Guardian university rankings out yesterday

[TheJollyCoralEagle]

The Guardian University rankings were published yesterday (The Daily Mail rankings are out today as well, but I don't really want to reference that otherwise this might take a political detour which isn't relevant to the conversation)
The usual subjects are at the top. Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL, Durham etc. What is interesting is further down. Established, high ranking globally, Russell Group unis like Newcastle and Nottingham at 62nd and 63rd, but Chichester at 26th and Bolton at 32nd
And then the variation between the league tables. Bolton for example is 108th in the CUG and Chichester at 79th.
I know the Guardian uses different metrics to CUG (and the others) but the rankings must have some relevance to each other?
Some good advice is to go look at the subject league tables but even there, that isn't always useful. My son wants to do Quantity Surveying. Speaking to Quantity Surveyors in practice they generally regard Oxford Brookes as one of the top universities for Quantity Surveying yet Oxford Brookes comes in at 12th on the CUG Quantity Surveying rankings. And for Magic Circle law recruitment or investment banking for example, apparently the vast majority of their recruits come from a handful of targeted top universities, but some other universities feature highly in these relevant subject rankings.
I know rankings aren't important for everyone. Some people just want to go to a university that they like for the experience, the city, their friends are going there, it's close to home etc, but for students concerned about getting a job and having to choose between more than 100 universities it's a bit of a minefield!
I know recruiters aren't supposed to look at which university you went to, so maybe rankings aren't such a big factor in the job market any more, but let's not kid ourselves if rankings/reputation/kudos weren't important most students would be going to Leeds Beckett, Northumbria, LJU or Nottingham Trent to have a great social life!

https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2024/sep/07/the-guardian-university-guide-2025-the-rankings?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

As far as blind recruitment is concerned though, that’s correlation not causation.

the “brightest candidates” you refer to have probably been to better universities because more of them probably applied to better universities.

They’re not brighter because the university caused them to be brighter.

So why recruit blind then? It’s pointless if the best rise to the top anyway? As they appear to do. Just accept that some applicants are not the right fit. Plus NO employer chooses on uni alone. So many other aspects of a candidate are looked at. Just keeping a few things removed doesn’t necessarily change anything. I know names, ages, sex, uni etc can be removed but candidates should still tick the boxes required. Some will and some won’t. What matters is the whole candidate, not just uni. However I do believe some unis are far better than others and for some employers it’s legitimate that it matters.

Because it isn’t always the case that the brightest have been to the higher ranking universities.

They want the brightest. Blind recruitment in theory gives this more accurately than making a judgement that someone is bright based on a view that one school or university is better than another.

Middle class parents like us don’t tend to like that concept because we’ve worked hard to help our children get into “better” universities thinking that in itself will help them in life even if they’re not necessarily the “brightest”.

if a job applicant is actually the best fit for the role then they will succeed wherever they went to school or university which is the way it should be.

Now recruiting/interviewing someone just because they went to a state school or just because they went to a low ranking university, that is wrong (and patronising and offensive). The best person in the selection process should get the role.

@Ciri Yes. I agree. However research is still saying the best paying roles are going to the brightest and the best from the top unis. I would argue that all the brightest should aim to be the best by going to one. Not bothering isn’t a great attribute. It’s definitely being risk averse.

Staying local for uni and job won’t matter one jot of course if that’s what is wanted. Staying local might not give the skills to succeed elsewhere though. Which definitely stunts social mobility, Aiming high to aid social
mobility is always a better tactic if you can. However I do think many prefer not to as the comfort blanket of home and familiarity is strong. I don’t think it’s the role of employers to engineer social change. It’s certainly not clear that DC who went to lower ranking unis are just as good. There are many reasons why they might not be but the biggest issue is many don’t see how to get the better jobs because they aren’t mixing with people who are going to get them.

Must be so hard to recruit! In law for example yes you have to be clever but other skills (conscientious / attention to detail / proactive / good social skills with clients) are if anything more important than pure brainpower.

A younger lawyer I recruited and worked with has risen to the top of the top MC firm I used up work at and I know for a fact he is not that bright! Dh had to do his work for him and was more junior. Nice guy though.

