Cost of Education

[Arch]

University isn't for everyone and I was gobsmacked when a Target of 50% of eighteen year olds was set or, rather, plucked out of the air.

Spot on. I think University should be for two types of career: 1. Doctors, Lawyers, Vets etc where you need to learn a great deal of specialist knowledge, and 2. 'Academic' stuff like history, which is almost self serving (you study history, to go on and teach history etc).

For everything else, there is either some practical and classroom training needed (like the old Polys) or the job is best learned as an apprentice or just sheer old fashioned 'working your way up'.

I've spouted it before, but I would like to see a compulsory gap year, a sort of National Service but not military, when people can either do a useful job in the community or try out a career, on a basic level of pay, before they even think about Uni. But the snobbery about anyone with a degree being better has to go.

And I speak as someone with 2 undergrad degrees and an MSc. None of which I'm currently 'using' beyond the transferrable skills I picked up along the way, many of which were actually gained in 12 years of working in a shop job - people skills, getting up on time, finishing the job and so on.

 

[ASC1951]

The hike in fees will hopefully kill off the wishy washy degrees with appalling post graduation employment records as kids won't trade crippling debt for a good time and unemployment.

Unfortunately it will also catch some others in the mix.

I'm a governor of this splendid institution Northern School of Contemporary Dance and hardly any of our graduates earn the sort of money that most young people expect after completing a degree. They do get jobs, certainly, but employment in the dance world isn't particularly well paid and even though money isn't what motivates our students, the increase in fees will have an effect. I'm not as concerned about yet another Media Studies Course, but it would be a pity if performing arts disappeared at degree level.

 

[vernon]

Unfortunately it will also catch some others in the mix.

I'm a governor of this splendid institution Northern School of Contemporary Dance and hardly any of our graduates earn the sort of money that most young people expect after completing a degree. They do get jobs, certainly, but employment in the dance world isn't particularly well paid and even though money isn't what motivates our students, the increase in fees will have an effect. I'm not as concerned about yet another Media Studies Course, but it would be a pity if performing arts disappeared at degree level.

I have no quibble with the NSCD. It's likely to be an innocent victim.

I will not mourn the loss of:

• Equine Studies
• Media Studies
• Sports Studies
• Leisure Studies
• Events Management
• Surf Studies (already deceased)

and their ilk.

 

[trustysteed]

...hardly any of our graduates earn the sort of money that most young people expect after completing a degree. They do get jobs, certainly, but employment in the dance world isn't particularly well paid...

which kind of negates the NCSD's quote on the home page link you posted:

'The training is therefore rigorous and challenging requiring a high level of commitment and determination. This approach enables our students to continue to succeed in the field of professional contemporary dance and is recognised as the hallmark of NSCD’s ethos.'

i think there should be more emphasis on practical, manufacturing, industrial, engineering-type courses which actually teach people how to invent\build tangible things and less emphasis on wishy-washy 'it's a hobby' degrees like dancing or film\tv-watching (media studies).

 

[ASC1951]

I will not mourn the loss of:

• Equine Studies
• Media Studies
• Sports Studies
• Leisure Studies
• Events Management
• Surf Studies (already deceased)

and their ilk.

I completely agree. One thing I do applaud about the new arrangements is that institutions will be obliged to publish all sorts of data like staff/student ratios, weekly teaching hours and percentage of graduates getting jobs. Students are perfectly capable of making sensible decisions about the value of courses once they have the right information. So rather than have worthless or badly delivered qualifications protected by ignorance, students will be able to vote with their feet and wallets, and the rubbish will gradually disappear.

 

[User169]

i think there should be more emphasis on practical, manufacturing, industrial, engineering-type courses which actually teach people how to invent\build tangible things and less emphasis on wishy-washy 'it's a hobby' degrees like dancing or film\tv-watching (media studies).

And there we go. If you can’t eat it, milk it, rub it, build with it, kill things with it or masturbate over it, then it’s essentially useless, isn’t it?

