Higher education – the debate continues
Higher education – the debate continues
In my previous blog, Who Needs a University Education? Who Wants it?, which can be found here:
http://writing-community.writersworkshop.co.uk/members/profile/104/blog-view/3796
I concluded that successive government policies, through (1) creating one-size-fits-all ‘universities’ out of existing universities, polytechnics and colleges, (2) adjusting the methods of attaining entry qualifications and thereby vastly increasing the number of eligible students, and (3) introducing student loans instead of grants to finance all this huge growth and then increasing the fees to £9000 – have virtually priced themselves out of the market. The question has to be asked, are they no longer giving value for money? Is it worth it?
This stimulated considerable comment broadly in agreement, although it was pleasing to learn of some others’ experience of the ‘new’ system which had worked out well for them. Certainly some of the polytechnics have managed the transition to university status and served their new student intake well. But at a cost? It seems there is definitely now a gap in the provision of honest-to-goodness practical training in basic skills and thousands of school leavers are being forced through the ‘academic’ sausage machine, not against their wills, necessarily, but against their best interests, because the alternatives no longer exist to the extent that they used to.
The resultant glut of ‘graduates’ on the job market has (1) made it difficult for employers to differentiate between job applicants and (2) reduced the number of job opportunities per ‘graduate’. At the same time new students are now facing starting their careers with a potential debt of around £30,000.
The previous blog outlined the steps that got us to this point. It’s now apposite to consider what may well be the next steps.
We have already seem employers starting to favour applicants with work experience over the purely academically qualified. This latest hike in fees has caused potential students seriously to reconsider their options. For these reasons, we are very likely to see student numbers starting to decline. So even with the higher fees not all universities are going to be able to make ends meet. We’ve heard, as commented on the other blog, that some converted polys have already had to close. This trend is likely to continue, but because of the unnatural uniformity that has been forced on these places of higher education it will not always be the new that will founder. We could see some long-standing and excellent universities going under through lack of students and hence, fees to keep them going.
Might we eventually end up, not just back to the number of universities we had before the polytechnics were promoted, but with rather less, some of the good ones having gone under in the battle for the reduced numbers of undergraduates who can still afford the fees? Back to where we were in the 19th century when only the rich went to a (comparatively) few universities.
And the inevitable result of fewer and smaller universities? Fewer academics, less research, fewer brilliant minds trained and let loose to invent and innovate, to make great discoveries – in medicine, in food research, energy research, environmental research. This will be a poorer place, and not just fiscally.
My last blog ended by implying that for many it no longer made sense to go to university. I am now saying that something must be done to change that scenario. The trend outlined in the previous blog cannot be allowed to continue as I’ve suggested here that it may well do. Our universities must be retained, strong and viable, to stand alongside industry and commerce to maintain, or some might say, regain our position as a world leader - to keep the country viable for future generations of school-leavers to have genuine practical and appropriate choices about the next stage of their lives and continue the process.
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61 Comments
Conclusions are always best made at the end of a debate.
Years ago, you could work your way up without the qualifications through ability but that's not as common nowadays. Qualifications are more essential than ever, and students find themselves having to make the decision, A levels/career or career. Aaron has always wanted to be a mechanic, so his choice was simple, and he didn't stay on for his A levels, but I wish he had.
Universtity was so much more, for me, than the education I gained although that did give me the gate key to what has turned out to be a fairly successful career. It made me a different person, taught me how to think and how to be independent, self reliant if you like.
So, I for one hugely regret the mess that has been made of the university system in the interest of self seeking asshole politicians who just wanted to get favourable headlines and gave no thought to consequence. Because, although it may seem selfish, when I went it was only 10% or 15% of a school year that could, it can't work if everyone goes. It just can't. And there's the problem. I don't grudge anyone the opportunity and I wish everyone could have the experience I had. But it won't work. And you are right, they may have broken something valuable.
One footnote. My daughter is going, provided she nails her A levels and lucky me, it's this year before the fees rocket. She's going miles away and it will change things for ever and may break my heart a bit, but I have to let her fly. I know she can. And she won't be starting her life with crippling debts. That's one thing I can do.
