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'm sure it's wonderful if you do so well that firms are falling over themselves to pay for your degree and you can work in those top firms, but it would also be fabulous to be a high earning footballer. As we all know though there is a lot of wastage, I understand that only 4 out of 15 lpc graduates actually have managed to secure a training contract at a friends daughters excellent uni.

So I suppose it might depend on whether you are willing to take the risk. That's perhaps why some people choose a course that might have a lower return, but more likely job prospects.

I've loved reading this thread, so informative! I just did a bunch of a-levels I liked, it's so interesting what is really going on.

Although DH is a partner at a top 20 law firm and did Economics, Accounts and Law at A-Level. This admitted him to an RG Uni to read law. This was in the late nineties/early noughties. From reading this thread it really seems they are all useless A-Levels. Did he just get lucky or have the value of these A-Levels changed?

Thank you everyone; a few things to think about. And yes, I probably do need to start my own thread about this.

I was going to say the same Spinoa a maths degree isn't for the faint hearted you need to love maths to get through it. DD2 graduated with a maths degree this week and has a place on a master's course starting in September but my goodness she found parts of her degree incredibly difficult.

Congrats to your daughter Nice

Thanks Auntiestella, I hadn't realised you could do that.

Really interesting thread. I think (thought!) DH and I are pretty well clued up but this has offered me all sorts of insights and useful links.

Thanks to OP for starting it.

And yes, it's bloody outrageous that the crap about 'all qualifications/providers are equal but Oxbridge isn't right for our students' is still being peddled, and that students are given rubbish advice about combinations of A levels.

It's also pretty awful that students are put under dreadful pressure to achieve the best, most prestigious uni and course and we should all remember messages will be heard about what's desirable or not. Sadly there can be some brutal consequences: I know of one uni student who ended up in a mental health unit this year.

Trying to help young people realise they have achieved even if it's not a RG or Oxbridge can be as depressing too.

It is still possible to qualify as an accountant without a degree and some employers have signed up to offer training via the government's apprentice scheme (including big four firms) so in theory this route of entry is alive and well.

Merry - if they last the apprentices will be sent on the captive degree schemes at some point. If they last.

I know of one uni student who ended up in a mental health unit this year.

So do I. However, I'd need some evidence that rates of mental health crisis are higher in RG universities than for people of a similar age and background elsewhere, either inside or outside higher education.

Sorry if this is a bit o/t, but can someone explain RG to me while we're on?

My understanding is it's a group of uni's, mainly ex red brick like Manchester, who are part of some sort of research funding gang.

Why are they suddenly the be all and end all? Why does there seem to be the polys vs. uni attitude where some people don't think HE is worth bothering with unless its oxbridge/RG. Are employers also thinking that way?

There are uni's who are leaders in their field, who are not RG. Dundee for example, has a phenomenal Biochem/Med sci dept.

RG - many many years ago, 1994 in fact, lots of the larger (plus LSE) research intensive unversity VCs got together in the Hotel Russell to schmooze bemoan the lack of policy support and dosh for research. They vowed to join forces and fight the good fight for research funding not to be overlooked. Later on that year, another group of equally as research intensive, but much smaller, institutions also got together because they felt left out. This latter group became the 1995 Group.

RG bumbled along quite happily for many years, until they employed a super-whizzy team of Marketing and PR bods who suddently saw their role as promoting the group itself, not just lobbying writing papers saying how important research is. They were so successful that the RG as a name became synonymous with good quality. The 1994 tried for several year, to promote itself in a similar vein. Sadly it jumped onto that bandwagon a little too late and with not as much oomph, and following a few of its member leaving, some to join having paid serious amounts of cash the RG, it disbanded year or two ago.

The Russell Group are a bunch of universities who, together, pursue various funding initiatives and are involved in certain lobbying activities.

They've also done a rather good job at packaging themselves as Gold Standard.

The truth is that there are some courses at some institutions outside the RG that are regarded more highly. And there are some courses at some institutions within the RG that are bloody poor (one reason why it always makes me smile, when MNers brandish their degree from an RG university as solid proof of high academic function ).

That said, if a young person is not aiming for one of those universally well regarded non-RG courses, then I can see why they might aim for RG. If there is a perception of quality, then people want that shine to rub off. Perfectly understandable really.