 

[trustysteed]

milk it, rub it, or masturbate over it, then it’s essentially useless, isn’t it?

does watching pron come (sic) under media studies?

 

[ASC1951]

which kind of negates the NCSD's quote on the home page link you posted:

'The training is therefore rigorous and challenging requiring a high level of commitment and determination. This approach enables our students to continue to succeed in the field of professional contemporary dance and is recognised as the hallmark of NSCD’s ethos.'

I don't follow how you draw that conclusion. The NSCD does produce very well qualified graduates who do indeed succeed as professional dancers - my point was just that the world of professional dance is rather worse paid than medicine, or industry, or many other sectors.

I would agree with you that we do need more build-it and invent-it degrees in UK education. Germany, for instance, values engineers far more highly than we do and trains them much better; so do China and India. But there should still be a place for arts-based degrees, even if it is a smaller place.

 

[summerdays]

As to whether my eldest child should go to Uni - if she decides not to go then fine if she has an idea of something else to do - not to just drift. I was the first in my family to go to University (as was Mr Summerdays) - I would love for my children to have that same experience - but not forcing them to do it. I agree not to do a wishy-washy subject. Luckily her school seem to offer sensible choices and so she managed to achieve the Eng Bacc. this year even though she made her subject choices before it was introduced. She is bright - all A's and A*'s so I don't see why she can't go on to study further. She is a little worried about the fees, what 16-18 year old wouldn't be. University may not be right for all of my children, and I don't know that it should be right for 50% of the population, though other further studies which may not be degrees should be available and considered equally worthy.

 

[vernon]

which kind of negates the NCSD's quote on the home page link you posted:

'The training is therefore rigorous and challenging requiring a high level of commitment and determination. This approach enables our students to continue to succeed in the field of professional contemporary dance and is recognised as the hallmark of NSCD’s ethos.'

i think there should be more emphasis on practical, manufacturing, industrial, engineering-type courses which actually teach people how to invent\build tangible things and less emphasis on wishy-washy 'it's a hobby' degrees like dancing or film\tv-watching (media studies).

There must always be accommodation for the arts within the degree programmes. Our lives would be that much poorer without fine art, dance and music.

There were plenty of science, engineering and manufacturing degree courses until students discovered were told by their sixth form colleges about the ease of getting grade As in Sociology, Drama , Theatre Studies, Psychology, Health and Social Care, Travel and Tourism not to mention BTEC, and GNVQ.

There's many a time I could have wept when kids perfectly capable of going on to do three sciences or two sciences and maths at A level took up the Sociology, Psychology and Sports Studies combination because they were promoted as a mutually supporting set of subjects???!! leading to high grades and entry to a raft of degrees linked to sport.

Youngsters are more pre-occupied with the culture of celebrity and careers giving them access to the media no matter how obligue the connection. The new science curriculum has done little to encourage the uptake of science at A-level although Michael Gove has taken welcome steps to discredit devalue OCR qualifications. This, including the need to have two sciences along with a modern foreign language, a humanities subject and english and maths for the English Bac. just might bring some sanity back to the curriculum for a large number of pupils.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I wonder how long the EU is going to keep that law about university fees offered by one country to its students being the same for students from all member states. If Scotland did go independent, English students could study there for free.

I'm not sure I like the idea of the English Bacc any more. If you're studying maths then only one science should be necessary. It's rubbish only history or geography is allowed as the humanities subject. It should include at least English literature and religious studies as options. Geography is only half a humanities subject anyway. How is the formation of ox bow lakes related to humanities? The foreign language should be a useful modern language, like French, German or Spanish, not a dead or cultural languages like Latin.

 

[pepecat]

One thing I do applaud about the new arrangements is that institutions will be obliged to publish all sorts of data like staff/student ratios, weekly teaching hours and percentage of graduates getting jobs. Students are perfectly capable of making sensible decisions about the value of courses once they have the right information. So rather than have worthless or badly delivered qualifications protected by ignorance, students will be able to vote with their feet and wallets, and the rubbish will gradually disappear.