Does anyone have any observations on the danger to our academic institutions? Or the importance to the country (as opposed to individual students) of retaining the resource they have been providing for the last few centuries?
Crossed with you, Alan. Again, good points on 'the individual', with a brief telling comment about the state of the whole system.
At my university one of the lecture theatres I attended was named after Ernest Rutherford. He was just one person, but by jumped up Harry he made a difference. And that's the point. Everyone can't be exceptional (the definition of the word is clear enough) whatever the rhetoric of Tony effing Blair might claim. But a few exceptional people can make a big difference beyond what their number might imply. IF we create the environment in which they can flourish.
Moving quickly on, I think that we should make Uni's free ( yes I did say, FREE. hear me out) and make it harder to get in. this would mean less students who get in just because there rich, and more who get in because they're smart. It would also mean less students overall, meaning less uni's. This would mean ( if we elected a sensible government) that the remaining Uni's would get better, polytechnics could re-open ( which I am assuming is good?) and students would do better. and the money to make uni's free? well, we could get that back from the economy improving due to a rise in people with worthwhile qualifications.
of course a lot of things could go wrong with that.
Polytechnics, on the other hand, are a trickier subject. You are not going to persuade the old Polys that are now Unis that really they want to be Polys again. However, the government should be encouraging businesses to pay for courses through apprenticeship schemes as used to happen at the old Polys and then that would take a massive burden off the students/taxpayers/government. I think there are still some apprenticeship schemes out there - my nephew is an apprentice electrician and the firm he works for pays for his day-release course at college - but he had to search around for that and there was a lot of competition because places are so few and far between. But it's such a sensible way to do it because while he's been learning all the technical stuff at college, he's been getting hands on, practical and paid experience so that he can practise the theory. The more qualified he has become, the more the company have paid him. And this also means that he's not gone anywhere near the benefits system.
There's just so much to say on this subject and not enough time. I think one of the major problems is that for a long time people wanted to break through the elitism that Universities seemed to project but in doing so, they completely failed to understand the point of Uni. It is an academic environment, not suited to everyone and by no means the only or best way to get further qualified. The sooner we understand that and promote other styles of higher education as equally, if not more, useful for some people, the better.
In a hundred years from now we may once more be the workshop of the world, unless it's somewhere like Brazil or Chile.
Like Skylark, I also got a full grant and all tuition fees paid. I left Uni. with a £5000 loan, which I paid off at the end of the first year after getting an excellent job in Accountancy. I was academic, ambitious and hard working...the sky was the limit!
Unfortunately, the office job was not for me and I then retrained as a Maths teacher two years later - again all fees being paid for. When I started my new job I even got extra money for teaching Maths, a core subject...life was made easy.
Now, take into account that I grew up in a tiny apartment, with hardly any money, with a mother that told me to leave school at 16 to get a job - she did not see the point of education...she only made me work harder!
My main worry is that kids like me are now going to find it incredibly hard to go to University - how could I do it now? After seeing my parents put groceries back, have a loan shark around to collect bad debts, and my dad have a nervous breakdown there is no way I would have risked going to University with that amount of debt at stake...
So, the people that will suffer will be those that do not have parents that can help them pay. Regardless, of how bright they are! As a consequence, the economy will suffer because a workforce that is hungry to succeed is better than one that has been given opportunities on a silver platter.
Luckily for my children, I am already saving for the day they choose to go...but my parents would have never been able to save...there was never anything left in the pot!
What also scares me is the amount of intelligent children that are let down by the education they receive at school - just because you get an A in a good school does not mean you are an A student - you have just been better prepared...so again the wealthy get the better end of the deal.
Isn't it time that someone came up with a way to test intelligence and aptitude in a different way? I have seen many so called A students that can barely say a word confidently...how will they fair in the top jobs?
At the end of the day, University graduates go on to take senior jobs throughout many industries...we need to find a way to make sure that the best candidates get the jobs. And I don't think that it's all about a University degree - that's just a piece of paper!
