Are there any truly 'bad' universities in the UK?

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1st Greenwich Maths =/= 1st Cambridge Maths

That just shows you how difficult it is to attain a 1st at Cambridge Maths and it's of a reputable quality seeing as students have to do STEP before they are admitted (which I doubt Greenwich graduates could even do).

What an insult to Cambridge to even compare the two courses. :lolwut:

Just look at the course content for God's sake.

A more interesting question is when they stopped being comparable.

In the 1982 Cambridge Part 2 maths tripos there were 48 wranglers (1st class honours students)

In 1982 in the then 17 polytechnics there were 11 firsts in mathematics and 1 first in a modular degree including mathematics. One of those firsts was at Thames Polytechnic (now Greenwich University).

In all there were 15 firsts at Thames Polytechnic in all subjects that year.

My guess is that every one of those 11 mathematics firsts from polys in 1982 was of exactly comparable standard to Cambridge's 48 firsts in maths.

Reply 261

StarOfGerrad

Original post by didgeridoo12uk

thames valley and any other universities that have entry requirements on some courses of EE.

if a student has basically failed their A'levels, there is no way they should be allowed to waste taxpayers money having even more education at a higher level. so any university that lets them do that is obviously run terribly

How many points is EE? I've never had to deal with tariffs but I can't imagine anyone getting on anything with EE.

Someone may have blagged a place with **** grades through clearing on an undersubscribed course but I can't imagine it being common place and I doubt anyone will be able to point to any examples.

I did the math on the A level entry requirements a while ago and the primary reason tables show such a low entry requirement for TVU is because of the number of mature and international students skewing the figures.

Roughly 30% of students at TVU have "good" A levels but that's actually pretty good when you consider that 55% are mature students entering through access courses and relevant experience and the remaining 15% are international students.

TVU's primary focus as a university is teaching and employment which for some reason doesn't get you very high in the tables.

They lose out on vast sums of money because they don't do much research and they don't do much research because they don't have the funding to put into facilities and because they don't have the facilities they're unable to attract leading academics to secure research funding in the first place.

This also has a detrimental effect on other sections of the tables like the peer assessments where the department heads of a handful of institutions get to grade other universities based on nothing more than their opinion. Why a handful of elite universities get to pull the ladder up over everyone else I don't know, it doesn't seem like a good way to be impartial.

These three factors impact the placement of TVU in the tables quite significantly which effects the quality of students applying which means most school leavers are there through clearing and not necessarily doing courses they're suited to or want to do which leads to a higher dropout rate.

I don't understand why everyone insists on piling on TVU it actually does very well with what it gets which is **** all. If Warwick had to operate on TVU's budget they'd have 10 times the number of students a quarter of the staff and departments with an operating budget of peanuts for about a decade.

Reply 262

Einheri

Any univeristy that needs to pay to advertise on the frontpage of TSR must be pretty shocking.

Reply 263

TheFlyingDutchman

Original post by Joinedup

Probably wasn't her first job either TBH.

Can you imagine how strange it would be if selection comittees of grown adults hiring for senior jobs like that were playing TSR 'league table bingo'

Well the Oxbridge lot were hardly fresh graduates were they ? It's a CEO position everyone had lots of work experience under them.

I'm not saying ''omdz Bradford is clearly better dan oxbridge look at dis woman''

My point is that it's pretty clear that even though the university you go to is important, you can make up for going to a ''lesser uni'' by working your arse of.

Personally I'm not good enough to get into Oxbridge and because I don't really like London I'm going to choose a local university. My gf is playing a part in the university I choose which I know sounds stupid but whatever.

Reply 264

nulli tertius

Original post by TheFlyingDutchman

I think you need to bear this in mind as well.

Although A level and university results have changed over the years, innate intelligence has not.

When that woman went to university perhaps 7-8% of people went into higher education and did degrees either at university or polytechnics.

With the exception of Oxford and Cambridge which have had virtually no change in undergraduate numbers, all of the other "top" universities have grown enormously in size.

Whilst many bright people didn't go anywhere near university in the 1980s and the vast majority of bright kids do now go to university and will have taken up many of these new places at "top" universities, other places will have gone to people who in the 1980s ended up at lesser universities and Polys.

