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

I know for a fact HSBC held an employment presentation at Oxford Brookes this year. Admittedly, you are more likely to get employed by them if you go to Oxford proper but it is naive to say that employers simply overlook lower ranked universities.

This is really the problem, people tend to measure the employment prospect of universities by how many people go into IB, Ernst & Young, PwC et al, rather than examining the other areas that graduates go on to do well in and how having a degree affects their long term career prospects. For example, the university of Abertay Dundee runs one of the best Computer game design courses in the country with better employment prospects than most computer science degrees, yet it is still classed as a 'bad university'.

I think the way we measure the importance of a degree is flawed and it is annoying that there is so little academic research on the matter.

I don't know when the satisfaction stats are collected-presumably at the end of the course and before the reality of unemployment has kicked in.I don't understand why someone would be satisfied when they're unemployed or working in a supermarket stacking shelves when they've graduated in Law and ended up with a long term debt of 20k.According to the figures you've quoted, two thirds of Law graduates at Keele didn't get graduate jobs. I don't know which year these stats are for, but I suppose they aren't completely up to date-are they for 2009?If so, things will be worse now.
It's true that some people will be better off with a degree but a lot - it looks like more than half- won't be better off.

This is the equivalent of saying because Abertay Dundee has a better reputation amongst gaming companies than Edinburgh or Glasgow it offers better career prospects in general. Assuming that a higher percentage of Edinburgh engineering grads aren't just going into other highly paying sectors (like IB), Heriot Watt may be good for someone wanting to go into an engineering job (and even that seems debatable if the list of places visiting both universities is anything to go by)

but overall which has the better reputation amongst the top employers?

I know for a fact that HSBC take off points from your application if you are not from their target group of universities. I don't think the measurement of grad prospects is an issue, people who do their research into Abertay will know about their links with Sony etc, but then to say any degree from Abertay is the same as any from Glasgow is just misleading(as people seem to do when quoting anecdotes like "my friend from here is on 30k") when clearly Abertay has a small niche that it leads in but falls well behind in others.

End of day a degree is a degree. I rather have a degree then not have one. Look at data below, provided by Unistats, you still think Northampton is a bad choice?



Uni Average UCAS points achieved Sort by % of employed with grad job Sort by % Students satisfied


THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON 220 45% 89%

NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY 300 47% Not enough data

UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN 275 40% 89%

KEELE UNIVERSITY 310 35% 89%

OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY 340 40% 85%

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK 465 55% 90%

A survey sent out to students, six months after they graduated, asks the details of any employment. The job is then classified against the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) framework. Each of the jobs in the SOC framework is allocated a classification of 'graduate', 'non-graduate' or 'unknown'. All students included in this pie chart must have completed their course successfully.

'Graduate job': means those students that hold a graduate job as a percentage of those that are currently in employment.

'Non-graduate job': means those students that do not hold a job classified as a 'graduate job', as a percentage of those that are currently in employment.

Unknown: means those students that are employed six months after graduating where the job they hold cannot be classified as either a 'graduate' or 'non-graduate' job.

This is the equivalent of saying because Abertay Dundee has a better reputation amongst gaming companies than Edinburgh or Glasgow it offers better career prospects in general. Assuming that a higher percentage of Edinburgh engineering grads aren't just going into other highly paying sectors (like IB), Heriot Watt may be good for someone wanting to go into an engineering job (and even that seems debatable if the list of places visiting both universities is anything to go by), but overall which has the better reputation amongst the top employers?

I know for a fact that HSBC take off points from your application if you are not from their target group of universities.

May I ask from you where have seen these lists? Even if you just pulled it out of your ass (which I doubt), it's still not debatable at all because I actually network with recruiters from these industries.



I don't know, because I don't know what you mean by top employer, but I'd imagine that Shell, Chevron, Baker Hughes and other large oil companies count judging by the salaries and other benefits available.

Wouldn't giving a presentation at brookes suggest it is in the 'target group'? Why waste the time and money to prepare a talk if you are going to automatically disqualify any applications you receive as a result?

Do you really mean HSBC or do you mean one department within HSBC?

Do you believe that their HR, marketing and property management departments recruit in the same places as their investment banking front offices?

As an individual faced with a decision about where to go the average is irrelevant to you - you'll be choosing a particular course at a particular institution with a particular employment sector in mind.

I meant the IB arm of HSBC.

Btw, the computer games course at Abertay isn't really the same as a CS course, and it does not have better employment prospects within all CS places (it does with gaming companies) than most others. There is no massive influx of Abertay grads into Google, Amazon and MS, they still hire mostly from the top CS places(Imperial, Edinburgh, Oxbridge).

How many people do you think end up working in the sector at 22 they wanted to work in when they started at 18? Always best to keep your options and wishes open isn't it?

Some people that do CS go into the games industry. Seeing as CS grads recently had only slightly better employment prospects than media studies grads in one survey, I think a course that is so respected within the industry proves invaluable when trying to get a job with companies. I feel you are missing my point which is that ex-polys tend to be much better at game design courses than traditional universities and I tihnk this specialization will pay off. (indeed it has already payed off.) Therefore ex-polys are not worthless.

EDIT: and before anyone says 'its just one course'. No it isn't. I just can't be bothered to type the other numerous examples, perhaps I will when i return.

All universities are fine in my opinion if you are doing a good degree. End of day a degree is a degree.

Completey slate the ineptness of a certain department of a certain uni with whom i've had beef with.