At the moment, I am looking into a memorial to Thomas Hood that had been erected in Kensal Green Cemetery in London. (This monument had been a 'cause celebre' in the nineteenth century)
Had Peter Acroyd or Daniel Cruickshank - or any other London historian- looked into this material, the result might well have been a published article, a novel or a programme on BBC 4 in conjunction with 'The Open University.' Researching a nineteenth century 'Breach of Promise' trail would be easier with a university background would be easier too.
Islander8 gives very telling examples of just the sort of situation I have been speculating on. Higher education open to all, but only accessable by the rich. She asks, 'Isn't it time that someone came up with a way to test intelligence and aptitude in a different way?' Absolutely! How about testing all pupils prior to beginning their secondary education to see which would benefit from a prastically oriented learning path and which would benefit from accademically geared tuition. Round about aged 11 would be right, or just over. We could call it the Eleven plus. Oh, hang on...
If the LibDems had resisted the introduction of £9,000pa fees then I think our children's prospects and the LibDem's own prospects would be looking much rosier. They should have pushed an alternative proposal which ensured that the most able students (from state schools) should be given free-tuition and encouraged to study at university, as it benefits our society in the long-run.
I'm off on holiday as of tomorrow morning, so I expect you all to have this sorted when I get back, OK?
What about the Dutch, and other European education systems? As far as I can recall, public schools do not exist in the Netherlands.
I have to add something into the fray on private education ...bullying! The larger the school, the harder it gets to control. My son loves reading, is a book worm, and does not has a few solid friends...and he is constantly a target for bullying. we would prefer to keep him in the state system, but we are tempted to pay up for him to go to a private school...all I would like is for him to be happy. And sometimes "smart kids" are easy targets!
Deli, when you say 'here' do you mean UK or Oz? It's an interesting statistic but your description of spoon-fed, indulged pupils is not one I recognise from my own experience. The ethos at my school was very much self-motivation to excel - opportunities were provided but it was up to you if you chose to use them. I did and I benefited from it. Possibly, at some of the posher schools, networking and knowing the 'right' people is part of the education but that wasn't the impression I got at my school. Success was open to anyone willing to try hard enough. I owe a lot of my subsequent successes to the attitude that my school instilled in me. Thinking about what I've written, perhaps it isn't the fact that my school was private but because of its ethos that it was such a good school. Maybe resources have less to do with it or maybe it is the combination of a positive, challenging ethos and great resources. Either way, I think it should be open to all and not just those who can afford it or who are lucky enough, like me, to be financially supported.
I came back last night to read everyone's comments and add my own but by the time I hit 'Post' I'd been timed out so lost all. In brief, I think that to preserve our universities as centres of excellence for the future we need to understand that unqualified equality can only be imposed by government edict since it doesn't exist in the real world. People are not mass produced but individuals with a variety of talents, not all of which thrive in Academe. Equality of opportunity is a different matter and that is what state education should be offering in as wide a variety of educational establishments as possible.
Young people have been led to believe that a University education is their right and a sure way of getting a good job but those who encouraged this belief didn't have the foresight to see that positive discrimination would be necessary to achieve the dream and the public purse would never be deep enough to fund such tuition for all who wanted it.
Now I see you have raised the suggestion that rich parents might be allowed to buy Uni education for their children. This was mooted by the universities as a way of raising funding beyond that from students and the Government. Willetts made that clear and did not rule it out but Cameron squashed it immediately and rightly so.
The proposal put to Parliament yesterday was that companies and charities should be allowed to buy such places and this is nothing new. Universities have always been free to raise funds in the private sector. My father's university fees were paid for by his employer at that time. More recently, John Prescott's were paid by the trade union he represented before standing for Parliament. And much valuable research would be lost to this country without the money provided by industry and commerce.
Although I fear the Governments plans are going to increase the level of student debt across the country (taking us towards the situation in the US, although not yet at that level). One thing that is changing for the better is the Governments changes to allow part-time students (those who are studying at University alongside a part or full time job or family commitment) to apply for and be given a student loan. I was lucky that my own University fees were paid for my my employer as they linked to my job/career path. The formal inclusion of part-time study as valid and supported could open doors for others who were not ready or able to attend University straight from school, thereby giving people the option to pursue their educational aspirations at all stages of life.
