why does it matter where you do a degree?

[ssd]

me again (sorry)

I've been learning all about the degree process here and its been an eye opener for me

but something I keep reading confuses me

posters have said its important to do the right degree at the right uni

and that's what's confusing me

I've looked up a certain degree at the 4 uni's local to us

the entry requirements are as follows

first uni; AAAAB

second uni;AAAA/AAABB

third uni;AABBB/ABBBB

fourth uni;BBBC

now they all state the same qualification at the end of the course, so why are the entry requirements so different? is it just not worth doing the degree at the fourth uni even though you will have a qualification at the end of it? will employers poo poo the fourth uni degree?

honest answers please!

Metacentric yes, and also "up to a point, Lord Copper" I would argue that in the humanities (my field) high-powered researchers in a unit (School, Department, Faculty) do have an impact on the whole ethos of their unit. Generally because in the arts/humanities, there isn't such a pattern of "buying in" rock star researchers (I tend to think that trend is anecdotal anyway look at U of Manchester's silly statements a few years ago about hiring Nobel Prize winners).

And sometimes it's the PhD students and post-docs who are doing the exciting work us old lags spend too much time on teaching committees and seriously, my PhD students are better tutors for the new undergrads than I can be. They're closer to them in age & experience and empathy. I was educated in a much tougher & more demanding system than that in which I currently teach, so I do tend to get a bit irritated by undergraduates moaning about "too much" work ... they don't read enough is my view, and they don't know that they don't do enough.

My main point is that high-flying research doesn't come out of nowhere. It comes from a foundation or ethos of pushing staff (oh I know about that!) always to be "better" - this can be a bullying culture for academics, but the results are great for undergraduates.

You did, UpThe, I was just fangirling. All I'm really getting at is that there are all sorts of competing inaccurate stereotypes - for all the people saying 'ugh, [university name] is awful' they'll be just as many say 'wow, [university name] has [famous person], it must be amazing'.

But I think that's been covered by subsequent posts anyway.

Whats also missing is the need for the right environment for the student. During playgroup days I knew a refugee couple where the DH was studying at SouthBank (which also enjoys a mixed reputation.) It suited their (difficult) circumstances, including a disrupted education which had impacted on his entry qualifications. I think he was working nights in a filling station to pay overseas student fees but still ended up with the best degree in his year. He was going to try to add respectability by a Masters at somewhere like Imperial but instead got snapped up by a good engineering company.

City and campus Universities all have different offers. DD just went to a medical school open day which had lots about academic achievements, but nothing at all (she was quite shocked) about social life, sports, music or opportunities to socialise with non medics. This would not suit her. It is a popular medical school, especially with Londoners wanting to stay at home, and who presumably look to friends and family for their social life.

Can someone link to research that shows that quality of university teaching positively correlates with money amount of research grants?

Or even that student satisfaction positively correlates with REF score?

YeOldeTrout, plotting a scattergraph of NSS vs REF and computing the correlation coefficient and the line of best fit looks like a nice homework task :-)

Except that the NSS is not in any way a good judge of teaching quality.

Which NSS score though? Overall? Or the aggregated scores used by the league table providers? If so which? And are students really the best judge of teaching quality? Wait till TEF happens in a few years then correlate, and yes I'd guess there would be a very positive correlation between TEF and REF.

Student satisfaction is based on all sorts of random things though, YeOldTrout. The OP is asking specifically about how employers view degrees in the same subject from different unis.

Student satisfaction is notoriously poor measure of the quality of a university's course and teaching. (If as a department you want to improve your NSS score you set easy exams, mark them leniently, hint to the students what will come up etc etc. Yet none of these measures actually constitute good teaching practice.) REF is also an imperfect measure of research quality. You can waste your time correlating NSS scores with REF but I'm not sure what you would learn from this, except that some departments are better at optimising their scores on both than others (but then the latter may have been too busy at actually doing research and teaching to do the necessary PR to optimise NSS and REF).

I would add to the anecdotal data that high quality research is generally correlated with high quality courses and teaching. In the departments I've been in, the research superstars are also the teaching superstars.

If you want research data you have to say how you want to measure the quality of university teaching. Many measures are as inherently flawed as NSS student satisfaction scores: measuring teaching quality by numbers of 2:1s and firsts encourages grade inflation; measuring quality by HEA qualifications ignores the fact that many academics come from abroad, so don't have HEA membership, but do have years of experience etc etc.

(sigh) then please link to ANY RESEARCH which establish that quality of teaching positively correlates to amount of money in research grants.
Sorry if I missed previous links in this thread.

Else you're just spouting opinions, not evidence.

There are many anecdotes about certain companies who recruit only from certain pre-approved Universities. I get the impression that recruitment subject to those conditions leads to only a tiny percentage of graduate jobs. But if you have research to suggest otherwise, please link to that, too.

Graduate recruiter here.

Lots of grad schemes and graduate recruiters ask for a minimum of 2:1 from a Russell Group university.

