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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

#311

Post by varispeed »

anonymousDan wrote: post #282
varispeed wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that the Universities focused on getting foreign students and cashing in instead of providing valuable education. The quality of teaching is non-existent. It's about giving foreign parents ability to tell their peers look my brilliant child is studying in England! But really they are not studying. Attendance is not checked and lectures are a sham.

This is such garbage. The only reason universities focused on getting foreign students is because the introduction of fees that don't increase with inflation means they are all slowly going bankrupt.

The funding squeeze is real, but that’s not the whole story. Universities didn’t have to turn into diploma/visa mills - they chose to. Instead of protecting standards, they pivoted to a business model of brand-selling: recruiting overseas students at inflated rates and cutting corners on teaching.

Domestic students end up with debt for degrees that deliver little value, often taught by underqualified lecturers. Those who complain get brushed off or quietly bought out with NDA-style settlements. Foreign students mostly keep quiet because openly questioning standards would devalue their own diploma.

So yes, funding cuts mattered - but the bigger scandal is how universities responded. They saw the “golden years” were over and decided to milk the brand, not safeguard education.

They are basically a scam.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#312

Post by zipy124 »

vzaliva wrote: post #140

Be cautious with university rankings. Universities can be assessed by research, student satisfaction, teaching quality, cost, accessibility, or by specific fields. Some excel in computer science, others in medicine or the humanities. A single overall ranking is therefore meaningless - look instead for the measure that matches your priorities. For instance, for research impact in computer science, see: https://csranki…

This website massively skews towards publication count, e.g research quantity over quality. Vastly flawed.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#313

Post by vmilner »

2dvisio wrote: post #302
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.

I used to teach tutorials at Keble college (Oxford). Not sure how they were run in Manchester. Tutorials in Oxford are impressive for me for many reasons: 1. Those teaching were generally of a higher level beyond Ph.D., post docs or professors, all paid, all assessed against an NPS from students, and the performance of the students in exams 2. Tutors are generally teaching more adjacent topics (creating connections),…

Video of maths one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTAUsTZbiZk

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#314

Post by foven »

patanegra wrote: post #187
frotaur wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which gene gives me a tutor to support me at the most critical point in my intellectual development?

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#315

Post by varispeed »

foldr wrote: post #291
varispeed wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that the Universities focused on getting foreign students and cashing in instead of providing valuable education. The quality of teaching is non-existent. It's about giving foreign parents ability to tell their peers look my brilliant child is studying in England! But really they are not studying. Attendance is not checked and lectures are a sham.

> Attendance is not checked and lectures are a sham. Formal tracking of attendance at lectures is a fairly new thing in British universities (introduced around 2015 when I was teaching at one).

Actually, the Home Office / UKVI does require universities sponsoring international students to monitor attendance and engagement, and to report non-attendance. This has prompted many universities to formalise attendance tracking (barcode check-ins, attendance apps etc.), especially for visa-holding students. Whether they actually do it, is another question.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#316

Post by cauch »

yodsanklai wrote: post #153
UK-AL wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have well off parents, you can literally be sent to prep schools which drill for these tests.

These tests are pretty advanced maths and physics, not just multiple choice question you can just drill. Also almost all the prep schools are public. Pretty much all French physics Nobel Prize and Field Medal laureate when to the same top school. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_École_normale_supérieu...

It misses the point: if you split the universe in two identical parallel universe, but then take the same individual and in one universe train them 2h per week, and in the other universe, train them 8h per week, do you really think, whatever the test is, the second one will not perform better?

This is the point of training: the more training you have access to, the better you do. If it was not the case, then the notion of school itself as a way of training people to be able to think by themselves will not have any sense.

And that is just training. Even with the same amount of class hour, kids who don't have to worry about take care of their siblings, of the house chores, or of even having access to decent relaxing conditions will get higher score even if they are in fact less smart.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#317

Post by WaltPurvis »

danlitt wrote: post #309
_hark wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't merit-based scholarships to any Ivy League schools, they all offer need-based financial aid packages.

Do they have enough money available to fund everyone who can't afford to come, or do they have to decide who to fund from a wider pool of otherwise good applicants?

MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and I believe most or all of the other Ivies, all fund 100% of the demonstrated financial need of every student, and they do not consider the financial needs of applicants when making admission decisions.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#318

Post by pyuser583 »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #190
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…

Plenty of ambitious Americans dream of the London School of Economics.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#319

Post by jltsiren »

calf wrote: post #292
jltsiren wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as "the European PhD". A PhD in the UK nominally takes 3 or 4 years, depending on the program. In Finland, it's nominally 4 years (but typically longer), and that assumes that you already have a Master's. It used to be longer, but Finnish universities moved to shorter "American-style" PhDs, because politicians wanted people to graduate faster.

There is such a thing conceptually as distinct from how American PhDs are selected and developed. I've alluded to this already without elaborating in full on it.

My point was that there several major university traditions in Europe. The differences between them are almost as significant as the difference between any particular European tradition and the American tradition.

The UK is a particularly poor example of how things are done in Europe. In many aspects (such as whether the primary university degree is Bachelor's or Master's) it's closer to the US than the average continental European country.

You edited your comment after I started writing mine. Your idea that the US is still responsible for an exceptionally large fraction of academic research sounds like a leftover from the 20th century. European universities needed a couple of generations to recover from WW2, but since ~20 years ago, there have not been any significant qualitative or quantitative differences between the research output in the US and Europe. (China may also have crossed the threshold recently, but it's too early to say.)

At least not in the fields I'm qualified to judge (computer science, bioinformatics, genomics). There are obviously major differences in both directions in individual topics, but that's because both blocks are pretty small. Neither has enough researchers to cover every subfield and every topic.

American universities fill most of the top positions in university rankings, but that's mostly because the concept of "top institutions" is more relevant in American culture. (That's another aspect where the British tradition is closer to the US than continental Europe.) In many European countries, all proper universities are seen as more or less equivalent as far as education is concerned. Some universities employ more top researchers than others, but that doesn't impact their reputation as educational institutions as much as in the US or the UK.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#320

Post by pyuser583 »

elcritch wrote: post #289
varispeed wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that the Universities focused on getting foreign students and cashing in instead of providing valuable education. The quality of teaching is non-existent. It's about giving foreign parents ability to tell their peers look my brilliant child is studying in England! But really they are not studying. Attendance is not checked and lectures are a sham.

I TA’ed a course at my state university a few years back. We had some program that attracted hundreds of students from the UAE. Many were obviously from wealthy families and drove Mercedes and BMWs, etc. The amount of cheating on exams and complete lack of effort on studying by the vast majority (+80%) was astounding. We were essentially hand feeding them to get them to learn the material. The professor was very frus…

I’ve seen lots of variations on this. Community colleges seem to have gotten in on it in a big way.
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