This is my first real, live comment so a line or two of relevant intro.
I grew up in the RAF and travelled a lot as a child which interrupted my education - four primary schools, three secondary schools. I was lucky to reach the fifth form (they wanted to throw me out) and left with nothing. Years later I discovered I'm Mensan - top end of the scale, actually - yes, that smugness was contrived. This made no difference to my life but did pose some interesting questions about the effectiveness of my 'education'.
In 1980 I started a two-year Diploma in Youth and Community Work at a Teacher Training College in Wales - please don't get me started on Thatcherism. Amongst other things, I discovered that the vast majority of teachers go from school to college and back to school. This seemed completely daft - not to mention cruel since the kids I was working with would surely eat these new teachers alive. Where was the life experience they needed to relate to the children they'd be teaching?
After ten years or so in the Voluntary sector massive cuts in funding and the huge proliferation of boxes to be ticked left me completely disillusioned. I switched into advertising then into 'news' publishing. I had no relevant qualifications or experience but I'd learned to 'catch the wave' of the 'new technology' and did very well, thank you.
This isn't an introspective and I haven't lost the point (or the plot) so please bear with me.
The 1944 Education Act made provision for three 'universally free' types of school: grammar, secondary modern and technical. In doing so it recognised the diverse needs of a civilised society and that money or class should not provide obstacles to education. This is a fundamental point and has absolutely nothing to do with jumping through hoops or postcode lotteries.
Is the recent proliferation in university places a response to demand? If so, demand from whom? Society? The (so-called) middle-classes? Does being a graduate make you good at stuff? Or does it make you a dilettante? We're all different, so I suppose that depends but I've interviewed enough grads to say with certainty that the letters after their name did not automatically mean they were the best for the job.
It's a dilemma. Does everyone have the right to go to University? Clearly not. Someone has to pay for it. And why should I pay for my neighbour's kids to go if my own choose not to? Well I might if I knew that my neighbour's kids would contribute more to society but there's no guarantee of that is there? Most people go to Uni to make their own lives better and care little about 'the poor' or the betterment of society.
I'm not sure what percentage of school-leavers go to Uni these days, 30%? My concern is what happens to the rest. Where are the vocational institutions? The technical colleges? The apprenticeships? Not in the limelight. Why is that?
My feeling is that Universities are an answer to some of the problem. We should protect them and ensure that money is not an obstacle - although I suspect an efficient system of scholarships would serve us better than free places for all. But it seems to me that we've become fixated on the idea. Most people don't want to go. What are we doing for them?
Free education is not a right. Or a requirement. However, an uneducated society cannot call itself a civilised society. Without education we will not be ready for the next phase of our evolution. But we will be just as ill-prepared if we study inappropriate subjects just because the letters look good on our CV.
I apologise for the length of this comment. The subject is both broad and deep. And I did so welcome the opportunity to exercise my creative writing skills. :P
By encouraging young people to take out huge student loans, we are sending out a very poor message and not being honest about the stress that debt brings. You don't often hear the phrase: 'never a beggar or a borrower be', which is a shame. At the very least we should now think very carefully before encouraging any young person to go to university.
Nahual: 'I wonder about the appropriateness of their placement' You are free to blog about anything. This one certainly got people's writerly juices flowing.
This has been an excellent blog, on a subject close to my heart.
I agree with nahual, a lot of teachers are institutionalised...no offence intended to any that did the school - uni -school route... I value all teachers for their time, dedication, commitment and drive in a career so plagued with discrimination and abuse. Teachers are such an easy target - blame them for everything! Think of how much teachers get paid? Value for money... I guess...
I followed an Acoounting & Law degree, started a job in one of the top five Accountancy firms of the time...to then realise it was not for me. I was pushed by my teachers into a lucrative career, to realise that I hated the University course and job...but, I was stubborn - I wanted to earn money! Doesn't everyone?
Luckily, my partner (now husband) saw how miserable I was and encouraged me to let go of the dream...so I went back to what I'd always wanted to do - teaching!
