Apparently (some) university courses that involve more work - measured in (contact and independent study) hours - give fewer students (in % terms) 2.is or 1sts. The message is perhaps why do 38 hours a week in Oxford for a 2.i when you could do 25 hours elsewhere, and maybe even get a First?
I'm particularly interested - predictably - that some mainstream media have labelled these findings a 'lottery'. This allegation was actually made in last week's Cherwell and in The Telegraph.
I think that the disparity might primarily be between Oxbridge and the Russell group universities, most of whom have cut back on teaching to focus on research, but are still producing 2:1 class gradautes because of the quality both the intake and the lecturers. New universities devote more resources to teaching, as this is their source of income, but fair less well because of less good intake. Oxbridge has the best results and the highest level of teaching (the intensity of teaching is also higher), but it can only afford to do this because of its endowments and in any case is in structural defecit. Hence the appearance of a 'lottery'.
ReplyDeleteTo make myself clearer I mean that level of teaching probably looks something like a U, with New universties at one end and Oxbridge at the other.
ReplyDeleteBy level, do you mean simply quantity? Or a function of quantity and quality?
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