Why wouldn't this work?

You get lots of unis like (inb4 I offend anyone, I just randomly picked unis off the times rankings ranked below 20) e.g. Glasgow, Leeds, Aston. They'll never be as prestigious as Oxbridge because of history (nothing wrong with that), but it's not like within 5 years they'll suddenly be perceived the same as Imperial, UCL. (ok I know this varies A LOT for subject, but hold on, I'm talking about a really dumb general view).

Why don’t these places just add about 30 % to the curriculum of every course, put the entry requirements up to A*AA or something like that, and then market themselves as some sort of Imperial style hell hole, where you want to commit suicide after a week, and you either fail after one year or come out of it really smart? These places have arts courses as well, so with all those girls it probably can’t feel as bad as Imperial.

Surely this would feed in to the research system, as some of the students would want to do post-grad, and then eventually it would bring more funding for the uni, making them world class?
Why wouldn’t this work?

Reply 1

llys

I think they would run out of money in the years before their reputation has caught up because students are too cautious to go for prestige without apparent foundation (i.e. history of excellence), and the foundation you have to build first.

NCH is trying to build a reputation in the way you have described, from scratch, and so far I don't think they are doing very well on it, or not as well as they expected, because not a lot of students are believing their hype so they get very few applications, and now have to admit people with grades below AAA anyway. Yet they have the advantage that they can ask for £18k tuition fees to fill the coffers in the meantime, so eventually it may work out. I think a normal university would just run out of money.

Reply 2

Joinedup

It'll take years for the reputation of a course to catch up - in the mean time it's still got to fill the courses up.

Warwick managed to do very well for a 60's uni but in contrast to a uni today today it

1 didn't have to worry about league tables for it's first few decades
2 had a lot less competition from other unis
3 did it at a time when there were a lot more bright students to available places