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

Competitive people will look for situations where they can have an advantage and win a greater prize. Those who are not competitive will be drawn to “flat” situations where they will get the same prize no matter what.

Where being competitive is a function of personality, it doesn’t matter so much. Where being competitive is a matter of talent, this matters a lot.

We don’t want talented people walking away from medicine and academia looking for more rewarding games to play.

I totally agree titchy.

Not only mental health reasons either. A young person might be a carer, or have dependents or other financial reasons why they cannot move away.

Investinmyself · Yesterday 21:19
"I’m Legal in local government and we don’t recruit blind.
SQE I’d like to see stats for each provider, rumour is big discrepancies between institutions."
I have been following it closely. It is a complicated picture as SQE has only just come out and it is only in the last year or 2 that the big firms have moved over wholesale to SQE (indeed any LLB graduate of 2024 is still allowed to sit the previous exams LPC - last LPC course for BPP is the course starting this month).
It has been a bit skewed in that people from abroad sat SQE and sometimes have not had good english or were just taking a punt on passing. Now we have the first few cohorts of large numbers of future trainees including those sponsored by the City Consortium and other firms patterns will emerge. I think people with a first do best, then a 2/1, then 2/2 so that seems exactly as would be expected including of a 100% multiple choice exam which is SQE1. Also those trainees sponsored by firms tend to be those who have the highest exam grades so as expected they tend to do best in the exam.
in fact you can now sit SQE and qualify without taking a single course in law ever. you need a level 6 and above diploma or degree in any subject including advanced knitting I suppose, 2 years work experience giving legal advice which could be voluntary in the CAB and to pass SQE1 and 2 exams which can be self taught.

Exams were marked so my daughter knows where she came within her cohort. And there will be degree classes for intercalations. And until this year you received merit based "points" so though there was not degree class, people knew whether they had done well or not. And then, inevitably, it was those with fewest points who wound up in the least popular posts or were allocated very late to a job within a deanery.

You are right though that an outsider would not know.

My point is that a system is not rewarded may be "fairer" but can be demotivating for higher achievers.

It is appalling. I know a medicine candidate - recently got extremely high UCAT score. That apparently is completely ignored in the next round which I think involves some kind of interview - how silly is that? Are we trying to b e communist China when they sent the children of the intelligensia to be refuse collectors in the country side to try to even things out? We are shooting ourselves in the foot.

The laugh has been on the other side with the law exams as exactly the group the woke left thought to help with the new exams by making them 100% multiple choice to help people who have bad English (even though bad English is hardly an attribute for good lawyers and would be like actively seeking medics with hands that shake so much they cannot safely perform surgery) and guess what? Exactly the group they were trying to help with multiple choice only and no difficult law essays have also done very badly in SQE MCQ too.

58 for the one I went to - woot!

They didn't have league tables in 1994 - or if they did I wasn't aware of them.

@Xenia I’ve 3 in my small team all qualifying via different routes.
The solicitor apprenticeship we use is in conjunction with a post 92 university. Their pass rate for apprentices for SQE1 this year was almost 100%. The two in my team who have passed SQE do have a 1st.
I know for bar course there’s a strong link between degree classification and outcome. I’d be interested to see if SQE same.

....My point is that a system where merit is not rewarded may be "fairer" but can be demotivating for higher achievers.

Sorry

Yes.

Sounds like they should find a way to motivate high achievers to want to take on jobs in more difficult areas.

UCAT is 100% multiple choice too. How universities score medical school applicants vary but some do interview the top eg 500 UCAT scores after achieving a minimum academic score, then base subsequent scoring just on interview. So UCAT is definitely considered. But getting 3200 vs 2990 in a single two hour test doesn’t automatically make you a better doctor. Hence why you have to go through a thorough interview round too.

This is why some regional medical schools prioritise local applicants - they are more likely to stay in the area.

Not quite. At the moment they are sending people randomly to more difficult (by which I assume you mean, less popular) areas. Despite the fact that contract terms differ quite markedly in the different component parts of the UK.

If is quite difficult for those who have few family links. Lawyers, teachers or whoever are not expected to drop everything and go to work in the Highlands and Islands or Enniskillen for a couple of years. Shift patterns can be brutal so it is not as if you can fly home at a weekend. Instead you might have 48 hours off mid week after coming off nights. Different people will want different careers, and those set on academic medicine would normally want to rain at teaching hospitals, and be willing to work hard to get there.

Yes it sounds great to allow all medics equal chances of the sought after training jobs, but from what I can see the risk is that the really dedicated are the ones most likely to be demotivated. Like the suggestion that recruiters should limit the number of Oxbridge grads they recruited to 2%. (DD opted for an unpopular deanery under the old system with a reasonable number of points, meaning she got her first choice of placements. A reasonable trade off. Now she would have to take whatever placements allocated.)

