Leicester & Lancaster unis

[flusterbluff]

Do people have any knowledge of the demographics of these two Uni's? I don't know much about them. I wanted to know are they heavily populated with any demographic? Private vs state schooled, ethnic group, socioeconomic background etc or are they both quite a mixed bag

Yeps @boys3 agree mine is just an anecdote for sure.

I was wondering if it was subject dependent - so maybe (say) 50% of medics there are from Leics but then only 10% of Eng lit.

I must say I surmised to dd that lots of students were local, and she said, well, no one she knew. But Yy that’s literally less than 50 ppl obvs.

I think it is spoken about in the same way as Loughborough and Bath.

St Andrews is always going to be seen as posh due to the royal connection. It is full of Americans mainly for this reason.

@flusterbluff St. Andrews is very different. Starting point being it is the 3rd oldest university in the anglophone world after Oxford and Cambridge. over 600 years old, Lancaster will be 60 years old this year. Not far off 40% private school, big international contingents especially as per another pp Americans. Plus of course the royal connection. And Chariots of Fire.

Bath and Loughborough excellent unis and geographically accessible. A lot of their popularity is also about where they are.

let’s face it there’s far from any levelling up in terms of educational outcomes. 36% or so of 18 year olds in the UK went to uni in the last cycle, but 50% from London, I think the figure for the South East was 40%. The gap between top a level and GCSE results between London / South East and the North East is truly shocking, and not much better for the NW.

Lancaster suffers so to speak to some extent simply for being in Lancashire.

But why is Lancaster then not spoken with the same aspirational tone as Bath, St Andrews, L'boro etc which are also not RG

It is on MN - there are lots of references to bath and lancaster paired together in posts!

Re demographics - I live quite near go to Lancaster a lot, just from noticing people walking around I think there are probably a lot of Chinese students/other Far Eastern countries, fewer other ethnicities. The lower percentage of privately schooled students versus comparable unis ... may be mostly a north-south divide? There aren't very many private schools in Lancaster's hinterland, and it's not got the 'oxbridge reject' thing going on which skews durham.

Lancaster suffers so to speak to some extent simply for being in Lancashire.

That's a very southern-centric pov! afaik it (and the many other northern unis) aren't short of good applicants. Many northern kids simply don't bother looking south of say Birmingham - no reason to!

Lancaster is on the main west coast rail line, similar journey time from the south as Durham I think and much less than St Andrews.

Easy access to so much good countryside too. I heard that lancaster uni has the highest rate of students choosing to stay in the area after graduation

Lancaster is very quiet, not much night life to speak of and a rural campus. Suits an introvert like my DD.

@ErrolTheDragon

two things.

1. I’m not from the South.
2. it is a data-driven point of view, although quoted slightly out of the broader context of the post which contained it.

and possibly a third : Avanti West Coast and train service excellence. Not usually seen together. 😀 Allied that congestion on the west coast mainline is only going to get worth.

but I fully agree with you that there is range of excellent Unis in the North

Going back to Leicester Uni for a moment. There is an interesting story, presumably true, with regard to the RG.

the VC of Leicester Uni was invited to join the RG when it was created but he did not think it would be right to join one specific mission group when he was representing all of Britains universities as president of Universities Uk.

But it has been many years now and presumably the VC is no longer the same person

I agree. I think the point being Leicester could have been in the RG from the get go and would likely be viewed, rightly or wrongly, in a different light because of that.

My observation - no data!! is that it’s pure and simple snobbery.

I didn't see much in your post that indicated Lancaster uni id 'suffering' though, @boys3

I really don't know where the op and others have got the idea from that it's less well spoken of than bath and Loughborough. Certainly not MN!.

I went to Lancaster on an open day in the 1990s and it was very wet, very windy, very concrete, and very far from everything. I ended up in Leicester, which was nicer, greener, more lively and had everything you could possibly want with the exception of that fucking paternoster lift.

I have worked at Lanc Uni in the past but very intermittently. It has a lot of overseas students from the Far East. I'm not sure how this affects the socialising situation. Some appeared to have poor English.
But as others have said it is highly rated and in a beautiful part of the country. There are lots of buses into town. It's probably not a good choice for a serious clubber.

But seriously, how many people know this fact? It's so random.