@Ciri

IIf we take your proportion that the brightest don't necessarily go to the best universities but in average those at the better universities have better A levels isn't the inference that it's not not necessarily the best and the brightest that get the best A levels. This would seem to be a massive question for our entire educational system and the embedded systematic means of awarding grades to students. That's a biggie.

Aren't we doing a disservice to those bright children who have arrived to get great A levels and gone on to the likes of Oxbridge. One could argue these children are showing the ambition and talent that are required of high status jobs so it is naturally to select them for these career paths. I think it is a fair point that trying hard and doing well in exams has some potential societal reward or what the point in trying and even what is the point of grading exams. It seems like maybe some want a system where have simply a pass/fail mark at A level so universities don't use grades to 'bias' them.

I think it is deceptive in a sense to tell going people they fall degrees hold the same currency in this country and this is evidenced by career destinatiinons. However I think it is hard to argue against this deception and it is easy to pillorise the person as being an education snob. The Guardian do have an agenda of pushing breathlessness in terms of reputation as part of a left wing campaigning office and it may be their tables and metrics reflect this ethos. It doesn't make it correct.

Proposition sorry!

@Tizerorfizz

You have a very interesting point about university and especially going to a remote university being vowed as a middle class rite of passage. I love in a community's many university's looked on a as middle class indulgence where parents (often non graduates with relatively low incomes) view the benefits of the cost with suspision.

One working class mom we know basically is unashamed of her inverse snobbery and declared she doesn't want her daughter to go university as she has met students and found them arrogant with an entirely different culture and world out look to her. I don't know how much this view will impact the educational ambition of her potentially bright daughter.

For many working class families (and those of minority ethnic and religious grouos) university is not an ambition for their children. (Especially remote high status institutions). The newer universities often in large cities are marketing themselves as a more vocational extension of fe which is more palatable to these famileis. The newer universities benefit massively from those who stay local.

My children went to a very well regarded selective independent school and achieved excellent A Level Grades and went on to top 10 ranking universities. It’s cost me a bloody fortune and I feel like we’ve invested in our children’s education to give them the best possible chance in life. I’m part of the system/ problem.

I can also see it from the other side, having grown up on a council estate, attended a poorly performing state comp (so poorly performing it was shut down the year I finished) but then having gone on to get to a very high level in the legal profession.

However, being objective about it, blind recruitment should find the best candidate for the job. The best candidates don’t always pick high ranking universities for all sorts of reasons. Plus many get in to high ranking universities who are not as intellectually capable as those who make other choices. I know someone at Durham on a military funded degree who really struggled at A Level and basically applied to the least popular course to get in.

I also know three (!!) kids who have just been forced to leave Newcastle having failed year 1 and fallen foul of its no second chances system (although arguably in at least one case this is far more likely to be due to excessive partying than intellectual capability) so two have ended up starting again at Northumbria this year.

Plus the rankings change which is the very premise of this thread and added to that, many recruiters have very outdated knowledge and views on which universities are at the top in the rankings. DH for example (top band equity partner in a large law firm) would have insisted that Newcastle was a “better” university than say Bath but they are streets apart now in most rankings - his view was formed in 1990.

Blind recruitment fills parents like me with horror initially when we think of how we’ve tried to support our children to end up at a university with a good reputation and perhaps managed to achieve that - but surely nobody can really argue that a system that strips away all of the perceived notions of what a person ought to be like and actually blindly assessed what they ARE like, is the fairest way.

Yes of course the statistics will continue to show that kids from the highest ranking universities will outperform on balance those from low ranking places. But it is correlation not causation.

Isn't this more at post graduate level though?
Undergraduate students won't really be taught by research staff?

Maybe that could reasonably apply for some vocational degrees but it certainly doesn't, and shouldn't, for STEM (and I assume many other 'academic' subjects).

Re recruitment..surely employers don't just want 'the brightest'! They also need the ones who've acquired the necessary skills for the role. In some cases an accredited degree from anywhere may suffice (the 'brightest' may even be rejected if the recruiter can see they'd get bored). For others it simply won't, the level of what they've been taught (and been able to learn) needs to be higher.

@Ciri

Firstly congratulations on you children's success.

I think there are interesting maybe wide ranging points about how our educational system merges with career selection.