This is why some regional medical schools prioritise local applicants - they are more likely to stay in the area.

But their graduates aren't guaranteed to get foundation jobs in their region unless they meet specific criteria (caring responsibilities, ongoing healthcare requirements, evidence of admission via a widening-access scheme and receipt of hardship-related financial support during university). Once someone has had to go elsewhere for foundation training, they are less likely to return as they might have formed attachments in their new area.

The correlation between UCAT scores and doing well at medical school is quite weak. And the correlation then between UCAT and being a good doctor is probably even weaker.

UCAT may get you to interview, but after that the interview should determine. Surely.

(My dyslexic daughter has slow processing speeds and is very bad at timed tests. She is, however, good at interviews and a talented scientist. She got into a medical school when there were still a few that did not require UCAT. She, and some of her friends, would really struggle now to get a place. Yet as far as I can see, they were far from the weakest in the cohort.)

Or more to the point there is such a shortage of training places, and indeed of locum jobs for medics applying for training places, that even after foundation you cannot choose where in the UK you work. You take what you get. And if you don't get anything, you leave the profession or go to Australia.

Like the suggestion that recruiters should limit the number of Oxbridge grads they recruited to 2%.

It was a tongue in cheek suggestion, not serious!! I was trying to make a point about where do you stop if you are always trying to rule out advantage as unfair.

@LongtailedTitmouse Just breathing before long!

I am delighted to be told I’m privileged! I’m not highly educated and don’t work at a university so I know my place - at the bottom of the pile. I really think guessing at why a good student doesn’t want a better uni doesn’t help social mobility. We mostly think aiming high is worthwhile until all the excuses are trotted out. No wonder the Sutton Trust doesn’t see the improvements it wants.

We mostly think aiming high is worthwhile until all the excuses are trotted out.

One in six 18 year old uni applicants have a disability. Needing to stay local is not a fucking excuse. How dare you suggest that.

For heavens sake that stat is ludicrous! Where is the research into that? One in six?? Plus I can tell you very clearly that the disabled want to go to the best uni they can. Just like anyone else. How dare you say they cannot make it- and be limited! Should they “know their place” in your world? Not think about aiming high? No. Just stay at home. That’s good enough for you. Not something I would suggest - ever.

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-15

The best university they can SUCCEED AT. Success for students who have some measure of disadvantage to overcome will very often mean support from parents and the local health services they're already engaged with.

I make that more like 20%, 1 in 5, but probably a majority of those won't need to stay local for uni.

And given that the U.K. population density is quite heavily focussed on major cities, a 'local' university may be an excellent one even if they don't have the luxury of choice.

So while the numbers who may indeed be best served by a university with a lower rating than they might otherwise have aspired to may be significant, it's not going to be quite that large a proportion.

Inclusviity only goes so far. We accept as a society there is a spectrum in ability in a number of fields and it is fair ultimately that those with the most ability are given opportunities for high status roles in life. I am not saying that to be unnecessarily elitist but the alternative is to say to young people don't because you have the same opportunities no no matter your university , degree class or overall ability. I don't think that works.

social mobility to me is aiming to get more working class children into better universities not using a panacea that the whole new raft of new universities can replicate and offer the same education as older universities despite the low entry tariffs.

I know of a lecturer who taught politics at a newer university (post 92}. The graduates outcomes for the politics studenrs were poor and the academic continually vented about the snobbery of employers not giving working class students from her class a chance. She wrote papers on how higher education was systemically biased against the working class and employee bias against the newer universities had to be challenged.

Employers though are only going for the best applicants and these come from the higher tariff universities .

The same thought to through the Guardian team when designing or compiling uni leagies. It is an attempt unsuccessfully to persuade society that there is some sort of revolution in the status quo of our educational system and eventually all universities will be equal. Well they may be equal but some will be more equal than others

I have a friend who recruits trainees for her law firm. They very rarely take recruits from the newer universities. Over the years they have taken a few but she says they have never done as well as recruits from old universities and they have never kept them on after their traineeship. They are a business. They ultimately don’t care where you went to university, they care how well you do your job, and they have found students who study at universities with lower entry tariffs don’t do as well as students who study at universities that select students with higher academic ability.

In law there are certain skills that mean you succeed that aren’t necessarily ascertainable by looking at academic grades. Was chatting about this with a partner at a local firm. They now employ candidates and offer the good ones the training contracts as it’s a real investment for them as they are not a massive firm. The best ones on the job are not necessarily the ones with glowing academic cvs.