Who Needs a University Education? Who Wants it?
Who Needs a University Education? Who Wants it?
So much changed in higher education throughout the long Labour reign.
Higher education for all sounds great and egalitarian, but actually, it's crazy. Higher education is to enable people with the capacity to benefit from it to reach their full potential. 80% of the ubiquitous 'all' that Labour want to have access to this, do not have that capability. (Maybe that figure is too high. 45 years ago we were told how privileged we were to be able to go to uni. We were in the top 20%, we were told. Well maybe Labour's heart was in the right place and that 20% should have been higher, 30% or even 35% - but nothing even approaching 100%. That's just plain daft.
Everybody's different; we don't all have university minds; how could we? But plans went ahead to increase places at uni and soon that reached capacity so the old polytechnics (that did a great job, incidentally, giving exactly the right level of further education to the sort of students who benefited from attending them) were reclassified as universities to provide more places. They became neither fish not foul - looked down on by 'real' universities and their students, and no longer providing the best possible education to the students they were originally benefiting.
Now there were plenty of 'university' places, but not enough students to fill them. Answer: change the examination system. Don’t reduce the academic standards. Oh, dear me, no! Hmm… But introduce a modular system where students can gradually build up enough points to qualify for a place at Uni. And, lo and behold, suddenly lots more of our students were of a standard to gain university entrance – an amazing and very convenient coincidence, so all the newly created places could be filled.
But, oh dear, so many students; how can we cope? cried the universities and pseudo-universities. We must have more staff, more facilities. Gosh, this is all costing an awful lot more than we expected, cried the government. Answer: substitute student loans for student grants – get it all back again, eventually. Not too much; something manageable. A brief reprieve.
Costs shot up, student numbers continue to rise. If we are to maintain the standards of teaching in our government set charters, you have to allow us more resources, cry the uni’s, again. Sorry, no can do, plead the new coalition. Got to make stringent cut-backs to get us out of the hole Labour left us in. But, tell you what, you can raise your fees from £3000 to around £4500 – that should do it for most of you. And to save us having to legislate again, we’ll put in a ceiling of, say, £9000 to cover the odd case where more is needed. And it will hardly cost us anything because Labour changed grants into loans – the bastards.
Right, thanks. We can increase our fees to £4,500, say the uni’s. Great. But hang on, did you say the ceiling is £9000? You did? Terrific, we’ll have that! And, surprise, surprise, the majority of fees go up to the full £9000.
What’s the result of all these changes? A glut of ‘graduates’ on the job market – some genuine, some a bit iffy. Employers no longer knowing what they’re getting when they take on a ‘graduate’. Could be somebody in the top 20%. Could just as easily be someone from the next 30%, or maybe lower. So they are putting much more store on work experience than mere, apparent academic qualifications.
The question is, is it worth it? A 30-odd thousand pound debt, with no guarantee of a job after four years of study and a degree that half the country now holds? What’s the alternative?
Get a good general education at school. Get good A-levels, or whatever they’re called these days, to show you are of university calibre. Then find a job that gives vocational training. After four years, you’ll have four years’ worth of savings in the bank, four years’ worth of work experience and with luck, a relevant qualification. And a job!
It’s
beginning to look like a no-brainer to
me.
In my next blog I extrapolate this trend and considered where it may lead. You can find it here, if you wish:
http://writing-community.writersworkshop.co.uk/my_profile/blog-view/blog_3798.htm
76 Comments
I have an academic family of Doctors, Dentists and Teachers. They have bachelors and honours and all that jazz, and I got stick from them as well. I got called a "waster" and was asked "what are you going to do with your life?" But I don't really mind, because so many people have now told me their degree was rushed and that they have regrets. I got stick for it, but I have no regrets.
I also think things like Apprenticeships are great but that students are pushed and funnelled way too intently to the Uni path.
You are courageous, of course and I'm with you. But you've set a cat loose among the pigeons!
Weens: this is why I think having a year out - not to travel, not to 'find yourself', not to 'take a break from education, but to work, properly, with proper working responsibilities - is so important. I did it - I worked for the Jobcentre as an Admin Assistant - and it set me up pretty well, not only because I had a better working ethic in general, not only because I was allowed to go back and work my summers, not only because it allowed me to save some money up before starting uni, but because I saw a whole sector of society I had never met before: the unemployed. They ranged from the homeless heroin addict who lived in the park to Ween's aforementioned graduates who wouldn't accept anything less than a management level job, as long as it was 9-5 and paid more than £20K a year (this was over 15 years ago, remember - to put that in perspective, when I worked there as a college educated employee, I was on £6,500 pa...). I still have friends in the job, and they tell me things are even worse now; not only are there even *more* graduates out there than ever before who all want management level jobs with pay of at least £30K a year, there aren't even the basic level jobs available to try and get them to some level of work experience so they can start applying for the management job. Which also don't exist. It's a vicious circle.
