To answer SAMs question, the State pays most tuition for universities in the UK (except Buckingham, which is private) bar a “top-up” of ~£1250 (soon to be £3000), the money comes from general taxation. Overseas students on the other hand, have to bear the full cost.
At one time all University tuition was free and up until the mid 1990s students got a maintenance “Grant” to pay board and lodging. However the Government decided that it wanted 50% of school leavers in higher education (rather than about 25% reading proper subjects) but couldn’t pay for them to do their crappy “Media Studies” degrees, and so scrapped the grant and introduced fees.
I agree with the idea of sending 50% to university as completle tosh. It has devalued degrees and has meant that for your degree to mean anything you must get a masters or go to a top university. 
Bladensburg and Scaley, I would have to agree as I see a lot of the pre HE going via the NVQ vocational courses. Most of the students, sorry can’t call them students now they are learners, :roll: are in college because (a) their mats go (b) it looks like an easy time (b) they have nothing to do/job. We have moved the 16+ from the social to the classroom and them onto HE. I have had a student who did a year on a course joined my course for a year and then went looking for another course, in 3 year he had achieved nothing except keeping out of the rain.
Instead of taking the top 20% into HE we are sending those that think they may be able to do the work but will in the end drop out. By looking at the GCSE results you can see what % will go on to HE. Any with Cs should be directed to a more productive career, and in 15 years if they still want to go into HE then I wish them Good luck and hope they do well. But most if not all Cs will drop out. That would be a good study for some one on an BA in Ed, see how many Cs do complete HE.
Why the rant? I paid for lot of people to get free education over my 22 year, then when I want to/an able to go they charge me.
:x
edited because i’m a numpty
Sounds like a fair swop to me, you pay for me getting pissed and i pay for your nappies and to have the dribble wiped off your chin! :lol: :lol:[/quote]
can i have hte bed bath as well, and she must be young :lol:
I have to defend the 50% number.
I worked for my University’s Widening Participation scheme, and this involved going into the city comprehensive schools and helping out (in my case, with Maths, and at lunchtimes reading, writing, counting and fundamental stuff like that). The main aim was to say to the more able kids “Yeah, look you’re here in this run down school and neither of you parents went to higher education… So did I and nor did mine. Please think about it as an option open to you”.
We were told from the outset - this 50% was NOT just to Universities although for some reason the media always portray it as such… dunno why. I may be recalling incorrectly, but I think it included any post 18 education. Let’s face it - too many kids leave school at 16 and go into jobs anyone could do. We don’t need that anymore than we need 50% of the country running around with useless Media Studies degrees! If more kids are going to think “Ok, by the age of 18 I want to be thinking about taking some education that makes me employable somewhere other than Asda” then that’s a Good Thing.
Although personally, I think the whole thing is misdirected. There should be a clear target for degrees, and then a clear target to get kids to choose to do trades. This country can’t legitamately whine about immigration when our own young people won’t fill the perfectly good jobs out there. If I had done an apprenticeship in the field of Aeronautics instead of a degree, I would have done my earning potential a power of good. Oh the irony. 
Yes thats the trouble: People are being encouraged by the govt. and the educational establishment to go for higher education. All well and good. BUT they are promising too much. Years ago when only the privlleged few and the otherwise very lucky went to uni having a degree really opened doors for you. To simplify in a rather unpleasent way you became insantly middle class and establishment, if you weren’t before, and had the ability to walk into some pretty good jobs that weren’t aavailable to your non uni colleagues.
In 2005 this isn’t the case. A degree won’t make you middle class or establishment or seperate you from the crowd in any way.
We, in the UK, are going to have a situation where ther are a significant increse in graduates without a significant increse in post graduate jobs.
Ok so what you might say - these guys have had a great education made some great friends, learnt a bit about the world and are generaly better people for their experience.
But you forget (i assume 
) that they are going to be carrying some serious debt and will be desperate to translate their degree into earning potential. I suspect the greater part of this group are going to be bitterly disapointed.
Exactly. I’ve just finished uni, having spent a few years in employment previously. I can but dream of the money I’d be raking in, had I trained as a plummer or electrician when I left school. As it is I’m £13,500 in debt with no job as yet, although I should be able to find something half decent soon.
There is simply no point in sending more and more people to university, devaluing degrees, and encouraging mass debt when the jobs aren’t there for them. It will all end in tears, I tell thee.