I retrained as a teacher of mathematics amd loved it - but, I was shocked by how little teachers knew of the real world...I knew what it was like to go through an intensive recruitment process, what it was to work in an office, and how different life was outside the school gates...I brought that experience with me, and I am a better teacher for it!
Regardless, all my knowledge has enabled me to be the Treasurer for a Pre-school, Friends Association, Swimming Club. My ICT skills allow me to do stuff other people barely know...so I have no regrets...
University is not a breeze, it teaches you life skills that are invaluable...but, I don't think its the right route for everyone. I saw many who did a course that was funded by a job and they had there act together...that is where the future lies!
In business you make the money, let them spend the money...
I hope I did not waffle too long, is this creative writing? Maybe? But, it sure is important!
'I wonder about the appropriateness of their placement' This comes laced with a liberal shot of irony - as do I. Your posts on this subject have been great. Thank you.
My points were more about the appropriateness of our education system.
Surely its anomalous that most of our teachers start their careers with little or no 'life' experience. It also seems odd (to me) that we're having such a heated debate about educating 30% of our young people - what happened to the rest? And how many of that 30% actually WANT a degree? And how many are just jumping through hoops to get letters on their CVs for their own betterment? (Nothing wrong with that per se... but should the broader society be paying for it?)
It seem to me that we certainly do have a responsibility for educating those gifted children (10% max) who may make huge contributions to our society. I just get an uneasy feeling that we have our priorities wrong when it comes to the rest.
The Thatcher years (studiously ignoring the politics of party and personality) reduced our manufacturing and industry - think back to what put the 'Great' in Great Britain. (Irony alert) The children of the people who lost their livelihoods then are not the University applicants of today - of course some of them may be. Do they give a flying f*** about their having to pay £9,000 to go to Uni? No, they are the children of high alcohol and substance abuse, hoodies, knife and gun crime and the Job Centre Plus - never worked out what the Plus meant.
My points, garbled though they are, really amount to this: We need Unis and we MUST protect them. And entry to them has to be egalitarian otherwise what happens to those bright young things who are not born of privileged parents? But we also need other means of educating people - vocational, technical, arts, sports institutions. We need these for the MAJORITY. Otherwise how can we call ourselves a civilised society? And I don't see the demos or the marches on the House or the petitions...
Perhaps we all need to review the work to date... from the boots up.
Right, off my soap-box and back to my latest opus. :P
I have 4 kids. Eldest just finishing the 2nd year of his degree in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. This is not a lightweight degree and his skills will be very much in demand when he graduates. He is clever, mature and will contribute significantly to society as an adult. He went to three state schools, then one private school, where he boarded. In the state schools he attended he was one of 30 pupils in the class. Because he is clever and quiet he was pretty much left to get on with it. He grew bored, fell in with the idiots of the class and became a bit of a pain. At this point, we moved him to a private school where he was in a class of 13. It was the making of him. We were lucky in that we were entitled to fee assistance through the Armed Forces Continuity of Education Alowance scheme. Our middle two children also started out in the state system, but moved to the same private school as their big brother at ages 9 and 6. They are now 16 and 13 and high achievers. Our youngest also had a year at a state school, and is now in a private day school. There are 12 others in his class. He has just been identitifed as a gifted child. We pay his fees in full.
We are not rich. We run one old car, rent a married quarter and are buying a cheap apartment in Spain to retire to when o/h leaves the Navy in 7 years time. We have invested in our childrens' education above all else. Why? Because they deserve to fufill their potential. I am fizzing with rage that the younger three will be saddled with huge debts if they choose to go to uni. The eldest has won sponsorship to help him through, but is still incurring a student loan debt. He intends to emigrate, taking his engineering skills with him, to avoid paying back his debt. I should be appalled by his plan, but I'm not. Those who have decided this deeply damamging policy DID NOT PAY for their university education. Make them pay back their fees, then I'll respect their decision.
There will be a huge brain drain as a direct result of the hike in fees. The UK will be left with the dregs. Good luck. I won't be here.
And no, Tony, you don't need a degree to make a success of your working life. But it sure helps.