What is ironic is that my husband's company (a pretty big engineering firm) are crying out for people, and are having to recruit abroad, simply because we do not produce enough home-grown engineers. This is, I feel, a travesty - in Portsmouth, most of out 'white collar' industry is all about engineering in many different forms (electrical and military based, mainly) and Portsmouth Uni actually has a very good Engineering Department - but no one is taking up the courses. Engineering, is alas, not 'sexy' right now. It's hard work, needs a certain level of mastery in a few 'difficult' subjects (physics and maths are pretty much statutory) and the course hours are long - none of this 'turn up for 6 hours a week and spend the rest of your time down the Student's Union' in an Engineering course. All of which was great for hubby: with his First and his Masters with a Distinction in Electrical and Computer Engineering, his company head-hunted him straight out of Uni... but it's becoming a rare thing.
So sad.
Sorry, but that's either very cool, or a bit spooky!!
Trouble is ... Bankers - once freed of regulation - held out the prospect of 'owning one's home' as the epitome of every young person's dream and lead our young ones into taking on loans they had no possibility of ever repaying.
Once hooked on credit liabilty there is no easy way out.
As for Tony's original point, university was a valuable experience for me but I always knew that's what I wanted to do with my life, from the time I was small - get A-levels, then a degree and finally work as a teacher and a writer. I thrived in an academic environment, I loved the atmosphere of searching for new knowledge and understanding, but I did have friends at university, no less bright or keen than I was, who did not excel in such an environment, who just shouldn't have been there. They would have benefited far more from an apprenticeship, learning a trade and then moving on to further studies (if they needed or wanted to) but my friends were simply expected to go straight for the higher education courses and not waste their time learning a trade. I often wish I had done that, for many reasons, not least of which the opportunity for well-paid work instead of the myriad of rubbish summer jobs I had.
Ely - btw my husband, too, has been trying to recruit for months now, most recently resorting to asking friends and acquaintances if they know an engineer who might want to work for his company. It's just mad when all you ever hear is people struggling to find work.
I picked myself up and went on to thrive in a new industry. I am a political animal and really don't want to go down the route of defending my values and principles on Cloud. Suffice it to say that if you believe Thatcherism destroyed your job prospects you are so very wrong.
Perhaps a lot of people would be better earning sooner. Schools have a lot to answer for, the young people I was involved with all seemed to think they were going to be rich or famous. In fact they will eb sweeping floors or making tea in the beginning, as I did.
My nephews and nieces are at Uni - one at Oxford but he started late due to illness, and two in London. All are enjoying it, finding it hard work, and working to support themselves. I don't think they have any idea yet of the career prospects they may have.
Yep. Because, generally, she's culpable.
We've had twenty years of macho government since her time and where are we now?
http://writing-community.writersworkshop.co.uk/my_profile/blog-view/blog_3798.htm
I was never a teacher but so many of my school-friends took that route in the sixties. They believed they could make a difference; that as teachers they would inspire future generations to love learning for its own sake as much as they once did; but in the end they all retired defeated.
Those old, retired teachers are among my dearest friends. Not one of them now believes that they made a jot of difference to the lives of children in their care because they were hidebound by government targets written in law.
I hope with all my heart that young teachers may soon break out of the straitjacket that binds them and say "Yessss!".
1. what is a polytechnic?
2. what is Thatcherism?
3. Tony, what's vocational training?
and, you might all laugh your heads off at my stupidity at this remark, but, if things are so bad, why not emigrate?
In the absence of Tony, I'll try to help out, as I seem to have woken up today:
1: A Polytechnic was an academic institution that existed to provide higher education to those who, for whatever ,reason, were not going to university. They could not award Degrees, but in those days there were many other well respected qualifications other than a degree. They tended to be more towards the practical side of things and in my view they did very good work.
2. Thatcherism applies to thse who believe in the policies adpoted by Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister between 1979 and 1991 (if memory serves). Her policies were very much free market monetarism, leading to a lot of de regulation and "opportunity". She also smashed the trade unions and the miners to bits which provided a free rein for capitalism. It is also known in America as Reaganism, after the US president of that name at the same time. Depending on your views (I shall keep mine to myself) she either ruined the nation or saved it, in brief. What is certain is that we were almost bankrupt when she came to power.