Edit to add: Of course, I should have gone to university, being clever and all that… and I should have got a grant…
I have no problem with this and would encourage it. I am the first in my family to get anything form of HE. A lot of money is going to the 14-16 group now and we must produce courses for them.
One slight problem, they have caped 19+ education. If a 19+ applies for my course I must refer it to my boss as the college can only take 250, over that we get no funding. We have about 3000 students of all kinds.
We are running a factory, it is a production line, students in qualifications out. But the factory must make money I must get 12 students to run and am under a great pressure to keep them.
The plumbing course is over subscribed. So are most construction courses.
Most classrooms are for 16 students. When you get 80 students on a course it put a lot of pressure on the infrastructure within college. But the management looks at the extra cash. We are now looking to provide HE course as an out reach for HE.
On Monday I will look up our retention and
sucsess rates.
We are running a factory, it is a production line, students in qualifications out. But the factory must make money I must get 12 students to run and am under a great pressure to keep them.
Unfortunately i think that’s the way all HE institutions are going. Get them in do a degree get a job on the council (Playgroup potty policy co-ordinator) earning 25K and roger’s very much your’re mother’s brother, you end up with what labour define as a ‘productive’ member of british society and likely to vote labour seeing as they got them into university, and because they had a disabled-lesbian-muslim-single-parent-mother they obviously deserve a place at a South Shetland University and technical College.
Rant over.
Have you noticed how students don’t “read” for degrees anymore?
Well alot of times i dont read coz im pretty good a reading people and catch on really quickly. (Minus Math … you really have to read those I think) But however I know people that have made it thru college without ever reading a page. And usually graduate with a 2.3/4.0 or something stupid
I KNOW! IT’S BL**DY OUTRAGEOUS
I still read for my degree (about 12-20hrs per week). Most students ‘study’ for their degree instead, i.e. they get pissed do f**k all do some ‘assignments’ and that’s it. I kid you not one of my mates does geography and in his 1st term their major bit of work for that term was to design a poster, A POSTER! sweet baby jesus and the orphans. It’s a bloomin’ disgrace, i think that my degree is one of a handful left at my university that hasn’t been trivialised. :evil: :evil: :evil:
A poster? Sounds more like primary school than Uni. IIRC I had one feckin’ nasty essay and a practical write-up in my first semester, per module.
I know how you feel. My first semester i had x6 3,000 word essays two 1,500 word assessed essays and every week had to do an assignment on international relations. Now to some of you that doesn’t sound much but don’t forget every essay has to be researched properly and i still had to fit in Rugby, Army training, Women and booze!
Have you got the right priority on that? Just asking.
Now you mention it I remember University Challenge with Robin Snell reading art.
I would not suggest that my students are any way in the same league as you (GCSE Ds) and I have great difficulty getting 500 words out of them without cut and past. It is amazing how many submit cut and past and think I will not notice. Last year it was 1000, no chance. Fortunately a lot of my evidence can be gained from video or tape and it is recognised that student at this level are not very literate.
I have very little faith in secondary ed having to plug the gaps they leave.
To answer you, public services course. I also read minds.
edited because i can’t see. my bold.
I can testify that my course (which I bvelieve I have jsut failed was ultimately painfully dull.
12,000 words of essays and 12 hours of exams, in an entire year! it was sickeningly boring!
University is tiresome!
Did you not have a dissertation to blag out?
This was only my first year, I came to university after a brief yet promsing career elsewhere. For all the time i was working I had the voices of various elders and teachers and parents etc in the back of my mind telling me a degree was beneficial, Im beginning to resent listening to the voices in my head.
(I wonder if Sutcliffe gets the same feeling!!)
I have alternative plans at the ready incase my University career is curtailed, however it will ahng over me I am sure that even in this age of “easy degrees” I left university. as a result I am sticking it out even though it is the most mundane existence I can imagine, (and a costly one at that) 
I really didnt see any good response to this…could someone help???
I really didnt see any good response to this…could someone help???[/quote]
Do we study in any great detail? Yes and no. We’re supposed to look at ww2 strategically i.e. the bigger picture. However we are expected to make presentations, about one a fortnight, on a specific operation for example i did Monte-cassino, Kursk and stalingrad, the Arctic convoys, North Atlantic and others which i can’t remember. So, you can do more tactical stuff if you want but definitely not until 2nd year.