Staff student ratios and weekly teaching hours could be, I guess, ways of measuring a 'good' uni. But low staff student ratios and lots of weekly teaching hours does not equal a 'good' uni. Oxbridge students have maybe two or three tutorial hours a week - they could argue they're getting no value for money. Similarly, are the teaching staff good teachers? Unis so far have gained their reputation as 'good' unis on research ratings only - the government allocated money based on the quality of research produced in that institution. So there were lots of unis with excellent researchers attracting research grants, but who weren't very good teachers. Just cos you're a world expert in a subject, doesn't mean you can explain it well to undergrads, no matter how many teaching hours a week you do.

The percentage of grads getting jobs after graduation as a measure of success is just stupid. It depends on all sorts of things; how engaged and enthusiastic the students are for the course, whether they go into graduate jobs in that field afterwards or not (or are jobs in macdonalds also going to count in these statistics?), whether students do internships afterwards and would therefore be counted as being unemployed. Art and Design grads in particular often try and become self employed after graduation, so would probably count as being unemployed if they're in the process of setting up a business. They also are more likely to do internships to gain industry experience, so again, would be counted as having no job. A uni might well say '80% of our students find employment after graduating', but are they going to break it down as to what sort of jobs those are?

The govt White Paper on Education that came out in June this year was just saying the same old stuff that has been said about higher ed since the thirties / forties at least, just with a different spin on it. Then it was 'we're paying for this therefore we can tell you what to do so we get value for money', now they're spinning it to 'Students are paying for this so they need to know XYZ to make sure they're getting value for money'.

Of course degrees should have some value, but what does that mean? What is the 'value' of a degree and the whole university experience. I don't think it can be measured by simple statistics.

 

[cookiemonster]

Currently looking at universities for my eldest son for next year and so far all the universities we've visited will be charging the maximum £9,000 a year tuition fee for all their courses. Now I knew that tuition fees had been abolished in Scotland for Scottish residents, but what I didn't realise was that tuition fees had also been abolished in Scotland for all EU residents with the exception of the English who will still have to pay the full amount. Now this does seem somewhat discriminatory to me especially since English taxes are helping to pay for Scottish universities. Its not the fault of the Scottish system though as it seems there's some quirk of EU legislation which introduces this English discrimination, not to mention the criminality of the UK system which has resulted in English universities tripling their tuition fees from one year to the next.
I think I shall be writing a little letter to my MP to tell him just how cross I am.

I'm Scottish born and bred and have just completed a degree at Aberdeen. I'm now in London to do my Masters.

I had to pay tuition fees as i lived in England for 4 years before heading back to Scotland. So, if you're angry, how the hell do you think I feel. I wasn't even considered Scottish by my own government and had to pay fees but I studied with 2 student from Groningen and one from Munich and they didn't pay a penny.

As I said, I'm just as angry as you.

 

[ASC1951]

Of course degrees should have some value, but what does that mean? What is the 'value' of a degree and the whole university experience. I don't think it can be measured by simple statistics.

I agree, it can't, but the more information that is available to potential students the better. You are more likely to raise standards by getting students to vote with their feet, rather than letting the vested interests in education be the only ones to decide what courses to provide.

 

[pepecat]

I think it depends on whether you're talking about what courses to provide, or the quality of courses that are provided.
If students voting with their feet regarding what courses to provide is a good thing, then foreign language courses would have ended a while ago, and maths would looking dodgy too. Should we stop providing those courses at Unis because students don't want to do them, regardless of whether they're more 'valuable' than media / surfing studies which are more popular?

In terms of the quality of courses provided, how are students supposed to know whether their course is a 'good' one or not compared to other places? As i mentioned earlier, if you look at teaching hours per week, Oxbridge courses would be rubbish compared to other unis, but i don't think anyone would say that an Oxbridge degree is not a 'good' one.

Of course students have a vested interest in education, but they're hardly in a position to know what they need to equip them for the world of work - if indeed that's what we think the purpose of higher education is.