Guardian University League tables 2020 - Notts Trent rules

Yes, Loughborough is good, but still, not excellent. It can easily argue that imperial/UCL/Edinburgh and even Manchester is better than Loughborough in engineering. If you are choosing between Loughborough and Manchester, the teaching/social quality in Loughborough may surpass Manchester's research quality, but Imperial/UCL will clearly provide better chances than Loughborough, yet both two are lower than Loughborough in Guardian, which doesn't make any sense.

What are these better chances, outside of academia, that UCL provides over Loughborough for engineering ?

Higher employer reputation, higher quality of network, higher capacity of classmates, which all results in higher expected salaries.
As a LSE and UCL student, I don't want to be sounded like biased, so you can ignore my UCL comments, but do you really think Loughborough can rival Imperial or Bristol? It's not common for students choose Loughborough and reject Imperial/Bristol, while their rankings are all lower.

These uni rankings are so often BS, but this is a new level. LSE IS 30TH FOR ECONOMICS AHAHAHA

Have you studied economics at lse, let alone the other 29 above it?

Depends on the industry. Loughborough is a very good choice if you're pursuing engineering and I'd choose it over the London unis.

Correction: LSE is 35th. I do indeed study economics at one of the 34 above it. The idea that Nottingham Trent would be 28 places above LSE at economics is patently absurd.

These rankings are ultra-skewed by satisfaction reporting from the NSS. If I'm a slacker who coasted into a mediocre university and is given an easy and un-challenging course, I'm going to be very happy and rate everything highly. If you're challenged and have to work hard and struggle, you probably wont rate things as highly, but you'll have benefited more.

What matters is how much you've actually learnt, how well you've been able to apply it, and how much it will benefit your future employment. However, these rankings mostly forget about that, and ask how students 'feel' instead.

Correction: LSE is 35th. I do indeed study economics at one of the 34 above it. The idea that Nottingham Trent would be 28 places above LSE at economics is patently absurd.

These rankings are ultra-skewed by satisfaction reporting from the NSS. If I'm a slacker who coasted into a mediocre university and is given an easy and un-challenging course, I'm going to be very happy and rate everything highly. If you're challenged and have to work hard and struggle, you probably wont rate things as highly, but you'll have benefited more.

What matters is how much you've actually learnt, how well you've been able to apply it, and how much it will benefit your future employment. However, these rankings mostly forget about that, and ask how students 'feel' instead.

Yes L'Boro is well respected for engineering but, Imperial is still well above it and the top end RG unis generally have more expertise as well. tbh Uni rankings are a complete joke, the data is pure ****...

What do you mean expertise? That sounds like a good thing if you want to go into research

Thats my point L'Boro is a very good engineering school... but it does not have the same level of expertise other Unis with more engineering research have its still an excellent program tho...

But research isn't very important for most students who go into industry. If you want to go into research/academia then fair enough but those students are a minority.

Yes but if you care about the content the uni is providing you in the teaching, some professors have more expertise than others, if all you want is the piece of a paper from a reputable institute then yes very true L'Boro is considered a very strong engineering uni, but if you care about the content as well, then you might want to have more world leading experts on hand teaching you the content and a handful of Unis have that in engineering.

So it's absurd that a uni you've never studied at is ranked below other unis you've never studied at.

It's absurd that an extremely well renowned university for Economics with the highest expected earnings of all university courses is ranked 28 places below an ex-poly with poor prestige and poor expectations. FYI, I have actually studied at a university that was ranked higher, and can tell you it doesn't deserve to be so.

Someone needs to look at why the app is rubbish at cutting off posts if you go back to edit them...

Salary and industry aren’t good measures - they’d be worse than the current one which is basically “did you need a degree to do this job”. The good news is that the employability data will switch to 18 months post graduating - must be next year if it isn’t this year. That will at least be a little more reflective of the employability stats.

However whatever the system, the data collection will always be open to abuse. For employability that will include universities employing their NEET on short term assignments, or putting them on a free short term PG course when the survey is taken. For others it will be paying employers to take them on short term assignments. But even outside of these practices, even the resource put into manipulating the inputs of data will always skew the data in the universities favour - even the basics of who they communicate the NSS out to, who they fail to chase up, who they actively target. That drives all of the data, not just employability to be skewed. And why the whole thing needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Just because someone conducts the survey, doesn’t mean other organisations haven’t got the power and capability to promote it. You are naive if you think universities are not promoting (and sometimes pressurising) certain groups to complete the NSS and actively removing those from the communications where they know the stats will work against them.

I’ve seen it in action. I’ve been part of the process (securing alumni NEETs a job and then sending them a link to the NSS to complete). I’ve been in meetings where these tactics have been discussed by senior management in universities.

Quality teaching is only one of the measures of the survey. So there are plenty of basic ways to ensure other measures work in a universities favour.

You seem to misunderstand how basic data can be utilised to show how these tactics are working. It often doesn’t need a seismic impact, small changes and influences here and there can have a real collective impact that helps.

Having done this purely focused on improving the employability stats with very small sections of a student population, I know these “tactics” are working. The results and improvements of the surveys are proof in part of that.