Mastodawn

A key defence of higher education is its contribution to social mobility, so we should be attentive to *which* universities actually achieve the greater impact on transforming the lives of their students.

You will notice that while Cambridge is ranked 20th & Oxford are rated 34th (Cambridge has improved its place while Oxford has dropped)... its the more maligned universities that do a better job for students life chances!

Just sayin'

#universities #politics #class
https://www.hepi.ac.uk/reports/2025-english-social-mobility-index/

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Andy Dearden 5d ago

@ChrisMayLA6 it would be interesting correlate this with public transport distances from areas of deprivation. Is it the boost provided from the middle to the top, or the leg up from exclusion to inclusion?

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Emeritus Prof Christopher May

@AndyDearden

Good Q.; this would relate to the work done some years ago on value added by institutions - never continued because so many top universities didn't add value at all but actually depressed life-time earnings by stopping top students going starlight into work (and thus delaying their climb up the wage ladder)..... my own university didn't want to publicise their data, because it transpired while they didn't actually make things worse, graduating added zero to life time earnings!