Would you recommend a degree?

InKursion said:
Um UCL/KCL/Imperial are the only other 3 universities in the UK that regularly chart in the world top 20. They are all regularly domestic top5/top10, and they have far more international/worldwide stature than other RG universities. Hence the extra qualifier. The Golden Triangle are considered the UK's super elite on the worldwide level.

For self-aggrandizement by middle-road / second tier universities, look at the RG. Cardiff, Newcastle, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Queens Belfast. As good as Oxbridge? Nowhere near. Do any of them rank in the world top100? Nope. All of the Golden Triangle do. The RG has lately become a voting bloc for just what you say: large, first- and second- tier universities to bunch behind the weight of Oxbridge and UCL.
Click to expand...

Most of those universities, rank higher than your university on research.

I believe Birmingham(My current university) is about 55 on the world rankings.... Those other universities must be pretty close Birmingham, since they are in the same league... and Birmingham most defiantly surpasses royal halloway on the RAE.

Does that mean the royal have **** teaching? I don't think so.

http://www.rae.ac.uk/results/qualityProfile.aspx?id=108&type=hei

http://www.rae.ac.uk/results/qualityProfile.aspx?id=139&type=hei
 
Last edited:
UK-AL05 said:
Most of those universities, rank higher than your university on research.

I believe Birmingham(My current university) is about 55 on the world rankings.... Those other universities must be pretty close Birmingham, since they are in the same league... and Birmingham most defiantly surpasses royal halloway on the RAE.

Does that mean the royal have **** teaching? I don't think so.
Click to expand...

"most defiantly"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2008/dec/18/rae-2008-results-uk-universities

Actually you're one place below. You are also far behind tiny RHUL college on world-class research (4*+). So check your figures. The gaps get even bigger when it comes to 'strong' departments. Wouldn't compare RHUL Music, Geog, Classics, English, etc. to Birmingham if I were you. We have more world-class (4) and more international renowned (3) than you, and we submitted a significantly higher number of our academics for review (normally the tactic is to quietly not submit your weaker academics' work...) You get the point, anyway... small 94 Group institutions compete with Russell Group on research. It's just a fact. RG as a lazy shorthand is not correct. Many institutions (more than just Birmingham - again, Cardiff, Newcastle, Liverpool, Sheffield, QUB, Leeds, etc.) are on the same tier as the 94 Group colleges yet seem to share the warmglow of Oxbridge. Not so in academic reality.

Also your figures for world rankings are 2-3 years out of date. 2012/2013 Birmingham is 148th in the world and RHUL is 107th. So that's your Russell Group uni with 20,000 students and a high research funding rate because of the RG faring worse in both world league and RAE to a small 1994 group college with 8,000 students.

I think this has been instructive.

Also like I said earlier, a surprisingly low number of UK universities regularly break the world top 100. In 2011/2012 RHUL was 88th. Most RG are in the 100-250 range. York is doing surprisingly well this year. Basically what I said earlier about the Golden Triangle being the only frequent world top25 was pretty much true. Don't assume most RG will be in the world top 100 because, frankly, there are way too many big American, European and up-n-coming Asian universities for them all to fit :p
 
Last edited:
InKursion said:
"most defiantly"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2008/dec/18/rae-2008-results-uk-universities

Actually you're one place below. You are also far behind tiny RHUL college on world-class research (4*+). So check your figures. The gaps get even bigger when it comes to 'strong' departments. Wouldn't compare RHUL Music, Geog, Classics, English, etc. to Birmingham if I were you. We have more world-class (4) and more international renowned (3) than you, and we submitted a significantly higher number of our academics for review (normally the tactic is to quietly not submit your weaker academics' work...) You get the point, anyway... small 94 Group institutions compete with Russell Group on research. It's just a fact. RG as a lazy shorthand is not correct. Many institutions (more than just Birmingham - again, Cardiff, Newcastle, Liverpool, Sheffield, QUB, Leeds, etc.) are on the same tier as the 94 Group colleges yet seem to share the warmglow of Oxbridge. Not so in academic reality.

Also your figures for world rankings are 2-3 years out of date. 2012/2013 Birmingham is 148th in the world and RHUL is 107th. So that's your Russell Group uni with 20,000 students and a high research funding rate because of the RG faring worse in both world league and RAE to a small 1994 group college with 8,000 students.

I think this has been instructive.
Click to expand...

That's in the times rankings, not really independent is it. Try to QS world university rankings where the royal is 200th or something, while Birmingham is 50th.


Really universities can not be compared like this.
 
