No one knows what a degree is worth, says Guild of Educators

It is not make sense for u.s.a. university to get high ranking in the world for their study year is properly less 1 to 2 years compare with u.k. university. I think it might have some adjustment misundertaking. U.K. university should be in more high ranking than U.S.A. university

"do more to meet the needs of UK business." surely that is easy, turn back the clock 2-3 decades and let businesses train via apprentice schemes and let the HEI's educate. But training and apprentice schemes hit the bottom line, so much easier to palm off to someone else then whine and interfere. We used to have a world class tertiary system and respected research, do we still? Even the failure to exploit our past research is the fault of academics, apparently they are not entrepunerial enough, surely business should be handling this side of things. If not what is their part of the bargain?

Internationalism is the clue to the future of world-class higher education. ie. it is now well over a dozen years since the world wide web began to influence how we think of higher education, how we contact/communicate throughout higher education, and how we view research and teaching in higher education - and yet, we talk on issues of excellence/degree quality etc as if they are nationally ring-fenced! Of course there is no consistency - but it is digital revolution that has given us the tools to discover this, and which will provide the tools to create a global higher education system which benefits all. In the meantime, just great: let's worry about whether there is consistency in the UK . . . while at the same time today's school leavers can find out what a degree might be, and what it constitutes as a "qualification", by searching the web!! Hardly good for us in HE to be following, not leading, if we are supposed to truly supposed to be engaged in "higher" learning.

Degree's are more about justifying class and stratification. I don't think it is really about "quality" or "consistency". Truth is now that there is more competition for jobs higher ups are scarce and need a reason to stratify society so they can command their high wages.

We all know that a degree from Imperial has significantly different content and assessment procedures than a degree from say Teeside or Thames Valley but no one in the sector is prepared to say that. We have lost sight of what having a degree should mean. By all means widen prticipation but make sure that everyone partcipates in something worth having........

Yeah I agree with who?. Sure a degree from a Russell Group uni is better than a degree from an ex-poly. But then again, a first class honours bachelor degree from an ex-poly is better than no degree at all, and it's certainly leaps and bounds better than not being able to read and write. And there's nothing to say that graduates of ex-poly's can't go on to do postgraduate courses - or, failing that, conversion courses - at Russell Group unis. As long as we're honest about the fact that different qualifications count for different things, and as long as we're also honest about what both current and prospective highed ed students have to do to get from A to B, then I don't see the problem. However, the fact that different degrees are worth different things is absolutely *not* an excuse to roll back any advances we have made in widening the access to higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. You have to ask, what do you want higher education qualifications to be? Do you want them to be a genuine statement of meritocratic achievement? Or would you prefer your bachelor and masters degrees to be nothing more than a rubber-stamping of your elevated socioeconomic status within a rigid and inflexible class system? Personally I know which I'd prefer my own qualifications to be. The deliberate narrowing of access to higher education would serve to make a mockery of the idea that anyone's genuinely achieving anything on individual merit at all.

So the external examining system is failing? "I have no problem with your first class students they are at least equal to ours, even though your entry requirements are so much lower", a quote from our external examiner(from one of the "elite" Russel group). Given to Science awards delivered by one of these apparently useless ex-polys, incidently staffed predominately from Ph.D's, D.Phils and post-docs from the traditional elite. I do not think he really appreciated the depth of compliment he inadvertently gave. I also do not think some people realise effective research and effective teaching are poles apart.

Why is a Russell Group degree better? It is more prestigious, because it is in relatively short supply, and it feeds a system of stratified snobbery, but the plain fact is that at an RG institution, the student is more likely to have been taught by postgrads, and less likely to have had direct expert supervision across large areas of their study. There is simply no evidence that a first-class student from Imperial, Bristol or Warwick is any 'better' at anything than a first-class student from somewhere 30 or 50 places 'lower'. There is undeniable evidence that more and more students at those 'elite' institutions have been getting firsts in the last decade or two; while the time spent teaching them has gone down, and more and more of them have been packed in... Hmm, how can that be, we wonder??

I have taught in both the new university and Russell Group sectors. In my experience, marking is done more authentically and ethically in the new university sector where there is less of a sense that 'our students don't get [insert phantom marking floor here, depending on cultural capital of students--less than 50? 60?]'. At one RG institution I was told I could not fail an exam answer that was a paragraph long and wholly inappropriate to the question asked. In the new university where I taught I could, and did, give marks of less than 10 % where applicable. If there were few or no firsts in a graduating year, it was acknowledged to be a weaker cohort; at an RG institution, if students underperform the onus is on tutors to explain what was wrong with the modules and assessments instead. It is simply ridiculous to say that a first-class degree from a new university is based on lower standards than one from an RG uni.

The "ex-poly" argument is not straightforward. I work at a Russel Group Uni and have had grad students from "ex-polys" who were great. I know that a First from some institutions is as good as a First from mine.

