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Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

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Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#181

Post by fsckboy »

rm445 wrote: post #124

I am a Durham graduate, still somewhat involved with the university via some voluntary roles, and a bit of a 'booster' in the sense that I'll sing its praises to anyone. I also have a postgrad degree from Cambridge and did a little teaching while there. So, I'm quite familiar, and while I'm happy to see Durham get some love, this is bunk. There is a gulf in undergraduate teaching between Oxbridge and the pack. The su…

I think high school students preparing to go to university are most interested in rankings not least because for graduate schools specific areas of research are more important.

and I agree with much of the parent post, and would add that "oxbridge" and/or "high ranking schools in subject areas" provide many of the professors to "lesser" schools or programs, so you can get a fine education from anywhere.

however, the special extra sauce for me was not small classes/personal attention, but rather rooms full of the smartest possible peers to do problem sets with, and these are found at the highest ranked schools, see first paragraph above, they attract the best incoming freshman.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#182

Post by Latty »

rayiner wrote: post #161
ceejayoz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only 1 in 2600 gets 4 A. > And 1 in 83 gets 3 As. And what if that’s not always an indication of which person is smarter ?

But we know that it’s true. That’s why we have been using objective metrics like test scores for millennia, across societies are different as China, India, and Britain.

Your best argument is "we've done it for a long time, so it can't be wrong"?

Quite the contrary: there is a long history of "objective" tests being shown to be deeply flawed and biased towards certain factors (often cultural and class based), we explicitly know it isn't the case that test scores are purely about some innate intelligence characteristic: there is a reason the rich spend a lot of money to raise their children's scores.

My secondary school claimed to have the best results for Business Studies A-levels in the country. They achieved this by taking the pre-released case study, writing every possible question they could think of about the study, writing model answers, and telling the students to memorise them. The idea that these scores represent some innate intelligence of the student is obviously nonsense if you interact with the system at all.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#183

Post by mrcarrot »

ics wrote: post #175
exe34 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The supervision system guarantees all Oxbridge students weekly, small-group tutorials, We had that in Physics at Manchester in the 2000s. 4 students. I'm guessing they got the idea from Oxbridge, but I don't think it's been a USP for a very long time.

Unique Selling Point?

yes

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#184

Post by corimaith »

joosters wrote: post #52
patanegra wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is extremely unfair framing. Oxford University has been discriminating people from independent schools for a while now. To get in, you need 4 A* from an independent schools, or just 3 As from state schools. That's not "letting in poor people" as you framed it. It's letting in dumber people, worse students. Lots of that is mainly based on classism (against people from middle class), racism (against white people).…

Oxbridge have never had to 'let in dumber people'. They are always heavily over-subscribed, and give offers to a small fraction of the people who come for an interview, let alone apply. The whole point of the interview process is to assess not just the applicant's past achievements, but what they might be able to achieve if they got their place at the uni. Part of that is looking at the applicant's background, and kn…

And is this new generation doing paticularly well in solving our problems or advancing the nation over the previous one? I can't see much examples, I do remember going through some of the science projects shown in undergrad showcase but none of them were tackling key bottlenecks or doing something novel.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#185

Post by cs02rm0 »

fatfox wrote: post #113
afavour wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anyone at Oxford but do have friends who work in higher education. From what I hear from them Brexit has turned UK higher education upside down when it comes to funding and research. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is a consequence of some universities navigating that better than others. But you don't get anywhere near as much online outrage with that theory so "leftists are ruining western civili…

Yes I’d agree with that. International student income dropped, rounds of layoffs. Some universities are better at optimising for rankings, see also REF research funding and how much effort and resources are spent on it, which varies by university: https://2029.ref.ac.uk/about/what-is-the-ref/

How did international student income drop with Brexit, when the UK now have 4-600k student visas granted in each of the last few years vs 2-300k pre-Brexit?

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#186

Post by programjames »

energy123 wrote: post #158
patanegra wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is extremely unfair framing. Oxford University has been discriminating people from independent schools for a while now. To get in, you need 4 A* from an independent schools, or just 3 As from state schools. That's not "letting in poor people" as you framed it. It's letting in dumber people, worse students. Lots of that is mainly based on classism (against people from middle class), racism (against white people).…

It's interesting to see that conservatives have quietly moved on from the idea that affirmative action should be done on the basis of household wealth instead of ethnicity. At least now we are being honest.