Last edited:
World rankings change loads year on year and all of them have varying different methodologies. QS tends to favour bigger universities with more research-funding and larger research output. They all prioritise different things to pretty different results. Can argue about that all day and it's all really pretty meaningless. Anything near the world top 100 is pretty much the world top 1% of higher-education. After that there are so many near-equal institutions (i.e. world class on research) with so many factors, it will be all over the place year on year except for the usual Top 10 suspects.

And my point all along has been about the 94 group being under-represented with research strength. I don't know how you're reading those RAE charts but clearly my point stands and yours is wrong.

We are massively digressing, anyway... I feel I've quite conclusively made my point ;)
 
InKursion said:
World rankings change loads year on year and all of them have varying different methodologies. QS tends to favour bigger universities with more research-funding and larger research output. They all prioritise different things to pretty different results. Can argue about that all day and it's all really pretty meaningless. Anything near the world top 100 is pretty much the world top 1% of higher-education. After that there are so many near-equal institutions (i.e. world class on research) with so many factors, it will be all over the place year on year except for the usual Top 10 suspects.

And my point all along has been about the 94 group being under-represented with research strength. I don't know how you're reading those RAE charts but clearly my point stands and yours is wrong.

We are massively digressing, anyway... I feel I've quite conclusively made my point ;)
Click to expand...

So does the times rankings...

And the guardian 'average' is completely designed by them too. Not by RAE.

If you look how much total high grade work comes out of b'ham it is more than the royal, instead of using that average/
 
Last edited:
Why are you still talking? I've said from my first input in this thread that league tables shift around so much year on year (both our current universities have gone up and down +/-20 places in 3-4 years...). You tried to defeat my point about the 94 Group's strenghs by swanning in and saying, "actually my university trumps yours in world ranking and RAE", quote "defiantly" [sic]. I just pointed out quite plainly that you are wrong. On world rankings the RG are by no means ahead of 94 (nor is Birm ahead of RHUL, according to who you fancy checking), and on the RAE where you were "defiantly" better in a whole other league, you're actually considerably worse on the world anad international level. Learn to read the charts and accept the reality of the RG/94 Group situation. RG students like to clap themselves on the back and act as if they've made it for life because "yah I went to a Russell Group", but really there's just as many top-class 94 institutions as well that out do you.

Can you let the poor fella get his career advice now? This one tiny pedantic point about RG/94 group has spiralled into a "mine is better... oh no, wait..." thing for far too long.
 
InKursion said:
Why are you still talking? I've said from my first input in this thread that league tables shift around so much year on year (both our current universities have gone up and down +/-20 places in 3-4 years...). You tried to defeat my point about the 94 Group's strenghs by swanning in any saying, "actually my university trumps yours in world ranking and RAE", quote "defiantly" [sic]. I just pointed out quite plainly that you are wrong. On world rankings the RG are by no means ahead of 94 (nor is Birm ahead of RHUL, according to who you fancy checking), and on the RAE where you were "defiantly" better in a whole other league, you're actually considerably worse on the world anad international level. Learn to read the charts and accept the reality of the RG/94 Group situation. RG students like to clap themselves on the back and act as if they've made it for life because "yah I went to a Russell Group", but really there's just as many top-class 94 institutions as well that out do you.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't trump it. Have look again. After what I just told you.

The total high grade pieces of work coming out of birmingham university is more. I have absolutely no idea how that guardian average is computed.

They have a lot of other departments too(Royal is specialised, Birmingham isn't they do everything), so it lowers their average.
 
Last edited:
RHUL 4* world leading: 18.8%
Birm 4* world leading: 15.8%

RHUL 3* international: 59.8%
Birm 3* international: 58.4%

RHUL total academics submitted to survey (fair representation/cheating the system measure): 89%
Birmingham: 73%

Well it's good to know your far superior higher-league-than-thou education can teach you to read a simple table.
 
InKursion said:
RHUL 4* world leading: 18.8%
Birm 4* world leading: 15.8%

RHUL 3* international: 59.8%
Birm 3* international: 58.4%

Well it's good to know your far superior higher-league-than-thou education can teach you to read a simple table.
Click to expand...

Percentages, which I just told you why it doesn't work. It is not the total pieces of good work submitted. Royal is specialised in humanities, while Birmingham covers everything. Compare Birmingham's good specialisations against the royal.
 
