxbridge and at the hippest of the post-92s. Someone without those A Levels doesn't have those options.

It's also worth pointing out that some post-92 courses which are vocational as you want have the same problem. I'm thinking of for example the motorsport engineering course at Oxford Brookes which is ABB with maths and physics (and A Level maths is compulsory even if you have BTECs otherwise. That's a tougher admission profile than quite a lot of RG courses. Or is Oxford Brookes now a scary place of smoking jackets and cigarette holders that the sterotypically downtrodden will be excluded from by their accents and poor taste in music?

Zero, I work at a university. A few years ago I went on our diversity and equality training. We were told that Cambridge (or possibly Oxford) had done research about why students from BME backgrounds dropped out. One reason given a lot was that the students were teetotal, usually for religious reasons, but every welcome event was built around the assumption that to have a good time students would drink, drink, drink, so free drink was a big feature. That isn't a mark of an institution that's thought long and hard about how to welcome a diverse intake of students.

My own employer has a very diverse intake indeed and has had to adjust to the implications of this. Quite right too.

It's also about aspiration gasp, from this thread it seems that some schools/teacher are telling disadvantaged pupils that they should look only at places "their sort" normally go to and some posters are defending that approach.

Earlier people talked about first generation FE seekers should aspire to nursing, and then their children can consider medicine. Fortunately the days of medical schools rejecting students from working class backgrounds is now in the past.

A lot of unsubstantiated rubbish about drop-out rates being quoted here too... at my son's medical school, the very highest achievers are more likely to be from state school.

Thank you gasp you put it so much more eloquently that I did! (I happily admit I'm not particularly eloquent, data, rather than words are my thing.)

But yes drop out from universities lower down the league tables is higher, but dropout among BME and/or lower socio-economic students is HIGHER across all institutions, and the gap widens the further up the league table an institution finds itself.

I am genuinely delighted you were happy spinoa, and yes we need to do more to ensure students from all backgrounds are made to feel they belong. But plenty have a really tough time, hence the drop out, and we shouldn't ignore that and pretend everything's rosy as long as everyone's aiming for a pure subject at an RG.

Totally support the need for full and informed and accurate decision making, and aspiration raising silver.

State school doesn't equal disadvantaged by the way....

titchy yes you are of course correct.

Hmmm ... How do I put this? Gasp0 when you go for diversity training, and when those trainers go off to do their research you are only going to be meeting people who feel they might have a problem. It's lovely that you try to accommodate those potential students - but there are surely thousands of others who find no problem, no culture shock, nothing they haven't experienced in their own book filled, wine imbibing parental homes.

It must be rather tedious for them to hear about the "cultural differences" they must have experienced.

But yes drop out from universities lower down the league tables is higher, but dropout among BME and/or lower socio-economic students is HIGHER across all institutions, and the gap widens the further up the league table an institution finds itself.

But it's absolute rather than relative levels that matter to a student.

Suppose there are two institutions. One has a 20% drop out rate from BME students and a 15% drop out rate from non-BME students. The other has a 10% drop out rate from BME students and a 1% drop out rate from non-BME students (I've pulled those numbers out of my proverbial, but they're not implausible as inner-city-post-92 and RG).

By your logic, a BME student is better off at the first institution, because the gap between BME and non-BME drop out rates is narrower, as a ratio, as a difference, however you measure it. But the drop out rate for BME students is still twice as high as it is at the second institution.

You also have to look at BME participation at the two institutions.

A has an intake of 40% BME. A quarter of those drop out, the same rate as for the 60% non BME.

B has an intake of 10% BME. 75% of those drop out. Of the 90% non BME only 5% drop out.

A is doing well relatively - its BME students don't appear to behave any differently from the rest of its students (all equally disillusioned )

B is NOT doing well for it BME students at all.

spinoa This logic seems to ignore the fact that kids from low socio-economic backgrounds can actually be very, very bright, and fit into an academic institution where the people around them are as bright as they are. I was happy for the first time in my life when I went to Cambridge and was finally around people who were similar to me (academically).

This was my experience too. But I do recognise that it's not the same for everyone.

There's a whole field of economics about people's willingness to accept outcomes which are worse, so long as other people do badly as well.

All the matters rationally is the chance that an individual student, matched for their gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background and educational history, completes. The higher that number, the better for the student. Accepting a lower value for that number because that makes you more comparable with other people who are also more likely to drop out is politics, but hardly a good objective.

What the fuck are schools playing at? Why do they let children who don't have middle class parents get into this situation?

Going back to the OP late (I've been immersed in conference-land) I get this: what the OP is talking about is what sociologists might refer to access to 'cultural capital' That is, it's not always about actual economic capital -- it's about the accumulated set of beliefs, knowledges and behaviour ("habitus") which accrue in families which eventually do confere actual economic benefit.