We maybe have to go the premise that we accept as a society that A levels are graded and there has to be a reason for the grading. The reason for the grading is a means of differentiating ability and to act as goals for our young people to spite to. Personally I feel it is slightly demeaning to young people toughest the grades they arrived for have little ultimate meaning when it comes to employment as there is no correlation between A levels/university attended and general ability in a field of public life.

I hope this does not come across as insulting but if we take science and those that have traditionally made great strides in scientific endeavour the majority do come from Oxbridge. This is not to demean those that don't have an Oxbridge degree it is simply stating the likelihood that great academic minds very likely went to the best universities in the country. I think it is reasonable to accept an element of educational elitism as it is embedded into he country's nature through the presence t of 2 universities.

I think some of the arguments presented are akin to equality of opportunity (which I am all for) and equality of outcome (which is more problematic).

An problem with blind recruitment is that there are no initial filters for interview (or what would those filters be) and we would expect staff to spend half their jobs interviewing absolutely everone. I don't think This is realistic so filters like university attended though not entirely perfect do help.

Interviews are short and I think it helps recruiters to have as wide as wide a view of the candidate as possible and that includes university as well as other things such as experience etc.

I think those that advocate blind recruitment possibly overlap those that have inclusivity in their political make up and the advocation of blind interviews is a method of supporting working class children into traditionally middle class careers. I think intelligible would be better to equip those students initially with the tools to get into better universities.

You could also suggest that there may be while new tutoring industry shouting up to as it graduates with the blind interview process so it is not immune to some manipulation.

They are certainly complex issues. My view was get the children into the best hardest to get into school and university they could as no harm done then other than to social life as a teenager. It will never really harm you to have good exam grades (unless you are working yourself to death or jumping off a bridge), work hard and go to a harder to get into university.

If there is illegal discrimination at any level my own view is that ultimately in your 20s employers can sort out who is good and who isn't and it will all pan out in the end although getting that first job can be tricky (US universities have been found by the US Supreme Court in a welcome case to breach the law in hiring blacks often over harder working higher achieving Asians at university entrance which is of course leading to change to ensure equality for everyone without fear or favour).

Once you are in, then good hard working people who have the skills for the job (whether that is coding for 16 hours a day in a back room or charming the pants off clients or gaining the highest sales in the company) will do fine. If they don't (eg I wasn't made a partner) they can still do well - I set up on my own which has been brilliant for me but kind of born out of failure. I eat what I kill and if people don't like me they can use another lawyer.

On one of the many issues on this interesting thread, someone wrote about a teenager wanting to fit in at university. In a sense it can be useful to put yourself outside your comfort zone and meet different people. Even just when I was 10 and went on my first holiday ever and also first time out of the UK and on a plane was life changing for me - I still remember to this day playing with Roma children in a Spanish rural area, the heat, the foreign language (our parents had bought a record set of Spanish language things so we knew some of the language before we went there) and much else. It would be a pity if students picked universities based in effect on social class segregation by choice or by rent costs of halls.

Recruitment obviously involves filtering. In the past DH used to see CVs and though he had a good idea of what he was looking for he would spot the occasional applicant who was offering something different and who was worth an interview. Now HR filter and the CVs he sees are very samey.

They might not be using University as a filter but they will be using other things. There is now an increasing tendency to use some form of on line personality test as a first step. Who decides the questions, and what are they looking for?

DS was quite confused when applying for the job he really really wanted and for which he had very strong qualifications. He is essentially a statistician, and struggled with the "agrees strong/disagrees strongly" questions. His instinct would be to look at the data first. He did not get as far as an initial Zoom interview, and indeed got further with an application to the American equivalent despite being in the UK.

Interviewers will have biases, everyone does. So some might go out of their way to support someone from the state sector because they feel they understand their journey and motivation, another might decide an applicant for a client facing role had good social skills because they were easily able to slip into a conversation around a mutual interest about, say, sailing. My concern about the organisation wide tick box approach is that you are essentially building a culture across the organisation. Who sets the questions? Who checks? Can we be sure that there is no subtle political bias, or, say, wanting to measure a candidate's inclusivity by their response to a question on sex or gender.

It's not like blind recruitment is universal. And it's also not like kids from the top universities don't have better "ins" to internships, courses, extra-curriculars etc. that would form part of the filtering even when it is "blind".

