<p>*...thanks to a "citizenship-blind" aid policy at six U.S. colleges Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Amherst and Dartmouth British citizens in need can access the same grants as their American counterparts.</p>
<p>Starting next year, a student with no savings from a household with an average U.K. income of £30,000 ($50,000) will accrue around $20,000 in loans per year for tuition and living costs at Oxford. (Most undergraduate courses in the U.K. run for three years for a total of about $60,000 at that income level.) At Yale, the same student would be expected to contribute about $5,450 per year towards tuition and living costs for a total of $21,800 over four years. That's a staggering $38,200 difference in the price of a degree. Only when a British family starts earning an income of around £90,000 ($150,000) will Yale, Princeton and Harvard begin to cost as much as a top British university after U.K. tuition rates go up. Mehan says that even before the tuition hikes, Harvard's grants made it a better deal for him than Cambridge. "In the end, I think financial aid is what tipped the balance," he says...*</p>
<p>Much is said about students from families with combined income less than US$ 50,000 getting full rides at Ivies and other top US schools. However, what percentage of the admitted students actually come from families in that income bracket ? I don’t know about Harvard, but I remember reading that, at MIT, only slightly less than 20 % of the undergraduate student body qualified for full-ride scholarships.</p>
<p>BTW, in England (a country that is often maligned on CC), not only are tuition fees capped for domestic students (at 9,000 pounds/year in 2012), but also ** nobody **, regardless of family income, has to [pay tuition fees while at school](<a href=“BBC News - Q&A: Tuition fees”>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11483638</a>). The British government pays full tuition for you and you only start re-paying (with low interest) once you graduate and are in employment making over 21,000 pounds/year. Furthermore, if one is unable to pay his/her tuition debt in 30 years, the debt is simply written off and the government takes the loss.</p>
<p>Yet another way that Oxbridge are behind top 3-5 private universities in the US.</p>
<p>Although many will disagree (and will flame me for saying), Oxbridge just aren’t at the quality of HYPSM. They don’t have the same quality faculty, they don’t produce the same quality research (or research volume), they are not nearly as selective and don’t have the same quality student bodies, they can’t afford new, cutting-edge facilities, etc. Oxbridge are continually touted as the very best because they’re extremely old and have long dominated in prestige; but the very tippy-top private schools in the US have long surpassed Oxbridge in most measures of academic quality. That’s not to say they aren’t also amazing - they’re just not quite at the level of the top 3-5 (depending on what you’re measuring) private schools in the US.</p>
<p>In the end, money talks: it determines financial aid, but also determines, directly or indirectly, quality of faculty, facilities, students, degree programs, etc.</p>
<p>Actually, the better question would be: how many Harvard students come from families that actually need any financial aid whatsoever? The truth is, there are plenty of Harvard students who are scions of rich families for whom the Harvard expense is trivial. I suspect that the same is true at Ox-bridge.</p>
<p>I also wonder how much ‘academic quality’ (whether measured by research productivity or otherwise) really matters for most undergraduate students for which the Time article was targeted. Let’s be perfectly honest - the overwhelming majority of undergrads are almost any school are not going to engage in research careers. For most of them, prestige - and the concurrent access to top-line recruiters and elite lifelong social networks - is what ultimately matters. Oxbridge have long and arguably unfairly dominated the prestige rankings, because of their age and (especially) their central social position within the most dominant empire in history. But fairness has got nothing to do with it, by the same reasoning that a major (and unfair) reason for Harvard’s world dominance is its prime social position within the world’s lone superpower, claiming both the current and prior President as graduates. Some schools such as, say, UCSD, may be extraordinarily productive from a research standpoint, but just aren’t going to give you the access to elite networks and recruiters that most undergraduates desire.</p>
<p>I think ARWU has many flaws that give Oxbridge an advantage, e.g. Nobel prizes, which I don’t think are indicative of the quality of Oxbridge relative to HYPSM.</p>
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<p>I’d make two points here: one, many measures of research productivity do have an influence, directly or indirectly, on the undergraduates (although the measures used in the rankings may or may not truly be indicative of such influence), and two, I meant overall university quality. Of course, that deviates from the topic at hand, but as I suggested above, the financial aid point is just one of many ways that Oxbridge fall behind HYPSM. IMO the other ways in which Oxbridge fall behind HYPSM (e.g. faculty quality, research quality, funding for initiatives, programs, facilities, etc.) put the latter solidly ahead on the whole.</p>
<p>Not really though, as Bruno123 pointed out the students in the UK are financed by the government and so its not really a big deal despite the recent hike in fees.</p>
<p>However, I do agree that if you measure research quality (is there really anyway of doing this??) or a substitute for it- then you would discover lots of US universities and not just HYPSM are superior to the Oxbridge. It only when you add stuff like reputation and international staff that these schools get some pull ups. </p>