I see this in my own family: we're upper-middle class, "old" money, which means now, no money (well, not the sort of money my grandparents had which means they & my father didn't have to work for a living). But we are three or 4 generations of Oxbridge graduates, and so even without much actual cash we have the cultural capital just to know without having to search out advice, about how to go about getting to university etc etc etc. To us, it seems 'natural ' -- just 'what we do.' But it's an immensely privileged position, actually. Just that too many privileged people (not all of course!) seem to think they got to where they are by their merit, rather than the accumulation of certain kinds of capital. AND merit, of course. But there are probably still a few "nice but dim Tims" around who have the push of well-connected families and the assurance of generations of going to universities, opera houses, art galleries etc**

This is partly why the research-intensive universities published their "facilitating subjects" guide. My problem with it is that it omits a number of Humanities subjects which actually are very facilitating - Music, Art, Drama, for starters. (Not for nothing is Art History a top choice of the Sloane types). But, it was an attempt to start to avert the situation the OP describes.

* Not that there are not many many people not with such upper-middle connections etc who don't go to galleries etc etc. Just that there's an assumption that to do so is an ordinary part of life, and you don't feel out of place. I've had conversations with students from much less privileged backgrounds who tell me about their initial anxieties about going to the Royal Opera House or wherever. Not that they don't go, but they worry about "fitting in" and dressing up. I say "Oh go in your jeans." But that's easy for me to say -- I've been going to those places of "high" culture since I was a baby. I've never had the slightest hint that those sorts of places might not be "mine." But I'm very* aware that for many many people, this is not the case. Old universities, old cultural institutions etc look as if they intend to exclude people who are "not like us"

Apols for all the "scare quotes" -- I'm trying to indicate my critique of the exclusionary cultural politics that I think still remain.

Whoops bold fail ...

It pains me to disagree with a fellow Archers obsessive, Zero, but I'm afraid I do, a bit! Yes, there are plenty of students from all strata of society who have grown up in book-filled homes, with or without wine, and who fit right in when they go to a top university.

I don't, however, see a problem with expecting universities to go to some effort to help everyone settle in. I also believe that schools and FE colleges should do their bit to prepare students to cope with different environments and mixing with a wide range of people. It's an essential life skill, after all.

The alcohol issue is one that resonated with me because although I'm not teetotal, I am a very moderate drinker from a family where there have been some tragic consequences from heavy drinking. I don't like any culture that pushes the idea that you can only have a good time when you're tanked up.

I agree Gasp, choice is a wonderful thing and would like to see potential students being informed about their choices and implications more effectively. However I wanted to share my own experience as its not something that people talk about.

The assumption is of course that you must go to the most desirable course at the best uni, league tables are produced and poured over etc. I think there equally a sadness about dashed hopes in both instances, whether it be poor A level choices or pressure on to do a degree in a well regarded subject.

I also feel a sadness that some courses and universities are seen as less prestigious or less difficult than others and wonder what that is really based on apart from entry grades which rather self fulfilling. Is politics less difficult than biology for example? Is a degree from Nottingham university so much better than Coventry? It is because we think it is or is it because the students enter with better grades or because the course is better? The top employers may visit there but that might be because they already have the better students? It's a question I ponder from time to time.

About twenty years ago I had an interview at Oxford. I was at a state school, I would have been pupil premium, my parents left school at 15.

My state school did fuck all to prepare me. I was sent to interview having no idea what to expect. No internet back then. There was an exam I hadn't covered half the topics for. I had no idea about colleges so didn't express a preference and for some reason they thought a mixed state comp kid would want a women's only college. The whole place was built to intimidate. The professors were kind but I was clearly in the wrong place. They understandably rejected me, but tbh you couldn't have paid me to go there had they accepted me.

I really hope it's different now.

We're not disagreeing Gasp0! Of course universities must do their best to make themselves welcoming to all comers.

I take issue with the implication (not yours) that everyone who appears to be "other" should, willy nilly be lumped into one great big "other" group. Who should be directed to "other" educational outcomes.

A black female teenager born in Wiltshire to atheist parents is not the same as a Somalian boy lately arrived in SE London. The child of a middle class single mother - whatever their race, is not the same as ... You get the picture?

Some of these people can read. Some of them are on MN. They may be a little disappointed to hear that they only exist as a "problem".

I think there are two problems - one is advice on choice of a-level e.g. Some courses require maths and physics - this would seem to be something that could be easily checked on a database.

The other is that some a-levels don't seem to be respected and aren't given equivalent value even when the a-level subject requirements are non-specific.