Education UK and UCAS searches compared

The Education UK site uses UCAS data under licence, so you would expect the search results to be much the same, if not exactly the same. But they're not. Even if you think it is more suitable for a non-native speaker of English to type, say, "Biological science" rather than click on it, the fact is that the student who does succeed in getting the spelling right etc. may have a rocky time. The serious question is why does anybody believe that the search system on Education UK, which has been this way for almost 8 years, is better in any regard for overseas students? It works sort of, for some searches, so it's better than the EFL or summer course searches. But let's not kid ourselves that this crappy service is helping international student recruitment.

Comments

[Chris]

Oh dear! And to think they could have had you as a contractor. But I think they perceived your competence as a threat. Sad really.

[David]

Hi Chris - at the time - in 2001 - they wanted a company to manage the entire project including FE / HE / Independent Schools / EFL / and anything else. There were plenty of good companies interested including Hobsons, Pearsons, and significantly Study Choice, a high profile Internet startup at the time. It didn't interest us because the revenue model was not, as I saw it, appropriate, being dependent on banner ads and "data sales". I believed that the former was unworkable and the latter unethical. The company that won the contract was the one which happened to agree to paying the BC a share of the attributable profits. The quality of the result was in the first place so appalling that the EFL data was removed - which is when they (secretly) put the managers liaising with me in charge of developing a product to match ours. But of course not only were they utterly incompetent as well as devious, but they also failed at any time to implement any quality controls or any research to establish its effectiveness. The British Council simply and blindly continues to present universities and parliamentarians with the myth of their "success". In the end the world of education, like the taxpayer, gets what it deserves.

[Chris]

During my time with the British Council I came across a couple of education managers with a professional approach to their work. Unfortunatley they had to play the incredibly slippery politics of the organisation to achieve the success they deserved.