<p>Now I do not really agree that high-quality research has a significant impact on undergraduate students. I have been in various kinds of universities- one undergrad focused but not so strong research, one strong research but not undergrad focused and one undergraduate focused with very strong research (obviously one of the HYPSM).</p>
<p>The weakest in terms of academics was the one which had very strong research but a relatively weak undergraduate student body. I only think research quality would have a significant impact when coupled with an elite student body as if the case at the tippy top universities.</p>
<p>Schools with Strong research and weak undergraduate students (like a lot of large publics) will tend to be weaker than those with a good undergraduate program but weak research.</p>
<p>I agree with sefago and disagree with phantasmagoric. First of all, comparing an Ivy to an elite UK university is truly comparing apples to oranges. At a UK uni, you study just your major for three years (with very few electives) compared to a four year (typically) liberal arts degree where you are taking significant core requirements, distribution requirements and electives. Therefore, you often study your major subject in much greater detail in the UK, particularly at Oxbridge. One anectote I heard from a American parent whose child had offers to study Maths at Combridge and Yale, told me that at Cambridge a Maths major would cover the same material in her first year there compared to all four years at Yale. Second, really, who cares? You are splitting hairs when you are comparing the quality of the education (forget about the quality of the research and the dorms which are much less important) at top unis such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton and Yale.</p>
<p>The liberal arts education produces leaders who can think critically and creatively. A Yale math grad may not be interested in a PhD and may not understand the most esoteric math topics, but he/she would be prepared for law, medicine and business school and for dealing with problems that touches on many different fields. I personally know a math/history grad from an Ivy who went on to Stanford Law. And now, she’s using her mastery of both words and numbers to drive deals for a top PE firm.</p>
<p>“In the end, money talks: it determines financial aid, but also determines, directly or indirectly, quality of faculty, facilities, students, degree programs, etc.”</p>
<p>Very true. This is how Stanford and the University of Chicago rose to the ranks of the most elite research universities in a relatively short among of time. The wealthiest universities can attract the best teachers and researchers, attract the best students, recruit the best athletes and have the best facilities.</p>
<p>I don’t want to discuss the merit of a liberal arts education, but I take issue with the idea that Oxbridge graduates are not “leaders who can think critically and creatively”. </p>
<p>Just as anecdotal evidence, Margaret Thatcher graduated with a highly specialized 4-year degree in Chemistry from Oxford (equivalent to an integrated BS/MS degree). Her graduation thesis was on X-ray crystallography, under the supervision of Nobel prize winner [Dorothy Hodgkin](<a href=“Dorothy Hodgkin - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Hodgkin</a>). Thatcher then moved on to study for the bar and become a lawyer. And, of course, you all know the rest of the story, which I don’t need to tell.</p>
<p>Also, the prestige that they hold has come from having some of the most influential people in history attend their universities. Cambridge had Newton and Darwin, who are probably both among any top list of the most influential people in history. I doubt anyone at HYSPM comes even close to those two. Like it or not, the prestige of a university also comes from the super-famous people who become associated with it. This can be seen with Einstein and ETH Zurich, or with Richard Feynman and Caltech.</p>
<p>So my question to you is: what exactly makes quality researchers, or researching facilities, more advantageous that one would be better off attending one of the SHYPM schools than oxbridge?</p>
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<p>you’re speaking as if Oxbridge don’t have among the highest endowments in the world; Cambridge has $6.7b; Oxford has $4.75b. That’s not nearly as high as the other schools, but i wouldn’t say, or imply, that either university is lacking financially.</p>
<p>I disagree. Even if the students don’t get involved in the research, high-quality research is usually indicative of a strong faculty (not necessarily the best teachers, but that’s largely irrelevant to a person’s education anyway - although that’s a topic for another day). Strong faculty means more prestige, better facilities, better departments/programs, better funding for initiatives, and the like. All this tends to correlate highly with selectivity, which is correlated with the quality of the student body.</p>
<p>londondad,</p>
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<p>I don’t know how this is relevant.</p>
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<p>Of course - I never said that Oxbridge didn’t give a quality education. But purely in terms of ‘education,’ there isn’t a difference between, say, Vanderbilt and Princeton. Yet for some reason, most regard one better than the other. Why is that? Because a university is more than simply ‘the education.’</p>
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<p>That’s fine and dandy, but universities are judged on more than prestige. They have to do a lot to be considered ‘quality.’ And the measure of quality depends on the factor you’re considering; for example, research quality can be measured (though imperfectly) through citations.</p>