I, personally, think it makes NO DIFFERENCE to how empoyable someone is which university you went to or even, in most case, which degree or class of degree you got. I've seen grads with thirds from terrible universties do brilliantly at work and some with firsts from Oxbridge be useless employees. However, some employers still use the 2:1 Russell Group entry requirement and so by going to one of those universities it can open more doors.

I won't go into my rant about how that stifles diversity in corporate cultures.

I was an average student who was lucky to get into a top university. I managed to walk into top jobs, despite being quite average on the strength of the university I attended.

Trout - just because there is no definitive measure of teaching quality doesn't therefore that the anecdote is inaccurate, just that it can't yet be proven satisfactorily.

Once we have TEF I'd bet my bottom dollar the correlation will be clear.

doesn't mean the anecdote is correct, either.

Lots of opinions, no evidence.

I assume I'm the only genuine academic on this thread?

If you're an academic I assume you can use google scholar to find a whole bunch of inconclusive articles on the subject; the conclusions seem to depend enormously on what measures of teaching and research quality are used.

TEF will probably correlate with REF but not necessarily because either is accurately measuring teaching and research quality. Whatever measures TEF uses, they will almost certainly be subjective and reflect the compositions of the TEF panels.

Frankly, I dread the TEF: it will use up just as many resources (more?) than the REF, and for what? At least the REF determines how the QR (ie government money for research) is distributed. There is almost no block/public funding for teaching now, so What.Is.The.Point?

I know that as a senior academic (yes a real live genuine one Trout) preparing for the REF took 12-18 months of my (expensive) time and stopped me doing actual research. I have no doubt that the TEF will be worse.

There is going to be no one criterion which will measure "good" teaching, so asking for simplistic correlations just doesn't cut it. Besides how does that play out in an individual student's life? Some anecdata: I remember a module I studied with a fairly inadequate teacher in terms of encouraging or actively pushing students, in the way we have to do now. Yet I received a First for that module.

Bad teaching does not necessarily lead to bad learning, nor does good teaching necessarily lead to good learning.

There are many criteria for "good" teaching, and these can change depending on the material, the aim of the module, the level of student - so on & so forth.

I spend all day on google scholar. Why doesn't someone with firm opinions want to search there instead of me who only has passing interest while I eat a muffin.

I declare an interest... I work in a dept that is middle of the league tables for REF but top of the league for student satisfaction measures. I don't teach so I've minimum ego involved. But I may want to advise DC (like OP). I also finished my degree at a middle-lower league Uni but had fantastic outcomes. Gained skillsets that led to Opportunities that my original top-10-in-world Uni would Never have achieved.

So with respect, I'm cynical about claimed positive correlation until I see evidence.

ps: and in case you wondered, my University-you-never-heard of had quite superior teaching quality, ime, compared to the No. 7 in world Uni, at least for Undergrads.

Trout this: establish that quality of teaching positively correlates to amount of money in research grants is not actually what I say.

I would argue from my empirical experience (which is extensive, international, and with a couple of peak national teaching and research bodies but I'm not giving my CV on here) that in general, a university/department/School/unit where high quality research (the sort that wins research grants) is the norm is also a better place for learning. More will be expected of students, they will be challenged and pushed, and they will see if they care to look the actual results of original research on the bookshelves of their libraries and in their seminar rooms.

This can happen in universities which are teaching rather than research-led, but it happens - generally as the exception, rather than the rule.

It doesn't matter though if the quality of the teaching is better if, among employers, the perception of the university is worse - which is what the OP is asking.

Yes you may learn more or have a better quality of learning, but you won't be more employable.

Because some universities are more equal than others.

I was at law school with people who had law degrees from Stoke Uni among other august institutions.

Unsurprisingly the Stoke etc graduates didn't get training contracts. Thus rendering a three year degree plus a year at law school completely pointless.

So were those Stoke graduates permanently unemployed thereafter? Or just never employed in any work where their degree was relevant?

How can you even claim to know that?

There is almost no block/public funding for teaching now, so What.Is.The.Point?

It will be used to decide who can increase fees. That's why I think the results are clear a priori; the criteria will be chosen to guarantee these results.

In my subject around a third of academics in the top 20 institutions were educated at Oxbridge, particularly Cambridge. The remaining two thirds were mostly educated outside the UK, with those educated in the UK coming predominantly from the top 10 or so universities. This data is easy to acquire. One could use such data to argue that teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels has historically been better at Oxbridge. Or one could argue that Cambridge has by far the highest entrance requirements at undergraduate and PhD level, so already selected the best students right from the outset. The latter is much closer to the truth imo.

Yes, spinoa but it's always struck me that this is partly an historical issue. We've gone from a time when Oxford, Cambridge, Durham & Edinburgh were the only universities, to when there's a underfunded ambition for 50% of all 18-25 year olds to be in some form of post-secondary training or education (from an elite to mass system) then the advantages conferred by the long-standing nature of some institutions over others are magnified.

Also, let's not forget the huge advantage that Oxford/Cambridge have: money. Endowments, property & cash independent of anything successive governments deign to hand out.

"We've gone from a time when Oxford, Cambridge, Durham & Edinburgh were the only universities"

Ahem. I think Glasgow is older than Edinburgh.