404 you're wrong about lawyers and science. It would actually be very odd if you were correct - why on earth would an aptitude for thinking in a legal way preclude an aptitude for science? Many lawyers have a background in science just as many have a background in humanities and many have a combination of both.

Tinkly there's no reason in theory why an art history degree plus conversion wouldn't work. Sometimes the most competitive law firms are also the most broad minded. If that's what she wants to do, I'd say go for it. No point regretting art if you love it. That goes for any other subject as well. I happened to like law, as did my daughters, but they did it for the subject itself, not as a vocational thing. Academic law isn't vocational, in itself.

I didn't think that's what 404 said... not that science and legal aptitudes were different (I should hope they were very similar!) but that not very many lawyers are 'scientifically literate'. Maybe we've got different ideas of what that might mean but AFAIK not many people do even a BSc then then law.

'Russell Group' doesn't really enter into our thinking as we're assessing universities with DD. DH and I (like many of us, I guess) predate that concept; we've had dealings with quite a few universities ourselves and have a pretty good idea how to look at the various statistics, research ratings, employment prospects etc and assess whether somewhere is good for the subject DD wants to do. TBH at the moment that probably excludes oxbridge and a few other prestigious places because it's not clear that the 'general engineering' they offer would be the most appropriate choice for her. Somewhere like Southampton or Surrey may well be a lot better by her criteria. (I may start a separate thread to see if I can get any thoughts on that one!)

Erroll 404 said that lawyers will rarely have any science post GCSE and that 'lawyers who can do science are as rare as rocking horse shit'. It was those two statements that are excessively sweeping and most probably wrong.

I agree about this 'RG' thing though Errol. Vastly overrated.

There's a huge gap between having some science post-GCSE and really being 'able to do science' though. I had a quick google for 'scientists with law degrees' and the first hit was about opportunities for postgraduate scientists to train as lawyers. The rest seemed mostly about patent/IP law rather than general 'lawyers' (barristers and solicitors) which is what we usually mean - guessing that's what 404 was thinking of as clearly 'patent lawyers' would mostly be scientists. No idea how to find the stats but my guess is that barristers with postgrad science experience would indeed be rare beasts.

Certainly significantly rarer than historians turned lawyers! But 404 said that 'most lawyers......won't have any post GCSE science'. A great many actually will and the thinking skills required even at A Level are extremely useful, arguably a good deal more useful than other types of thinking skills.

Oh I didn't mean to imply that mental health problems are more frequent in top unis than others, I really wouldn't know. It was more the observation that putting children under so much pressure to do so well can sometimes be detrimental. Young people are more aware than we realise sometimes in comparing the prestige of different courses.

I would think it extremely likely that mental health issues are far more prevalent at top unis, for precisely the same reasons that they seem to be far more prevalent at top schools. It's about the type of student that goes to the those institutions as much as the pressurized environment. But for those types of student, going to a less pressurized school or uni may well cause as many problems as it solves. You'd get top psychiatrists arguing both ways. There's no simple solution; I doubt there ever will be.

Molio do you really believe stress and pressure, and related MH issues is the preserve of the upper echelons.

I think research has shown the opposite to be true. MH problems are considered to be a disease associated with poverty.

I suspect the more experienced Uni's and those with better funding, actually invest more in pastoral care, being fully aware that this leads to better student satisfaction results in those all important surveys that feed into the annual rankings.

A large part of my work involves discussing scientific evidence with lawyers. I stand by my assertion that lawyers who have a sophisticated grasp of scientific method are a rare breed.

Otoh if I had a quid for every time I have had to explain, slowly and repetitiously, that the statement "x is compatible with y, but the evidence is weak" does NOT mean "x is probably different from y" I could retire comfortably. And if I had another quid for every time I've had to spell out the difference between correlation and causation, I'd be laughing.

So yes, I know there are lawyers out there with a rigorous science background. But they are very much not in the majority, among barristers in particular, up to and including High Court judges.

I didn't say it was 'the preserve' though SilverBirch and I'm not clear what you mean by 'the upper echelons' because you're making a wealth distinction there, whereas I wasn't making any comment about wealth, simply responding to a poster's comments about stress within the university system. But in response to your own comment, it's fairly clear on any empirical and historical basis that mental health issues are absolutely not the preserve of the poor in society either.

404 that's fine. But your comment implying that very few lawyers indeed had any science beyond GCSE was obviously a sizeable exaggeration which you've now expanded on and narrowed down.