<p>I don’t dispute that Oxbridge are prestigious - but it’s not just prestige that goes into it.</p>
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<p>I’ll answer with another question: why would you attend Harvard over Montana State for a reason other than prestige (assuming cost is the same)?</p>
<p>(I am not implying that Oxbridge are at the quality of Montana State. But by admitting that there are significant reasons to attend Harvard over Montana State, without considerations of cost or prestige, you admit that there’s a gradient by which we judge universities. Oxbridge are very high on this scale; they just aren’t at #1-2, as people like to think.)</p>
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<p>Of course, but I never said that Oxbridge is lacking. They just don’t have as much as the richest universities in the US. And whether you admit it or not, money ultimately determines most of the factors that we judge universities by. A ranking of universities by endowment or by operating budget is virtually the same as every ranking out there.</p>
<p>It’s hard to compare Oxbridge to US universities by endowment, anyway, since the former are public and thus supported by the British government. So look to the budgets: why is it that Cambridge’s budget is less than $1 billion, while Harvard’s and Stanford’s are $4 billion, despite the fact that all three have virtually the same size student body and faculty? Oxford spends less than $400 million in research each year; Stanford spends 3x as much. (All of them have medical divisions/schools. But even taking out the med school budgets from H and S would still put their university budgets many times larger than Oxbridge’s.)</p>
<p>So you argued: that strong research is important because of a "strong faculty (which does not necessary mean strong teachers) which means more prestige/better facilities/better departments (grad departments?) which basically mean more “gloss”</p>
<p>None of this really point at the quality of education as opposed to the reputation or “gloss” of the university. Moreover, some schools like say Purdue or UT Austin are very strong research universities but lack a high quality student body so it is indeed not correlative since there are outliers present. Selectivity comes up for different reasons, sometimes from having a strong research reputation and history to other reasons entirely.</p>
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<p>Then you mean prestige of the university. Seems all these conversation tend to boil down to is the academic prestige of the university and yes HYPSM are the best in that department. The research reputation of a university does impact undergraduates in that it gives the university a “reputation.” My point of contention is if that reputation is rightly deserved.</p>
<p>What I was looking for was the link between the research of a university and undergraduate education considering the fact that as long as a school does a decent amount of research its students will still have the opportunity to take graduate classes and engage in research projects as an undergrad. The students at HYPSM do have a larger research portfolio to choose from than those at other schools but that’s about it really.</p>
<p>Who said that the goal of this discussion was to determine the quality of the education? And by “education,” I assume you mean strictly that, and not broadly construed to include everything that might affect an undergrad’s academic experience.</p>
<p>As I said before, a university is a lot more than its education (in the strict sense of the word).</p>
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<p>No, I argued just the opposite, in reponse to beyphy’s assertion.</p>
<p>It’s not just the research, though. Because these universities have tons of money, they fund student activities/groups left and right, hand out grants like candy, give students amazing internship opportunities, myriad study abroad opportunities, etc. My main point before was a purely academic judgment, where Oxbridge fall behind (faculty, research, facilities, etc.). But they also fall behind in what I just listed, because money determines all of this (and more).</p>
<p>isn’t prestige determined by quality? If it isn’t, give me an example of any prestigious university that isn’t considered high quality.</p>
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<p>there are many problems wrong with this analogy. Even if harvard is better than oxbridge (which for the sake of argument let’s allow) they’re still in the same tier. The reasons to attend H over MS could be massive; for oxbridge they could be small, or even non-existant.</p>
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<p>you didn’t really answer my question. I asked you for a specific advantage. You didn’t provide one. All you really said is there are differences between universities, some of which are very large. No one doubts that there are differences between SHYPM and oxbridge, but the point is are the differences in SHYPM’s favor, and if so, why? Until you provide a good argument for why SHYPM are in the 1-2 category and Oxbridge isn’t, i’m rejecting your claim.</p>
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<p>because one’s a public university and the other two are privates, and privates typically spend more, and have a higher budget than publics do. Additionally, there’s no evidence that having a larger budget means being of higher quality.</p>
<p>The new QS Rankings - released today - place Cambridge as the best university in the world, followed by Oxford at number 5. They cite Oxbridge’s unique and much-prestigious one-on-one tutorial system and indeed its research capabilities.</p>