Furthermore, in the specific case of Bradford (and I think Salford as well) people are reading back present reputation into the past. These two universities have tended in the last 20 years to underperform their peers. Admittedly fallible memory would not have suggested any significant difference in the 1980s between Bradford and say, Warwick. The two joke universities of the pre-1992 era were Brunel and Keele.

Reply 265

MJay91

Original post by Valh

And your firm is Northumbria? ...

Yeah. So?

Reply 266

im so academic

Original post by nulli tertius

No, I am frankly disgusted people can even compare poly math degrees with Cambridge's Mathematics tripos.

Reply 267

MJay91

Original post by Valh

Northumbria isn't really that good either. So I think it's funny you call it bad.

It's definitely not a truly bad university. If Warwick for example would offer the course I'm interested in, I would go for it. However, they don't. And since Northumbria is among the best in country for Marketing, I had to apply for Northumbria. :frown:

Reply 268

nulli tertius

Original post by im so academic

No, I am frankly disgusted people can even compare poly math degrees with Cambridge's Mathematics tripos.

This comment is totally irrational.

There was a world before the present academic race to the bottom and to deny it once existed is rather like asserting that the world is flat because you can see the horizon.

Reply 269

Valh

Original post by MJay91

Yea, all universities have strengths and weaknesses which is why I doubt there are any truly bad ones. Overall, I wouldn't say Northumbria is better or worse than AUOL.

Reply 270

Joinedup

Original post by TheFlyingDutchman

did I say that's what you were saying? - a degree from a 'lowly' university isn't a lifelong curse and a degree from oxbridge doesn't confer a protective golden aura of invincibility that's going to get you hired ahead of all other candidates 10 or 20 years down the road.

Empolyers are hiring people at the end of the day, not institutions they attended years before.

It's rather sad reading TSR to see that students have so little faith in their own abilitiy to get on in life by their own efforts and seem to be engaging in obsessive brand name worship of the russell group etc.

Reply 271

didgeridoo12uk

Original post by House of Jonny

And on what earth have you heard of universities that give people entry to a course with EE? :LOLWUT:

thames valley do... take a look at their prospectus. thats my whole point, any university that does that REALLY shouldn't be called a university

northampton uni!

Original post by LilacTweet

northampton uni!

Why?

Reply 274

chrislpp

I know this much, being a **** and framing your degree from a university you claim to be one of the best in the country, quoting league tables and the like, will get you a great job earning the top salary of any graduate.

Trust me, I couldn't be any more right.

Reply 275

StarOfGerrad

Original post by didgeridoo12uk

thames valley do... take a look at their prospectus. thats my whole point, any university that does that REALLY shouldn't be called a university

Okay I've wasted an hour of my time doing exactly that and see no mention of a required EE.

As best I can tell from UCAS tariff points (which I wasted even more time looking up) the most you'll get for any kind of EE grade is 80 points. The lowest points requirement I can find for any course is 200 points.

From what I'm seeing you can't even do an Fda with less than 100 points.

Reply 276

RupertTheBear

Original post by nulli tertius

This has got to go into the retarded comments on TSR hall of fame. Obviously you must have literally no understanding of mathematics, but I think extra credit is due for ignorance and persistent refusal to accept that some institutions attract more able students. Just briefly look at the courses. Don't get me wrong a first from a polytechnic in Mathematics is worth something, but it is not on par with a first from Cambridge in one of its strongest subjects.

Reply 277

puddlejumper

Original post by RupertTheBear

Just out of curiosity and because you are so adamant about it, what is your evidence for that statement?

After all if the subject content is the same and the end result is the same why is one superior to the other? Perhaps you can identify the differences that make one superior to the other. Other than the fact that one is in a building called Cambridge and one is a polytechnic.

Reply 278

Wookie42

Original post by puddlejumper

For starters do you have any idea how much harder an Oxbridge student has to work than someone studying at say Sheffield Hallam? In all honesty though, I can't even be bothered to argue with someone who can't understand why a university that is internationally one of the best in the world is superior to one that is unheard of outside of Britain...