The RG vs. poly argument almost always ignores the individual element. A student at a RG uni could do just enough to scrape through and get a 2:2. A student at a poly, meanwhile, could work hard, attend all their lectures, do all the reading, and devote months on end to writing a dissertation, achieving a first. But, when looking at those CVs, would anyone see beyond, say, 'Cambridge University' on the former and 'Coventry University' on the latter? On two similar courses, Business Management for example, the students will be learning the same theory, reading the same textbooks and journal articles, etc, etc.

At least Coventry University has a decent track record, unlike some former polytechnics (and 'Institutes of Higher Ecudation') one could mention. I think Coventry has earned its place among the proper universities.

All this is fascinating stuff, I love it furthermore, I have just learnt how to email. Therefore you may forgive me for not understanding the full extent of this debate. All I know is that I have been defending myself through the courts system from the County Court to the Royal Courts of Justicefor the past 20years, and constantly coming up against lawyers and barristers. On the other side of life I can get to my local supermarket and buy the basic ingredients to make a wedding cake from scratch, and bake a very tasty piece of bread. And, Yes! I would love to get a degree. Keep up the debate. E.Jeffers

Lula: thanks for this piece of intelligence - I am absolutely appalled by your revelations. If the "old" universities are playing fast and loose with academic standards, small wonder that our degrees are shedding their value in international terms. Have you brought these facts to the attention of QAA and/or HEFCE? I feel you should!

If British degrees are worthless (except to the self-esteem of the graduate) it must surely be because they are meaningless. Potential employers and other interested parties cannot assess the usefulness to them of an applicant by looking at the degree. They cannot tell how easy or difficult the course was, how leniently the student's work was marked by a department trying to maintain its success rate, enrolment and income or even how much of the work was actually done by the holder of the degree. So how can they fairly decide among applicants? They can't - unless they decide what job-specific and general qualities they require of applicants, set their own tests to assess the extent to which applicants possess them and establish their own training programmes to make good any deficiencies. Universities will then be free to concentrate on education, and to give degrees that simply attest to the satisfactory completion of a course of studies.

Individual writes that, 'On two similar courses, Business Management for example, the students will be learning the same theory, reading the same textbooks and journal articles, etc, etc.' I don't know about Business Management, but in those disciplines with which I am more familiar I know that the courses of study on offer at different universities are often very different, with the older universities often making greater demands on their students. For example, an undergraduate reading History at Oxford will be required to take both a Further and a Special Subject. These papers require the student to master literally thousands of pages of set texts, mostly in English, but also in French, German, Spanish, Russian, Old French, and Latin. I understand that a degree in History at some other universities may have less demanding requirements. Furthermore, the range of subjects taught varies considerably between institutions. Whereas Russell Group universities and other more distinguished institutions are likely to offer a full range of subjects from Late Antiquity to recent times, combining a traditional focus on political history with intellectual history, social history, the history of science, the history of art, etc, I have noticed that former polytechnics and teacher training colleges often seem to focus on the early modern and modern periods, placing perhaps undue emphasis (for an undergraduate course) on themes such as gender, class, and race. Similarly, a member of my family was once considering reading English at a college of the University of London, but she was put off by the fact that in her first term she would have to read several whole novels, plays, poems, and other texts. By contrast, my contemporaries reading English at Oxford covered in their three years the entire canon of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon era to the late twentieth century. An author would often be covered in a single week, during which the student would read all of that author's major works, together with the critical literature, and produce an essay for the weekly tutorial. A student at Oxford writes one or two essays a week and in addition may have to complete translations, commentaries, manuscript editions, etc. The principal method of teaching, as readers of this thread will know, is the tutorial, in which one or two students will meet with a don or a graduate student (who is often a better tutor than the don) to spend an hour, if not longer, discussing the students' essays. In addition the students may have to attend classes organized by the faculty and may choose to attend lectures. Students in other universities, by contrast, generally attend a lecture, which may be supplemented by a smaller seminar of as many as twenty students. Students write a couple of essays for each course, which generally receive only written comment. These essays typically form part of the assessment for the final degree result, whereas at Oxford and Cambridge, almost uniquely now, assessment still rests on the final examination with, perhaps, one paper examined by thesis. A small minority of students find that the final examination works to their advantage because they have excellent examination technique and can do brilliantly despite having put in minimal effort during the course. However, the vast majority of students are advantaged by the submission of coursework, which can be completed in their own time, often with help from tutors, and can go a long way towards off-setting poor examination technique and the simple fact of not having learnt enough material to answer adequately the range of questions on the paper. The fact is that different universities really do offer very different courses of study, with the elite institutions offering a more pure intellectual training with much greater contact between students and academics and more rigorous methods of assessment.

The last sentence ought to have read, 'The fact is that different universities really do offer very different courses of study, with the elite institutions offering a more pure intellectual training with a much more demanding workload, much greater contact between students and academics, and more rigorous methods of assessment.'