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For the first time in history, St Andrews outranks Oxbridge

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: For the first time in history, St Andrews outranks Oxbridge

#21

Post by arethuza »

jna_sh wrote: post #19
eptcyka wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind you, these are not colleges, these are universities. Colleges are not as highly esteemed in the UK.

The two most common usages of “college” in UK education are: - pre-university education for 16-18 year olds. This is where you complete qualifications for university entry, such as A Levels, Scottish Highers, or the IB, as well as more vocationally aligned qualifications like BTEC or NVQ. This stage of education used to be optional but recently became compulsory. - institutions within a larger university umbrella. Th…

"UK education"

Nitpick: not all of the UK uses A-levels.

Re: For the first time in history, St Andrews outranks Oxbridge

#22

Post by foldr »

acta_non_verba wrote: post #16
cinntaile wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imperial College London has a pretty good rep, no? Even when compared to most universities in the UK?

Imperial college is just a part of the university of London. Like many words in the UK, sometimes “college” is used in a more historical meaning

Imperial College is not part of the University of London (it left in 2007).

In any case, the ‘University of London’ is an almost meaningless umbrella institution. Its members function as separate universities for all practical purposes.

Re: For the first time in history, St Andrews outranks Oxbridge

#23

Post by andrewingram »

n4r9 wrote: post #18
bencollier49 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, but with 30% of the students there from Scotland (more than three times the UK population average), I'm guessing it's a factor in satisfaction ratings.

As a former lecturer, I found that student satisfaction often came down to things like how "easy" the lectures are. Big name universities like Oxford traditionally haven't (until recently?) felt the pressure to hit these objectives since they can ride on their reputation.

What do you mean by easy in this context?

Re: For the first time in history, St Andrews outranks Oxbridge

#24

Post by jna_sh »

bencollier49 wrote: post #7
eptcyka wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind you, these are not colleges, these are universities. Colleges are not as highly esteemed in the UK.

They're basically a different thing in the UK, I think. At the risk of stereotyping, they're where you go to get vocational qualifications (further, as opposed to higher, education).

Not necessarily, vocational qualifications in the U.K. (the NVQ) are often available at sixth-form colleges, but they will also teach the non-vocational A-level qualifications too. I don’t think there’s any consistency to what mix of vocational vs non-vocational certificate you can expect at an institution based on use of the word college.

Re: For the first time in history, St Andrews outranks Oxbridge

#25

Post by biofox »

arethuza wrote: post #17
bsd44 wrote: post #11

I am looking at their document* explaining methodology behind the ranking criteria and I am still to understand which of those indicate quality of programme. All five sections revolve around research and the data is collected mostly from Elsevier. So St Andrews outranks Oxbridge for the first time. Outranks in what? What does "best" mean? I think these rankings should better explain in the title what they indicate. I…

"All programmes in the country are standardised and cover the same required topics, so the only major difference there can be is the way these topics are presented to students" Undergraduate degree courses being standardised - since when? We don't even have the same high school level courses and exams across the UK...

The QAA and BCS have a set of national benchmarks and course descriptors that degree programmes have to follow if they want to be validated or accredited. There's a lot of flexibility within them for specialist modules, but some key topics have to be covered in all.

Re: For the first time in history, St Andrews outranks Oxbridge

#26

Post by akie »

jack_riminton wrote: post #2

Whenever a rankings table comes out with a result like this it probably succeeds in selling some papers, but it also diminishes the esteem of the rankings table I'm sure that St Andrews is a brilliant college. But very few in academia would say its as brilliant as Oxbridge

It would be good if people could stop hero-worshiping famous universities and people from those universities. There are quite a few idiots who graduate from these institutions.

Re: For the first time in history, St Andrews outranks Oxbridge

#27

Post by bencollier49 »

n4r9 wrote: post #18
bencollier49 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, but with 30% of the students there from Scotland (more than three times the UK population average), I'm guessing it's a factor in satisfaction ratings.

As a former lecturer, I found that student satisfaction often came down to things like how "easy" the lectures are. Big name universities like Oxford traditionally haven't (until recently?) felt the pressure to hit these objectives since they can ride on their reputation.

I friend of mine was a lecturer, and she set exams and tasks which explicitly tested the students' understanding of the material she was teaching, as you would expect - scores for her tests followed a bimodal distribution - indicating that they were working.

She got terrible satisfaction scores, and got pressure from 'higher-ups' to reweight the exams so the people in the "fail" group passed.

Re: For the first time in history, St Andrews outranks Oxbridge

#28

Post by mettamage »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #10

As a student I used to obsess over university rankings, but I realize now that most of them are massively gamed. My alma mater, the UPMC (Université Pierre et Marie Curie) e.g. merged with other universities in Paris to form the Sorbonne University, mostly to move up in the worldwide ranking. So, it's still largely the same university with the same funding and the same chairs, but since it's bundled up in a larger pa…

> IMHO, as a PhD student, what really matters is not how well your university is ranked but how well your research group is organized and how much the people there support you.

I've noticed this as well and I'm not even a PhD student! For example, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam doesn't rank super high. Yet, when I look at their cyber security department, then they're top notch.

In most cases though, industry doesn't care about any of this. So only do it if you're actually interested in research. PhD to industry doesn't translate well (high variability in where people end up).

Re: For the first time in history, St Andrews outranks Oxbridge

#30

Post by Jensson »

eptcyka wrote: post #4
jack_riminton wrote: post #2

Whenever a rankings table comes out with a result like this it probably succeeds in selling some papers, but it also diminishes the esteem of the rankings table I'm sure that St Andrews is a brilliant college. But very few in academia would say its as brilliant as Oxbridge

Mind you, these are not colleges, these are universities. Colleges are not as highly esteemed in the UK.

They are both colleges and universities by US terminology. For example Harvard is both a college and university, the undergrad part is the college part.
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