Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

hotminute.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 446 posts

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#361

Post by smcin »

OJFord wrote: post #280
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a section in Yes, Prime Minister where Humphrey Appleby makes some comment about preserving England's great universities. Then pauses a beat and adds "both of them." (referring, of course, to Cambridge and Oxford.) It's obvious there are other very good universities in the UK and I don't doubt the LSE has programs that surpass the others. But I spent a couple months on a research project at LSE (and even deli…

Sure they'll never have quite the same cachet, but it's the same anywhere - UCLA/Stanford/Yale are extremely respected but nevertheless not Harvard or MIT. No doubt someone more familiar would say not all IITs are equal, but Bombay, Bengaluru & friends lead the pack. &c.

"Reputation" is not a uniform quantity; it matters hugely if we're talking about Arts, Law, STEM or what.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#362

Post by smcin »

afavour wrote: post #72
joefarish wrote: post #25

I'm not saying it's wrong but people are reacting to this as if the Times university guide is some objective truth. Regarding the potential lowering of standards for widening participation purposes, this doesn't change the fact that the entry standards for Oxford and Cambridge are still higher than LSE and St. Andrews.

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…

Where can you anecdotally find out about the accept/reject rate by students offered places? in particular I read the preference for UK universities by international students nosedeived ~2021 when the UK govt + universities said they couldn't even guarantee them either a definite visa during/after graduation, and fees went up.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#363

Post by viccis »

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…

>Durham University improved by 30 places year-on-year in its students’ evaluation of teaching quality, which was the main driver in securing its third place in the overall university league table.

Yeah this is worthless. "Elite" colleges in the US value student evaluations of teaching VERY VERY highly in things like tenure review. Well, guess what kind of grades professors give almost every single student at those colleges... It's a race to the bottom. Students aren't experts in teaching; they're rarely even experts in learning coming out of modern secondary education.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#364

Post by rando001111 »

nine_k wrote: post #348
rando001111 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking like Oxford is some school for shitdogs now. I went to an unranked school here in Canada for electrical engineering and graduated this year. I did a couple co-ops, won a couple engineering competitions and had my EIT job lined up for me after graduation. Started work a week after classes ended. Rankings are not the end-all be-all for uni.

On one hand, fair. On the other hand, an MIT or Stanford graduate is more likely to be immediately hired by Google, or NVidia, or Barclays, or something else top-notch, without having to make intermediate career steps.

My counterpoint is that those companies you listed do more harm than good anyhow. Advertising and data gathering, helping LLM companies train models that use more electricity than many countries, and charging outrageous interest and practicing usury.

Why would you want to work for those places?

Infrastructure projects are where it's at. Pays well and you're using your technical skills to do some good for the country for a change.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#365

Post by astrange »

rando001111 wrote: post #364
nine_k wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, fair. On the other hand, an MIT or Stanford graduate is more likely to be immediately hired by Google, or NVidia, or Barclays, or something else top-notch, without having to make intermediate career steps.

My counterpoint is that those companies you listed do more harm than good anyhow. Advertising and data gathering, helping LLM companies train models that use more electricity than many countries, and charging outrageous interest and practicing usury. Why would you want to work for those places? Infrastructure projects are where it's at. Pays well and you're using your technical skills to do some good for the country…

The customers are using the energy. LLMs don't use energy, they just sit there.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#366

Post by rando001111 »

astrange wrote: post #365
rando001111 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My counterpoint is that those companies you listed do more harm than good anyhow. Advertising and data gathering, helping LLM companies train models that use more electricity than many countries, and charging outrageous interest and practicing usury. Why would you want to work for those places? Infrastructure projects are where it's at. Pays well and you're using your technical skills to do some good for the country…

The customers are using the energy. LLMs don't use energy, they just sit there.

Society does not exist in a vacuum. Your individual actions affect others. A corporation's actions do as well.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#367

Post by ilya_m »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #317
danlitt wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, not for international students. Stanford (I haven't checked others) is very explicit about having a limited number of scholarship for international students: https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/internationa.... Admissions for US applicants are indeed need-blind.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#368

Post by arp242 »

ionwake wrote: post #145

I cant help myself, I have to chip in. Having lived in Oxford for about a decade my most memorable local ( and in one case international headlines) which maybe me tut and wonder what on earth they are doing were these ( feel free to look them up). a) Banned clapping in the student union. Literally incase it offended people for being loud. This one was even mentioned on Joe Rogan. b) About a year or so later, the SAME…

There have always been the occasional silly "Monty Python type moments" throughout the history of humanity, even in the best of institutions. We just didn't have the right-wing outrage media to jump on every tiny incident to stoke up anger among the base.

Re: Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK

#369

Post by j7ake »

_hark wrote: post #174

I'm a researcher at Oxford, and I've both taught and studied here and in the US. The undergraduate teaching here is phenomenal. It's incredibly labor intensive for the staff, but the depth and breadth students are exposed to in their subject is astonishing. It's difficult to imagine how it can be improved. My favorite study of university rankings comes from faculty hiring markets, which compute implicit rankings by m…

Implicit in the funding issue is the inability to attract and retain top researchers in resource heavy fields (AI, experimental field).

The starting package For new professors at Oxbridge is several orders of magnitude less than top institutions outside UK

Post reply on HN