21 universities handing out too many 1sts/2:1s

But I find that "universities handing out too many 1sts" is a ridiculous title. If the student fulfilled the criteria for a 1st, they should get a 1st, simple as.

It would appear that London is having a particularly ****ty time.

I think the issue is that the standard required for a 1st almost certainly isn't the same at all universities.

that is perhaps an issue, and for you a bit of a hobby-horse, but it isn't the issue adverted to in the article.

Surely it's very much obvious that the degree awarded depends on the university. I mean, different universities offer different modules on their courses, some have more coursework and practical work compared to others, some put a much higher weighting on exams, some incorporate placements; the list goes on.

I don't see the problem with this, either.

The problem is twofold.

One, there are strict grade cutoffs for a number of jobs and postgraduate courses which disadvantage those who go to the harsher marking and more demanding universities. It seems significantly unfair to me that a KCL student has a higher chance of graduating with an unemployable degree grade simply because they chose to go to KCL rather than Warwick.

Two, it makes life very difficult for employers and postgraduate course administrators. I'm considering employing a computer scientist graduate a few months down the road, and I honestly have no clue whether I should be more impressed with an Oxford 2.1 or a Bath 1st (since I don't know the courses in detail). Because there is no conformity on difficulty level, content, or marking standards, I'm going to have to pretty much discount their grades completely in making my decision.

Now it's easy to say something like 'well you shouldn't look at grades anyway, you should look at their actual knowledge and experience in what you need', and this is true to some extent, but also impractical if there are large numbers of candidates (e.g. at a bank, where some guys see 100s of CVs for a single position). Besides, a lot of employers just want to recruit someone for their general intelligence rather than specific knowledge, so that they can train them up, and you can see it's exceptionally difficult to decide whether or not an Imperial 2.1 is indicative of more general intelligence than a Salford 1st.

I'm sure there is more to it than that. Perhaps Warwick accepts a higher standard of cohort, which would naturally be expected to obtain better results at university? I'm just throwing that out there, I don't know much about either university.

Most employers that I have had dealings with have used a structured process to select graduates for jobs, which has included things like interviews, various psychometric tests, presentations, group tasks, technical tests, and probably a few other things too. I haven't heard the suggestion that employers are finding it difficult to select between a 1st from X university or a 2:1 from Y university outside of TSR, nor that it is even a concern.

The whole point of this study is that it controls for that.

"Figures showed 21 institutions awarded more good degrees than would be expected based on a number of factors such as students’ social background, previous school, prior qualifications and the university's entry standards."



Ah yes, a 'structured process'. Do you know what that actually translates into? I can only speak for investment banking/hedge funds/prop trading firms, but it basically means that if you're not from one of a select few universities, you're automatically not even considered. You can be the top graduate in your year from Dundee or Bangor uni, and you won't ever make it to an interview or any of those other assessments you mentioned. This is precisely due to banks not being able to compare the top graduate from Dundee with a 2.1 from LSE, so they introduce a cutoff line of unis with generally good entry standards and 'prestige', and mass-reject anyone outside that selection. Does that sound fair, or optimal for either employer or graduate?

Also, what of those employers who aren't able to go through the expenses of full fledged assessment days? Ask any small/medium sized business owner looking to hire someone for technical work and they'll tell you it's very difficult to determine how good someone actually is. Better conformity of degree standards wouldn't alleviate this completely, but it would certainly help.

It is exactly the issue in the article:

Prof Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said the latest study showed “that there’s no national degree standard”. “The degree awarded clearly depends very much on the university you attend,” he said. “Some universities are a lot more generous than others.”

Ah yes, a 'structured process'. Do you know what that actually translates into? I can only speak for investment banking/hedge funds/prop trading firms, but it basically means that if you're not from one of a select few universities, you're automatically not even considered. You can be the top graduate in your year from Dundee or Bangor uni, and you won't ever make it to an interview or any of those other assessments you mentioned. This is precisely due to banks not being able to compare the top graduate from Dundee with a 2.1 from LSE, so they introduce a cutoff line of unis with generally good entry standards and 'prestige', and mass-reject anyone outside that selection. Does that sound fair, or optimal for either employer or graduate?

Also, what of those employers who aren't able to go through the expenses of full fledged assessment days? Ask any small/medium sized business owner looking to hire someone for technical work and they'll tell you it's very difficult to determine how good someone actually is. Better conformity of degree standards wouldn't alleviate this completely, but it would certainly help.

which is what sort of proportion of graduate employment in the UK?

for technical work they'd rather hire someone with experience than a graduate - the awful truth is that fresh graduates are pretty blooming useless - even if they went to oxbridge. Any boss with half a brain can ask technical questions at interview. assessment centres are a backside covering excercise designed to dilute the responsibility for making a bad hire.

no employer cares whether or not oxbridge art history graduates know 15% more art history than graduates of leeds trinity.

Well, investment banking recruits such a small percentage of the years' graduates that I don't think we can justify reworking the education system to make it easier for their recruitment processes. I think that the Dundee and Bangor students would, quite rightly, be annoyed if their degree standards had to change to suit investment banks, especially when very few, if any, of them will even be interested in such careers.

Other sectors manage fine, if investment banks struggle currently then I am afraid they will have to come up with their own solution.



Having been interviewed by a few SMEs myself for technical work, I did not hear this concern. It certainly isn't beyond the ability of an SME to at least have a double interview (i.e. one technical and another personal).

I don't think it's a completely inconsequential number. I wouldn't be surprised if the sector as a whole is one of the bigger recruiters of grads.

Why would Dundee/Bangor students be annoyed about their degrees changing so that they could apply to a wider variety of jobs? It's a little presumptuous to suppose that none of them want to work in finance.

What about my first point re: KCL student much more likely to get an unemployable degree class simply because they chose to go to KCL rather than Warwick?

If it was, then surely graduates from a much wider range of universities would be represented.

I'm not. I'm assuming that a negligible amount of them want to work in investment banking, not finance as a whole. Finance is a big area, and a Dundee or Bangor degree certainly doesn't disqualify one from working in "finance".

Your point is null because a 2:2 isn't unemployable.

Because the article isn't about inter-unversity circumstance but intra-university circumstance: named universities have been more generous than they themselves have been in the past, is what has led to the concern about grade inflation. Oxford surprised the surveymakers by suggesting the class of 2010-13 as appreciably more able on the average than the (Oxford) class of 2008-11, without anything quantifiably true of the cohort that could obviously account for a statistically significant difference in ultimate outcomes.

Students with better A-levels do better in higher education

There is a relationship between a student’s level of attainment at A-level relative to the average of the school and his or her potential for success at degree level

Degree outcomes are not affected by the average performance of the school that a student attended