I didn't complete my degree but baled out in the second year. Why? mainly because I was lazy and easily distracted —some things don't change – and it was the wrong course The careers master convinced a very bolshy kid that Sociology was ‘where it’s at’. (Yes, they really did use phrases like that.) How times and advice change. Oh, I was lucky enough to get a full grant too and signally failed to do it justice.
Did being ‘degree-less’ prevent me from becoming a moderately successful corporate suit? I don’t think so. But then I was taken on at time of relatively full employment. Not so sure those companies would have benefited from my wonderful talents if I were seeking a job with them today, in an era of on-line CVs and first-pass winnowing out of all candidates who don’t tick the ‘have degree’ box.
However, for many years my lack of qualification did bother me. And this may well have coloured my thinking when it came to my girls' education. Their C of E primary school was wonderful but after much heart searching and checking of finances we opted for a private secondary school. Wonderful for my eldest, but less so for her sister. However, they both received a fine education and made it to university, where, again, there were considerable costs (although not the crippling charges faced by students today). My younger self would have been apoplectic at this 'class betrayal' decision but, he couldn't know that in the end, the perceived best interests of one's children, would trump any socio/political dialectic in which he was smugly well-rehearsed.
I believed at the time in comprehensive education. I still do.Trouble is, political expediency, cowardice (others might say wisdom) prevented the Wilson government from introducing it. Comprehensive has to include ALL schools or it ain’t comprehensive.
Most of us end up justifying the lives we lead and the decisions we’ve taken. We're not necessarily right of course, but it’s fair to expect governments to at least go with the grain of people’s reasonable aspirations and eschew the ideological sneering in which so many politicians and activists of all political colours tend to indulge.
Comprehensives don't work because they lump everyone together and make no provision for those who do not fit the very narrow mould. I detest them and would never subject my kids to them. My older brothers were fortunate enough to catch the tail end of the grammar school system and thrived. I was born too late.
Mary - I went to a comprehensive school. I had to deal with bullies as I come from a fairly rough "working class" area and this school had the lot. It's not easy but it can be done. I simply declined to be bullied, played football, cricket and jazz (believe it or not). My parents could not afford private schooling. In fact it wouldn't have occurred to them that such a thing could be possible for the likes of us. I was even told that Duke of Edinburgh awards weren't for the likes of me. Salt of the earth my folks.
I am not an advocate of the comprehensive system, but it's state education and we get what we pay for, as a nation. I left with 13 O Levels, 3 A levels and got a place at Manchester, one of the better universities. One or two teachers helped. It can work, or at least not destroy. I had the benefit of a grant which I topped up with holiday jobs. Once University was over I never went back home again apart from visits. Never.
I think my message is that everyone is an individual.
Incidentally, roughly how much are public school fees?
Alan - I suspect I was an easier target than you. I was tiny, wore glasses and was clever. Not good. And I lived in a council house. I stayed away from the bullies as much as I could, but still got punched and kicked around a fair bit.
Ron - I can only speak as I have found. Private school fees vary across the UK. We pay £6000 per year for the youngest. We pay top up fees for the others of about £6000 per year. A huge sum of money that we both work hard to afford. No regrets. We have saved the state system about £20,000 per year by educating our kids privately. Perhaps that could be diverted to pay their uni fees? Ha ha.
Agreed about good so-called comprehensive schools of which there are a huge number. But they're not in a comprehensive education system because private, faith and other independent schools exist separately. As a young man I was taken with the original comprehensive ideal of public/state schools in which all pupils and teachers  good and bad  had only the state system in which to learn or teach. Unrealistic? Probably. As a result 'comprehensive' often became another word for 'secondary modern' because the grammar (one of which I was fortunate enough to go to), private and faith schools were allowed to continue alongside them. Your own experience, I guess, isn't untypical  even though bullying and unfairness certainly aren't the sole preserve of state schools. It's why, living in London, where comprehensive schools have very tough challenges but not enough resources to meet them, we opted reluctantly for 'private'. No regrets about the decision, but quite a few that we felt we had to take it.
Utopia. I wish there was a way to get there. Education for all is one of the keys, but only one. The nanny state is heavily criticised, but by crikey if you could see the way some of the children at our school live, you would weep. I do. Ideals do not plug gaps in children's lives, action does.
