I wish it were, it would make recruitment much easier. I recruited electronics engineers for embedded hardware and software development from 1984 to 2000. I found that of all applicants with a few years post grad experience, the ones with a 2:1 or 1st from a red brick uni were much better than the rest. In that period I recruited 200 engineers, I must have interviewed 2000 of them and read 20,000 CVs.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule, like your friend, but they are few and far between.

The UK education system may well have deteriorated so much in the last 6 years that the degrees from the redbricks are no longer worth the paper they are printed on, in which case what you say may well be true.

Ian