Alternatively, the gap between the classes for access to educational resources has significantly declined in the past twenty years (due to stuff being posted online).

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#187

Post by patanegra »

frotaur wrote: post #123
patanegra wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly, it's because talented people grow to the top (not just economically, they might be cultural elites, like people working in news, academia). Then, they marry people who are on the top. And they pass their genes and habits. It's nothing bad that their kids end up good students again. I think that French system is superior. It gives fair chances to everyone.

This is not 'clear' at all. What is clear is the correlation. You imply that the cause is 'good genes and habit'. An equally, if not more valid cause is that having money makes it much easier to get good condition/tutors etc for preparing for the exams.

There are studies that show how heritable intelligence is. Very.

It is quite common people say, that something is only a correlation and not causation. But if you can point to a common denominator, that has been shown multiple times, to have a massive effect, it's not likely to be just a coincidence. Genes are this common denominator. Society and habits (for example, protestants vs catholics) are another.

Things that consistently impact the whole population are not just a random process that picks: "You will be clever, ugly.", "You will be pretty, sporty, but will be dumb." It's always genes, society and habits.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#188

Post by JetSetWilly »

patanegra wrote: post #5
abxyz wrote: post #2

pg thinks this is because of letting in poor people: https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/1969334665375813679

This is extremely unfair framing. Oxford University has been discriminating people from independent schools for a while now. To get in, you need 4 A* from an independent schools, or just 3 As from state schools. That's not "letting in poor people" as you framed it. It's letting in dumber people, worse students. Lots of that is mainly based on classism (against people from middle class), racism (against white people).…

And yet those kids from state schools then come out with more firsts than those from independent schools, showing they were not “dumber” at all - they were smarter.

Really, oxford and cambridge as well as other top universities can have a simple algorithm. They should bias against those from private schools in terms of admissions criteria until the point at which outcomes (as measured by graduating degree scores) are equal. This wouldn’t happen though because then private schools would drop to 5% of enrolments and there’d be no advantage gained from paying for a private school education. Unthinkable!

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#189

Post by alephnerd »

fsckboy wrote: post #181
rm445 wrote: post #124

I am a Durham graduate, still somewhat involved with the university via some voluntary roles, and a bit of a 'booster' in the sense that I'll sing its praises to anyone. I also have a postgrad degree from Cambridge and did a little teaching while there. So, I'm quite familiar, and while I'm happy to see Durham get some love, this is bunk. There is a gulf in undergraduate teaching between Oxbridge and the pack. The su…

I think high school students preparing to go to university are most interested in rankings not least because for graduate schools specific areas of research are more important. and I agree with much of the parent post, and would add that "oxbridge" and/or "high ranking schools in subject areas" provide many of the professors to "lesser" schools or programs, so you can get a fine education from anywhere. however, the…

> high school students preparing to go to university are most interested in rankings

Wouldn't league tables like Norrington and Tompkins be more important for them?

I remember during my Britishphilia phase in HS and imagined doing a CS Tripos at one and then a BCL at he other before I removed the emotion and realized the services and network was inferior to a good UC like Cal or UCLA or a B10 like Mich, I was concentrating more on the College itself, not the Uni as a whole. Like being at Harris Manchester College, Oxford wouldn't open the same doors that Balliol College, Oxford would, and it was Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL, LSE, or bust.

At the undergrad level, Oxbridge is college driven and not all colleges are equal even if everyone is in the same faculty.

It's not like Yale or Harvard where you are randomly assigned a house, and the overwhelming majority of education services are provided by departments.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#190

Post by skippyboxedhero »

rm445 wrote: post #124

I am a Durham graduate, still somewhat involved with the university via some voluntary roles, and a bit of a 'booster' in the sense that I'll sing its praises to anyone. I also have a postgrad degree from Cambridge and did a little teaching while there. So, I'm quite familiar, and while I'm happy to see Durham get some love, this is bunk. There is a gulf in undergraduate teaching between Oxbridge and the pack. The su…

The time of every bright child having Oxbridge as first university pick ended quite a few years ago. Not accurate that parents are saying this either, the change has largely come from parents who are often people doing hiring and have seen the change over the past few years. The very top aren't applying there any more at all, you don't need to: Stanford, Harvard, MIT, all better.

Oxford, in particular, has made their bed. They have made a willful choice to be worse. I am not sure why anyone wouldn't take them at their word.

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