Need, my graduate son who was a very good post man for 4.5 years and then a delivery driver, recently applied locally to where he now lives for a postman job and amazingly didn't reach interview stage. There were about 76 psych questions to answer (when in my view the main thing is are you strong enough to carry the bags around, turn up to work on time, have a clean driving licence and know the job). He now has a better job in a warehouse at higher pay so that's fine but it is Royal Mail's loss.

I agree with your comments. It would be good if those who will be working with the person concerned retain some kind of choice over who is hired otherwise HR's attempts to be fair and one size fits all tests could end up being unfair.

Rhinoc, it can be hard to know what extra curriculars employers want, however. I think some want team players so anything that shows that might be useful but who know.... May be it will be better when AI decides it all. We also have 18m m ore people in the UK than when I was born and more than the 15% going to university we had in my day so there is obviously going to be vastly more competition too (although I applied to 139 firms and had 25 interviews before getting my first job - I graduated in a year when we had the worst unemployment for FIFTY years in the UK).

I think a levels are a good way of assessing ability since they are standardised. They are certainly better than degree classification since degree grades are particular to the individual university.

I was initially very much against blind recruitment but actually on reflection it seems like the fairest way.

@Ciri .

I agree that A levels are perhaps the last standardised test we sit but school kids are told they are just a stepping stone into higher education. As an employer I do not see A level results only degree institution and classification.

I think it is actually a really difficult thing to be fair in society and people have different views on fairness. Some may say it's fair to try and negate advantage due to going to certain universities while others will say it's fair that if you have achieved academically then there must be an advantage to this (or why bother trying).

I don't think the status quo of a good university opening doors career wise is going to disappear any time soon. I have participate in quite poor recruitment formats that have been designed with fairness in mind but lead to prescriptive formats disgracefully don't allow differentiation of candidates so I am bit sceptical to be honest.

It'd be better if more unfairness could be negated well before the recruitment stage! And the silly guardian tables do nothing to help that.

I’m quite happy with blind recruitment for my DC. They certainly can’t complain about the results. The process may be imperfect, but it won’t be personal. It’s the best we can do.

I agree that it makes it difficult for businesses to find a practical way to do a first sift to get to reasonable numbers.

@EmpressoftheMundane I think it is personal to remove someone’s uni status. Why shouldn’t the deprived young person who has got to an elite uni have that known and acknowledged when applying for a job? It’s like being put back in a box,

Regarding the legalities of recruitment, employers must design robust recruitment policies . HR won’t want come back on unfair recruitment that can end up in a tribunal. So there must be objectivity. That shouldn’t be favouring a particular uni (although a fair few barristers sets have Oxbridge educated barristers at or near 100.%) but most good employers will look for skills and attributes that they desire. They should then match the applicants to these via early selection, aptitude tests and interviews. Some tests for personality are falling out of favour but selection should be a fair process and as objective as possible. This is why all info should be used and tested against the objectives and weighted. It’s not ok to ignore privately educated dc for example - why not consider them if they meet all reasonable requirements?

There’s been a lot of problems training non HR staff to understand fair recruitment and too many are inclined to bias. Preferring Newcastle to Bath uni or a certain hobby would be examples. I’ve had friends talk me through their recruitment decisions and at times it’s horrifying!

Regarding employment in general @ErrolTheDragon I didn’t say firms just want the brightest. I said brightest and best. Otherwise why look at academics at all and why go through a selection process? They want the best for the business and at a higher level, the brightest they can get. However they can judge how to measure these attributes.

They’re not brighter because the university caused them to be brighter.
But certain universities / courses will have led to an advantage in highly relevant career skills by how they teach and require rigorous analytical thinking and writing together with knowledge assimilation. Additionally tutorials, discussions and societies with a high density of fellow bright students will enhance potential in oral advocacy and how to be succinct and clear.

To dismiss that undergraduate educational advantage as irrelevant is as illogical as saying that all schools are equal for life chances.

Heriot- Watt above UCL for economics! In what world?

How do you blind recruit? How do you source your candidates; how do you decide who to invite for interview?

This would also mean work experiences should be blind too, i.e., not been worked in one field does not mean people aren’t good at it.