Vocational training is pretty much equivalent to what an apprentiship used to be. Training for a specific trade or skill.
Hope that helps.
I would have thought it was close enough for the parallels that we are drawing here. Therefore, you should be one hell of a writer. Oh look, the system works!
Oh, and Barb and Alan, perhaps it's time to re-open Aiyla and Steve's Dating Cafe (Group) ;-)
Tony - you're not a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to NVQs... it is generally thought that they actually stand for 'Not Very Qualified'. It's a shame, because people do work really hard for them, but they're just not the same as a 'proper' training scheme. For example, an NVQ 5 is supposed to be the equivalent of a ph.D... but I don't see many people with NVQ 5s being called 'Dr'!
Ely: "his job to 'find fault with everything the developers do." I'm a test manager, so him and I are simpatico!
Even back then it was getting to be a blurred boundary and everthing is now computer centric and the differences are pretty much academic.
In any event, I now explain it all to lawyers and judges rather than actually do it. We don't do engineering in this country any longer. Whatever, things are going better with Barb than I can have possibly hoped when I woke up this morning.
For the record, I did a joint course, Physics and Electronics. So I was a bit different once again.
The trojan was that nasty little one the BBC were on about a few weeks ago - it was attached to adverts that ran on all manner of sites, including the Financial Times, and was piggy-backing on Adobe updates (which is where I picked it up). But you're not the only one who wondered where I'd been at first - hubby did give me a weird look and say 'where on earth have you been?!?' when I first picked it up!
I did like Ely's description her Electronics Engineer husband's simulation-of-a-powercut test. You see, if he'd been an electrical engineer doing the same sort of thing, he'd have been standing by the socket turnig the switch off and on.
And somebody up there refered to an Electronic Engineer (without the s) - that would be a robot.
Electrical Engineers design things based of the flow of electrons (electricity) along wires, utilising either the magnetic field this produces for such things as motors and transformers; or the heat it produces, to boil a kettle or warm a room; or if it's white hot, to light a bulb. Electronic Engineers design systems that depend on the movement of electrons within (electronic) components - originally valves, then transistors and then integrated circuits and beyond, which are all basically sophisticated switches. Because computers are built from ICs and other electronic components, designing computer hardware is a branch of electronics engineering. And because computers have become so ubiquitous - not just sitting on your desktop, but in your car, in your washing machine and just about everywhere else, too, this branch of electronics engineering insinuates itself just about everywhere. So electronics engineer and computer engineer have come to be pretty synonymous.
To answer Ely, my hubby designs circuit boards that control gadgets (mostly, though not exclusively, data loggers and other measuring type things) though over the last decade he's also branched out to also design the software too so I guess that also makes him a software engineer. His mate who started on the same course as him branched off to do electrical engineering and now works for one of the big Electricity companies controlling the regional electricity distribution network or something like that...basically keeps the lights switched on.
Clear as mud? Jolly good.
Btw, on the subject of real ale, engineers and drinking (how did this blog start again?!) me and hubby were secretary and treasurer of the uni's Guinness Appreciation Society for a couple of years :-D
Sky, Ely - consider:- an electronic toaster is a toaster that runs courtesy of its electronics. An electronics toaster is a toaster skilled in electronics and may indeed be qualified in electronic engineering to degree level, if that helps. The rest of the description is fair enough. Although I think of myself as an engineer rather than a toaster, as I suspect does your husband. and yes, I brought the toaster into this.
Concerning real ale. Absolutely. Red wine too. In fact I may be drunk enough for now.
Off to bed now. Will be dreaming of my husband as a toaster thanks to you Alan ;-P
My eldest son is 16. He's worked hard through school and on course for some excellent GCSE results. His mother and I have always encouraged him to work hard so that he might go to university. But I can no longer encourage him to go, as it is no longer about working hard or proving your academic ability. It is about having enough money.
The best thing that could happen is if the LibDems collapse the coalition, and we get a chance to vote out the filthy, lying tories.
Thanks for your suggestion Islander8. If students can get sponsorship from industry that is a great idea worth considering. I think there should also be room to encourage academically-minded students to improve their minds at university without the constraints of a particular job at the end of it. I studied Maths, but didn't fancy accountancy, and I had no idea where my degree would lead. Since then I have worked as a mathematician in the space industry, the clothing industry and in the medical world. Had I been required to borrow tens of thousands of pounds to go to university I would definitely not have gone.
I will consider the move to Gibraltar, though I am concerned it might get a bit crowded over there if everyone has the same idea. I also wonder what is the situation with regard to my son studying in other EU countries. Any idea?
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