So you want to study in the UK?

There have been some interesting articles recently looking at the UK University system.

With the weak pound and strength of the Chinese currency more and more students are applying to UK universities.

As a UK based academic I can confirm some of these anecdotes. The fact that different Universities give out different numbers of 1sts and 2.1s is a statement of the obvious.

The following quote was one of the motivations for setting up this blog. To enable Chinese students to pick the right University to go to. For economics they are listed in the right hand column.

Research published last year shows why they would want to know. Three years after leaving university, an arts graduate from one of the older, research-intensive universities - those in the Russell and 1994 groups - is literally twice as likely to be earning £30,000 to £50,000 than a contemporary from a newer university. Some universities have a graduate unemployment rate after six months of 1%, others of more than 8%. In every subject, with the one exception of education, graduates from the older universities earn more than their new university counterparts.

In economics the differences will be greater if anything. Chinese students must be careful to pick the right institution.

Students have been sold a lie [Guardian]

When a friend enrolled as a mature student last year, I was curious to hear what university life was like these days. It was quite a surprise when he reported back that students were taking personal calls on their mobile phones during lectures. Apparently it comes as a shock to the students when lecturers ask them to hang up. In a recent seminar a girl sat with her iPod headphones on, and was astonished when the tutor asked her to remove them. There were no more than a dozen or so other students in the class, and one of them was trying to give a presentation. "But I like listening to music!" the girl objected, genuinely affronted by the intrusion, as though she were on a bus.

People did, my friend said, still hand out leaflets on the student union steps. But when he showed me one, it was a business flyer. "Getting behind with deadlines?" it read. "Snowed under with work? Call this number to order a professionally written essay on the subject of your choice." Prices varied according to the grade required, and even third-class essays were available. After all, there would be no point in paying for one that alerted suspicion by being implausibly good.

University life has changed, evidently, more than I knew. Academics familiar with it are under no illusions, however, and this week vice-chancellors said so to a Commons select committee. "There is a significant difference," one acknowledged, "between universities, and the extent to which they give firsts and 2:1s." It was no more than a statement of the obvious, and this summer 18 universities will issue report cards alongside students' final grades, which must be a good idea. But the wild discrepancies in degree classification are probably the least of the system's problems.

In 1994, in my final year, I visited a boyfriend at a former polytechnic in its first year as a new university. I couldn't believe my eyes. In the library everybody was working away on modules, in busy, practical groups, more like colleagues than my contemporaries back in Manchester. The industry was impressive. But the idea that we were all engaged in the same educational experience at each place was manifestly absurd, and no employer today is deluded by the charade of equivalence.

When the president of Universities UK told MPs, somewhat coyly, "A first in ancient history from the University of Poppleton is not the same as a first in tourism management from Poppleton Met," he knew they could decode his diplomacy. For "Poppleton Met" read, say, London Metropolitan. But the euphemism presumes a degree of inside knowledge - because it's not as simple as "ex-poly = inferior". Manchester Met, for example, outshines many Poppletons. As long as you know which ones to avoid, it doesn't really matter what they're called. But it matters if you don't. And the very people who are being targeted by university access expansion are those with the least chance of knowing what they're getting.

Research published last year shows why they would want to know. Three years after leaving university, an arts graduate from one of the older, research-intensive universities - those in the Russell and 1994 groups - is literally twice as likely to be earning £30,000 to £50,000 than a contemporary from a newer university. Some universities have a graduate unemployment rate after six months of 1%, others of more than 8%. In every subject, with the one exception of education, graduates from the older universities earn more than their new university counterparts.

You could argue that for a student who would never have got into Bristol or Edinburgh, a poorer-quality university was still better than nothing - and that's almost certainly true. But that's a judgment for the student, not an education minister, to make. The Tories are endlessly accused of snobbery on this. But they do, at least, display the virtue of an interest in the truth. "It's great we have diversity in the university system," David Willetts, the shadow secretary for universities, has said, "but there's an official conspiracy that all universities are the same; they are different. Young people are entitled to this information, especially when they are expected to borrow large amounts of money to go to university."

Last year my friends' eldest son enrolled at a former polytechnic in the Midlands to study photography. He is the first in the family ever to go to university, and they're thrilled. No one has told them that in three years, after he's accumulated a debt of about £25,000, his degree will almost certainly not get him a job he wants. He'd do better to get himself a camera and some unpaid shifts at picture agencies, and forget all about university. But how is his family supposed to know that? They think he's won a ticket to the pearly gates of the university-educated elite.

If university was giving him the social and cultural incubation I enjoyed, he still might not be wasting his time. But he has left south London for a campus where serious violence between ethnic student gangs is, he claims, a regular occurrence. If middle-class sons were dealing with fights outside their halls, their parents would be up in arms. But they're not, of course, because they knew the difference between a good university and a Poppleton Met.

There isn't anything more estimable or inspiring than an ambition for everyone to enjoy higher education. But the university drop-out rate is now 22%, and this must have something to do with what is essentially false advertising. Different institutions offering different kinds of education can each have their own merit, but giving them all one name doesn't make them the same, any more than calling a tomato a 747 can turn it into a plane. How can telling a lie possibly be in students' interests? Many won't even know that the lie will fool no one when they graduate, even if it is written on a degree certificate.

Earlier this week the Today programme on Radio 4 interviewed a man who left school functionally illiterate, despite having passed seven GCSEs. It might as well have been 70 GCSEs - or 7,000. It still hadn't meant he could read or write.

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