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UK universities slide down global rankings

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: UK universities slide down global rankings

#11

Post by lm28469 »

keiferski wrote: post #5

I recently spent about a month total in Cambridge and Oxford, just as a remote worker / tourist. Having previously visited Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, etc. it was my impression that American universities have an order of magnitude more resources than UK ones. Even an average state school campus in the US appears larger and better funded. Of course, Oxford and Cambridge have a centuries-old historical legacy (and a…

US campuses are mini cities with large amount of money spent on a lot of useless things

Europe campuses are buildings with just a bit more than the bare minimum you need to do the job

Re: UK universities slide down global rankings

#12

Post by keiferski »

inglor_cz wrote: post #8
keiferski wrote: post #5

I recently spent about a month total in Cambridge and Oxford, just as a remote worker / tourist. Having previously visited Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, etc. it was my impression that American universities have an order of magnitude more resources than UK ones. Even an average state school campus in the US appears larger and better funded. Of course, Oxford and Cambridge have a centuries-old historical legacy (and a…

While good amenities may matter for certain types of research (biotech), what about disciplines such as maths, which require good thinking, a piece of paper to draw on, and that's about it? If you look at the results of the International Mathematical Olympiad, many of the really successful countries (Russia, Hungary, Romania, Iran) aren't very rich. A possible explanation would be brain-drain: talented mathematicians…

I think the number of purely mental fields is fairly small, especially in technology.

More than that, though, are how amenities affect future applicants. If I was a prospective student choosing between Oxford and say, Princeton, the quality of the campus and amount of resources available would affect my decision. My impression was that Oxbridge is very much about maintaining and continuing the traditions of the UK more than anything else.

Re: UK universities slide down global rankings

#13

Post by okeuro49 »

was_a_dev wrote: post #7
keiferski wrote: post #5

I recently spent about a month total in Cambridge and Oxford, just as a remote worker / tourist. Having previously visited Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, etc. it was my impression that American universities have an order of magnitude more resources than UK ones. Even an average state school campus in the US appears larger and better funded. Of course, Oxford and Cambridge have a centuries-old historical legacy (and a…

From a UK perspective, the US "throws money" at everything, both culturally and because you are a larger economy. Education, sports, healthcare, industry, space, science to name a few. The UK also has an opposing culture, we don't invest in the long term in infrastructure or people. Even in your case, you visited the two richest universities (by a long margin) in the UK.

There's long term investment in London, but the North never recovered after losing its industry.

Numerous promises such as "northern powerhouse" have failed to materialise.

Re: UK universities slide down global rankings

#14

Post by joshvm »

keiferski wrote: post #5

I recently spent about a month total in Cambridge and Oxford, just as a remote worker / tourist. Having previously visited Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, etc. it was my impression that American universities have an order of magnitude more resources than UK ones. Even an average state school campus in the US appears larger and better funded. Of course, Oxford and Cambridge have a centuries-old historical legacy (and a…

University funding varies wildly in the UK and it mostly correlates with ranking, at least the 'higher-up' universities generally have more disposal income to give to researchers. Unfortunately, it's a vicious circle because it's the difference between "you can go to this conference" or "we'll pay the article fee" and "we have no money, sorry". Allowing researchers those sorts of freedoms means you tend to get better researchers who can pump out more research with higher visibility.

Oxford University owns pretty much the entire historic town centre, so they're sitting on a lot of assets that aren't obviously visible (beyond the colleges).

UK universities have generally very good staff benefits. 30-35 days of leave is not uncommon, on top of public holidays and the usual academia "if nobody notices" flexitime attitude. Pay is probably a little better than the US when you compare cost of living. The US has notoriously poor PhD and Postdoc salaries and several big universities have had strike action against them. Don't confuse US institutional endowment with what trickles down to researchers.

The US does have per-diem though, which is a fantastic source of beer money when traveling. UK universities are almost always penny-pinchers for staff expenses.

Re: UK universities slide down global rankings

#15

Post by was_a_dev »

okeuro49 wrote: post #13
was_a_dev wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a UK perspective, the US "throws money" at everything, both culturally and because you are a larger economy. Education, sports, healthcare, industry, space, science to name a few. The UK also has an opposing culture, we don't invest in the long term in infrastructure or people. Even in your case, you visited the two richest universities (by a long margin) in the UK.

There's long term investment in London, but the North never recovered after losing its industry. Numerous promises such as "northern powerhouse" have failed to materialise.

I think it would be safe to call London an outlier for the UK, for the reason of how much investment is directed there

Re: UK universities slide down global rankings

#17

Post by rcarr »

joshvm wrote: post #14
keiferski wrote: post #5

I recently spent about a month total in Cambridge and Oxford, just as a remote worker / tourist. Having previously visited Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, etc. it was my impression that American universities have an order of magnitude more resources than UK ones. Even an average state school campus in the US appears larger and better funded. Of course, Oxford and Cambridge have a centuries-old historical legacy (and a…

University funding varies wildly in the UK and it mostly correlates with ranking, at least the 'higher-up' universities generally have more disposal income to give to researchers. Unfortunately, it's a vicious circle because it's the difference between "you can go to this conference" or "we'll pay the article fee" and "we have no money, sorry". Allowing researchers those sorts of freedoms means you tend to get better…

> University funding varies wildly in the UK and it mostly correlates with ranking, at least the 'higher-up' universities generally have more disposal income to give to researchers.

This is how the entirety of the UK works. All the funding goes to London, everywhere else gets nothing. All the laws are written to benefit the landlord and investor classes, everyone else gets nothing etc. Little recognition that the entire nation is meant to be one big tribe, barely any redistribution or attempts to raise up the failing parts. In my opinion, the ruling classes have never really abandoned their colonial mindset, and now their overseas power has waned they treat the rest of the UK as a colony of the City and Westminster.

Re: UK universities slide down global rankings

#19

Post by kranke155 »

okeuro49 wrote: post #13
was_a_dev wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a UK perspective, the US "throws money" at everything, both culturally and because you are a larger economy. Education, sports, healthcare, industry, space, science to name a few. The UK also has an opposing culture, we don't invest in the long term in infrastructure or people. Even in your case, you visited the two richest universities (by a long margin) in the UK.

There's long term investment in London, but the North never recovered after losing its industry. Numerous promises such as "northern powerhouse" have failed to materialise.

The north didn’t “lose” its industry, im afraid. It was deliberately destroyed as a matter of policy.

Deindustrialisation is terrible.

Re: UK universities slide down global rankings

#20

Post by SilverBirch »

55 dropped, 6 stayed the same and 32 improved. Or to put it another way, this really isn't news. Then when you hear 96% of Chinese universities improved... this has nothing to do with the UK at all! Of course if one massive country manages to improve practically all their universities' rankings in 1 year, everyone else in the league table will be going down. The question is what happened? Did the universities actually just all suddenly improve in 1 year? I doubt it. This is almost certainly the rankings changing the way they regard Chinese universities.

When I was at Uni we had exactly this game happen. I was at a uni where our department was ranked highest in the country, then the student survey went around. At the time if you talked to anyone about how satisfied they were with the course they were pretty pissed off, somehow the department had managed to mis-grade every single group project for the largest single grade of the year and as a result capped everyone's grade, which for some people was very important.

Guess what we wrote in the student survey? That we fucking loved the place. Why? Because student satisfaction counted towards the rankings and we wanted our degrees to be valuable so we wanted a good ranking. All these measures are pretty bollocks.

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