Tony - your blog really has got us all thinking!
Pnut Cat, which branch of Higher Education did you follow in your twee?
Maryluv, I went to a girls only comp in Gibraltar. It still performs very well, and is the only secondary there so everyone has to go there - unless their parents send them to England for a "better" education.
I was a high flyer, academic, into sports, clubs etc...I never got bullied in my life! I got on with everyone...why, I didn't have a penny and I hang around with everyone - but the main thing that kept me grounded was my sport - swimming! I lived at the club...pretty much. My parents had hardly any money, as I have said previously, but I didn't care it was normal to not have money...
Of course, it motivated me to work hard - to make the break, etc...but my teachers, overall, were okay.
When I worked in a secondary school here I saw many kids thrive and reach their potential...in fact a girl I taught ended up getting straight A's even though she failed the eleven plus to get into the local grammer school.
There are many excellent schools around so please don't slate all comp's! Teacher work extremely hard with limited resources and support. The gap is in training the right teachers, and offering the right management support. It's the old the hand does not talk to the brain notion...
I am considering sending my son to private school because of the "extra" things it has to offer - better facilities, smaller class sizes, discipline, etc...but to be honest, it breaks my heart to have to do it. There does seem to be a huge us and them culture in England, and its a darn shame...
A work colleague of my dad once said to him..."how did you do it? You have three daughters, you didn't pay a penny, and yet they all went to University and have great careers. I spent a fortune and my kids are spoilt and lazy and have not got a job yet. What's your secret?"
The truth is we don't know...but there is a lot to be said for role models. Even though my mum did not see the benefit of education, my dad was my rock...he loves to read, loves history and was always looking over my shoulder with a smile...that's what the youth of today needs - support.
So, the issue is - should university be for everyone? Hell, yes, it gives confidence, self belief, discipline, etc...
I heard an ad on the radio for university and I've had a change of heart - - okay, so you have to get a loan, but the rate is really low and you don't pay it back until you earn over £21,000. If you do obtain a high paid career you'll have it paid in no time. And if you don't then steadily does it...but you'll always have the degree - no-one can take that away from you. Adn I for one am proud of what I achieved...
But the Tories have made other daft decisions where they have back-tracked, such as NHS reform and selling-off the countryside. I expect they will backtrack on tuition fees too, otherwise they will not last long.
I'm now 45 and never been to uni. Never entertained the idea of it, never thought myself clever or bright enough for it. Only ever earning myself 5 CSE's in school, one of which was NOT a maths, (got a U for that - unclassified - nibs and numbers in school never worked).
I may be on my own here with my opinion (but that never stops me).
Why are Universities highlighted as being the 'be-all and end-all' of education? Why are children being ushered this way and not being shown other avenues? OR why are other avenues so belittled by the names (better to say your child is in University than in college) And Surely life experiences happen everywhere, whether University or College, or other.
When I worked as a lab assistant building electronic prototype bits for cars I worked alongside engineers who would create all these wonderful electronic divices in the cars. Clever? Yes. Hard working? definitely. Practical? Quite a few in their early years of training were pretty hopeless sad to say. Fantastic at theory etc, but building them.... That was where my skills came into their own. I didn't need uni degree but I did need practical skills and natural abilities of organisation and method and a working knowledge of basic electronics which I'd learned at college.
I'm not sure I feel comfortable with University fees or not, but all the further education I've done since leaving school I've paid for myself, out of my own pocket and I don't see why I should help pay for others to attend uni when I feel most of them are better off financially than me (breadline people attaining grants etc excluded).
one person wrote earlier.....
Young people have been led to believe that a University education is their right and a sure way of getting a good job but those who encouraged this belief didn't have the foresight to see that positive discrimination would be necessary to achieve the dream and the public purse would never be deep enough to fund such tuition for all who wanted it.
Please don't missunderstand, I'm all for further education, but the whole saga of tuition fees is dragging on a bit now and I do wonder where it's all leading us in the end.....
I look forward to reading more comments.
Nibs
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