Last edited:
Haha! No surprises a university with 2.5x as many students and 2.5x as many staff are producing 'more pieces of work'. The important thing with the RAE is how much influence that university, according to its size, proportionally, has on the world/international scale. Birmingham has much more manpower and still falls behind - which has been my entire point about RG and 94 all along. How can you misunderstand this? My point is that smaller, specialised 94 universities are just as prestigious and world-leading as Russell Group. RG normally have much bigger science and medicine/law schools (which most 94 do not have), hence why they get most funding and output the most work on raw volume. Raw output does not measure quality, though! And the difference in size and departmental structure is entirely why the 94 formed a separate 'smaller' group in the first place.

And if you want a measure of international influence based on total output and its worldwide reception, RHUL are 3rd in the country on number of worldwide citations in peer-reviewed journals. Altogether now: "doh!"

FYI you're wrong on RHUL being strong in Humanities only as well, so stop bs'ing yourself. In Physics they are also nation-leading, working with Oxford on CERN.
 
Last edited:
InKursion said:
Haha! No surprises a university with 2.5x as many students and 2.5x as many staff are producing 'more pieces of work'. The important thing with the RAE is how much influence that university, according to its size, proportionally, has on the world/international scale. Birmingham has much more manpower and still falls behind - which has been my entire point about RG and 94 all along. How can you misunderstand this?

And if you want a measure of international influence based on total output and its worldwide reception, RHUL are 3rd in the country on number of worldwide citations in peer-reviewed journals. Altogether now: "doh!"
Click to expand...

Where's that data?

How can that possibly be, considering they only focus on humanities?
 
Ahleckz said:
And did you learn that through university?
Click to expand...

I was self taught before I went. But university turned me from crappy self-taught to a much more rigorous developer.

University adds a lot polish to a developers skills, which self taught people don't understand.

My skills are much broader now.
 
InKursion said:
Haha! No surprises a university with 2.5x as many students and 2.5x as many staff are producing 'more pieces of work'. The important thing with the RAE is how much influence that university, according to its size, proportionally, has on the world/international scale. Birmingham has much more manpower and still falls behind - which has been my entire point about RG and 94 all along. How can you misunderstand this? My point is that smaller, specialised 94 universities are just as prestigious and world-leading as Russell Group. RG normally have much bigger science and medicine/law schools (which most 94 do not have), hence why they get most funding and output the most work on raw volume. Raw output does not measure quality, though! And the difference in size and departmental structure is entirely why the 94 formed a separate 'smaller' group in the first place.

And if you want a measure of international influence based on total output and its worldwide reception, RHUL are 3rd in the country on number of worldwide citations in peer-reviewed journals. Altogether now: "doh!"

FYI you're wrong on RHUL being strong in Humanities only as well, so stop bs'ing yourself. In Physics they are also nation-leading, working with Oxford on CERN.
Click to expand...

So is birmingham, we have Ph.D students/lecturers who have worked at cern...


To make it fair you would need to take birmingham best areas(Same amount as the royal), and then compare.
 
"adds a lot more polish".

What rubbish, there is no reason that someone pursuing a vocation such as programming needs to go to university. It's a waste of time. A prospective programmer will learn far more on the job than they will pursuing a degree. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of time for academics in most fields but I think the vast majorities of programmers would be better suited to on the job training rather than working towards a BsC.
 
UK-AL05 said:
Where's that data?

How can that possibly be, considering they only focus on humanities?
Click to expand...

Where are you getting this 'only focus on the humanities' thing from? They have top-class Maths and Science departments too. An internationally leading Computer Science and Information Security Group. One of the most heavily competitive Economics/MBA schools on an international level, also. The only thing it doesn't have is a law and medicine school (though it was going to merge with St. George's, London a year or two back to right that as well).

Where are you getting this from that it's only strong in humanities? Particularly strong, yes, but hardly weak in the rest! The reason the Science and Maths departments are on paper weaker than Humanities is because they require much more funding, which the 94 members don't get.

It's like you're missing something fundamental, here. RG's strengths are their size and science/medicine schools. That's where they get all their heavy moolah from. To say that 94 group are "only good at Humanities" is to miss the point. They don't get anywhere near as much money to compete in science (and don't even submit in most subjects). That doesn't auto-relegate the departments they do have to the ****-bin though. That's all I've said all along: they just organise around different group outlooks. To be honest being outperformed on Humanities by a much smaller and lesser funded institution is hard to explain with the typical 'RG are the leading elite' line. Why should they not also be elite in Arts and Humanities? Strange.

At the end of the day, all I wanted to state was to look into BOTH the RG and 94 group if you're wanting an Access to HE leap into the top-tier. The view that the RG are the elite and everyone else is behind is simply not true. If anything, this long delving into lots of league tables and various assessments just clarifies my point: the borders have been blurred. Many of the RG are below the 94 on domestic/European/world league tables, and especially on the RAE.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom