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Why are the privately educated skewed towards Russell Group Universities?

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/dec/22/oxbridgeandelitism-oxforduniversity#data


As the data suggests, it seems like it's the Russell Group Universities that have a disproportionate % of privately educated pupils. For example, I am privately educated myself and I go to Nottingham University where over 32% of the students are privately educated. Private school pupils only make up around 7% of the UK population. It's the same with pretty much all the other Russell Group Universities, and with ex-Polytechnics it seems to be a lot lower %. Why is this?

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Privately educated students tend to be smarter?

Partly because many private schools have tough entrance exams so they select the best, and partly because rich parents tend to produce smarter children (because IQ correlates with earnings and offspring IQ).

There is also evidence that private schools "inflate" achievement in the sense that privately educated students grades get worse degree outcome than state-educated students with equivalent a-level grades. This may be due to better teaching, smaller classes, more university /exam preparation.
Univerisities are elitist in that those who occupy administrative posistions in top universities tend to be from private schooled background hence they disproportionately select in favour of private schooled applicants.
Original post by chazwomaq
Privately educated students tend to be smarter?

Partly because many private schools have tough entrance exams so they select the best,


The vast majority of private schools are liberal with who gets in as long as they can pay. I went to quite a big one and there were plenty of moneyed morons.

and partly because rich parents tend to produce smarter children (because IQ correlates with earnings and offspring IQ).

Source?

There is also evidence that private schools "inflate" achievement in the sense that privately educated students grades get worse degree outcome than state-educated students with equivalent a-level grades. This may be due to better teaching, smaller classes, more university /exam preparation.

It's obvious that the main reason for this is that private schools almost always provide a significantly higher quality of education and therefore produce students with stronger grades, as well as prep for things like entrance tests/interviews.

I also believe that the higher socioeconomic group of private students correlates with more books in the home etc. encouraging learning and interest, and their family lives tend to be more supportive and functional.
Reply 4
Original post by chazwomaq
Privately educated students tend to be smarter?

Partly because many private schools have tough entrance exams so they select the best, and partly because rich parents tend to produce smarter children (because IQ correlates with earnings and offspring IQ).

There is also evidence that private schools "inflate" achievement in the sense that privately educated students grades get worse degree outcome than state-educated students with equivalent a-level grades. This may be due to better teaching, smaller classes, more university /exam preparation.


Elitist mindset, poor people should stay poor. You know where you can take that.
Original post by Birkenhead

Source?



Coward, W. Mark; Sackett, Paul R. (1990). "Linearity of ability-performance relationships: A reconfirmation". Journal of Applied Psychology 75 (3): 297–300

Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. A. (1996). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Neisser, Ulric et al. (1996). "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns". American Psychologist 52 (2): 77–101, 85.

R. J. Sternberg & E. L. Grigorenko (Eds.), Intelligence, heredity, and environment. New York, NY

Sternberg, R. J. (1988). Advances in the psychology of human intelligence (Vol. 4). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.


It's obvious that the main reason for this is that private schools almost always provide a significantly higher quality of education and therefore produce students with stronger grades, as well as prep for things like entrance tests/interviews.

I also believe that the higher socioeconomic group of private students correlates with more books in the home etc. encouraging learning and interest, and their family lives tend to be more supportive and functional.


These are certainly plausible, but we should always be careful about saying something is obvious without evidence. As a said, there is some evidence that private schools inflate grades, but whether that is enough to account for all the differences in different unis is not clear.
Original post by shahbaz
Elitist mindset, poor people should stay poor. You know where you can take that.


:confused: I didn't say anyone should do anything did I?
Its more than just the reasons mentioned above though its because people who come from state schools are much less ambitious on average than private schools are, this is for many reasons like successful pushy parents, more academic learning environment etc.Cambridge try and make the proportion of state and private applications to the University equal to the proportion of successful applications from state and private schools, the problem is because of these reasons and those listed above, this proportion is much closer than the proportion of all people studying at private schools compared to all those studying at state schools across the country.
Reply 8
They were educated by Bertrand Russell. If they do not belong to a set Russell they will end up as a storm in a teapot. I would express that in formal logic but I don't want to insult anyones 'comprehensive' education (rofl)
Nottingham is my firm this year and I am publically educated.

Personally I believe your findings come around as a result of pressure to succeed from both teachers and parents. Granted this pressure works and as a result they go to better uni's.
Original post by Birkenhead
The vast majority of private schools are liberal with who gets in as long as they can pay. I went to quite a big one and there were plenty of moneyed morons.



Source?



It's obvious that the main reason for this is that private schools almost always provide a significantly higher quality of education and therefore produce students with stronger grades, as well as prep for things like entrance tests/interviews.

I also believe that the higher socioeconomic group of private students correlates with more books in the home etc. encouraging learning and interest, and their family lives tend to be more supportive and functional.



Original post by shahbaz
Elitist mindset, poor people should stay poor. You know where you can take that.


Not that he needs defending, but the guy you're disbelieving is I believe an evolutionary biologist lecturer, probably on track to becoming a professor.

In other words he probably knows a thing or two about the reality of heritability of intelligence, regardless of automatic knee-jerk cries of elitism.
Original post by ClickItBack
Not that he needs defending, but the guy you're disbelieving is I believe an evolutionary biologist lecturer, probably on track to becoming a professor.

In other words he probably knows a thing or two about the reality of heritability of intelligence, regardless of automatic knee-jerk cries of elitism.


I don't think I said anything like that in my post ?
Original post by Birkenhead
I don't think I said anything like that in my post ?


Yeah fair enough, it was more directed to the other guy.
Reply 13
I think it's probably because private schools are so focused on all of their students due to the fact that they have the resources. I know that at my school, the focus is placed on students who are getting the lower grades so those who have the potential to go to a RG uni are left to get on with things on they're own. You've then got the obvious stuff like better teaching, better facilities and richer parents who can afford private tutoring.
Might need to look at the types of courses they're doing as well, afaik oxbridge claims it gets very few applicants for arts courses from people with less privileged backgrounds.

A lot of nursing courses, radiography courses etc ended up inside the post 92 unis... quite possibly people after nursing or radiographer jobs don't care about whether or not they're in the Russell group (and quite possibly they're right not to care)
To the poster who said private school kids are smarter, you're wrong.
Most human beings value things when they have to pay for them, therefore they make a greater effort to make the most of it. There are very few who are there on intelligence alone (scholarships). Also success is drilled in a lot more in private schools than state schools.
Original post by chazwomaq
Privately educated students tend to be smarter?

Partly because many private schools have tough entrance exams so they select the best, and partly because rich parents tend to produce smarter children (because IQ correlates with earnings and offspring IQ).

There is also evidence that private schools "inflate" achievement in the sense that privately educated students grades get worse degree outcome than state-educated students with equivalent a-level grades. This may be due to better teaching, smaller classes, more university /exam preparation.
Is this contradiction a joke?
Quite obvious really. Private school pupils receive, on average, a better education than those who aren't paying for their education thus tend to achieve better grades, thus are more likely to meet the entry requirements of the best universities.

So many obvious reasons why the privileged end up in Russell Group unis I'm surprised the question had to be asked.
Reply 18
Original post by chazwomaq
Privately educated students tend to be smarter?

Partly because many private schools have tough entrance exams so they select the best, and partly because rich parents tend to produce smarter children (because IQ correlates with earnings and offspring IQ).


Re: the part in bold, surely you must be joking? But I suspect you're in earnest, so (a) there is also evidence that IQ is no reliable measure for intelligence and (b) correlation does not imply causation and (c) there is an abundance of anecdotal evidence about to contest that ridiculous statement.
Original post by ella896
Re: the part in bold, surely you must be joking? But I suspect you're in earnest, so (a) there is also evidence that IQ is no reliable measure for intelligence and (b) correlation does not imply causation and (c) there is an abundance of anecdotal evidence about to contest that ridiculous statement.


Well think I've read that it does... but you're also right to be skeptical about people giving pat answers suggesting everything is running on nice clear tramlines.

A lot of people seem to get overexcited about correlations and averages imo - here's one way of looking at the correlation between IQ and occupation...

OccsX.jpg
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/98-07.pdf

from which it appears that the top 25% of Janitors have higher IQ than the bottom 25% of college lecturers.

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