Lancaster has suffered from a historic reputation for being isolated, which in the 1980s (I think!) had a small cluster of suicides. I certainly discounted it when applying because it was both in the middle of nowhere and too close to home for me! And it’s not like I went to a bustling RG Uni either. Lancaster just looked a bit……grim perched up there at the side of the M6. A friend of mine went there though, in the late 80s, when 6th Form Heads wanted him to apply to Cambridge, because he rated the course so highly.
Fast Forward 30 years and it was DS’s insurance choice. We looked round and it really impressed us - the housing, pastoral care, chaplaincy, all developed to make the isolation a thing of the past.Several of his friends went there and love it.

@TheMerryBandofPanderingShitwits identical experience! I loved Leicester when I went in the 90s. Visited in 2022 with DD and she liked it too, it was one of her offers alongside Cambridge. Lovely Victoria park just outside the teaching campus where I have fond memories of tutorials under a tree when the weather was warm. I was sad to hear the Paternoster was no more, it was iconic.

@boys3 thanks for this data. I am surprised as the teenagers I know (from London) have generally gone north- encouraged by parents who want them to have a change of scene and a cheaper cost of living. But I think that many London based students stay at home for the same reasons- perception that ‘out of London’ might be less diverse and that even cheaper rents in the Northern cities are more expensive than staying at home. The level of regionalisation does surprise me- has it become ‘worse’ over time? Leaving the SE for the NW at 18 was one of the best things about university for me. Seems as if not many do that now.

I went to Lancaster and it was excellent. I have no idea why it isn’t more spoken about as it is highly rated and it’s great living in campus in first year. The college system is great and getting to study 3 subjects in first year is really interesting.

If your child is considering U of Leicester, I should say that I lived in Leicester for eight years and found it very depressing — a generic, run-down city centre (some spectacularly bad urban planning), not much going on culturally, a sense of a prosperous Victorian manufacturing city that didn’t really know what it was now.

I live in Leicestershire and I agree completely with this. The city is a dump. Once bustling shopping streets have been almost abandoned. The market is a shadow of what it was even a decade ago. You can’t walk down the street without being accosted by beggars, chuggers, noisy political protesters or religious nutters. I rarely go into the centre these days, except to go to John Lewis. Plenty of other people who live in the county villages feel the same way.

All the people criticising Leicester should try living rurally near Exeter! Leicester is fab - DD2 is in her Masters year there and has had a great few years there, even taking Covid into account. It is a very diverse city; coming from rural Devon, DD loves it. We have had fantastic meals out there and it offers much better value for money than home. Obviously I don't know what it was like 10 or more years ago, but we have enjoyed getting to know it a bit.

Leicester is a great uni! Best four years of my life. LinkedIn regularly rubs in how great all of my contemporaries are doing: partners at magic circle/City and Big 4 firms, senior BBC bods, consultant physicians etc. It also does a good job of getting news headlines with ground breaking research. Culture wise, it is far more left wing than other similar universities. There is a big socialist society, very prominent figures in the NUS over the years etc. It trades on being a more inclusive learning environment. There is also a large Muslim community drawn from the locality and everybody got on fabulously and respectfully while I was there. The nightlife was perfect for a university of its size. It doesn't have the prestige of some other universities, I think that it is to a degree deliberate.

It's not off the radar to us northerners!

DS has his sights on it. It's that lovely "far, but not too far away" distance from us. I guess it may be overshadowed by Manchester to southerners looking north.

It seems to attract the people who want an outdoor, sporty lifestyle, who'd go to Sheffield, if Sheffield weren't their local uni! Loads of people locally to us (we're between Leeds and Sheffield) seem to go to Lancaster. I have a few colleagues who are graduates of their 1990s environmental science degree, who are all excellent.

Of course anecdotal from me too but my dc is 2nd year geographer at Leicester and is very much living the ‘normal’ student life (great flat mates, lots of nights out, bar job etc) - his course lecturers are very supportive and he has great field trips - accommodation is reasonable and I would say as a Nottingham person myself that Leicester city centre more than holds its own against Nottingham these days

Lancaster has 4 clubs and 9 bars on campus. Each campus has its own bar and student union. 20 minutes from town

My Uni and now my DC they having a ball.

Many of the departments are highly rated and it's a good student campus.

The stats on overseas students doesn't sound real as it's not my DC s experience. Their house has people from all over the country, has made friends with a few overseas students.