Why is it that going to University Costs so much.

The_One_Who

I don't consider my loans as debt. My credit card (which incidentally I have a dd to pay it off at the end of each month) is debt, my student loan is not. Not really.

I hate this attitude that only vocational courses are 'useful'. How many law graduates go on to become lawyers? Probably not that many. I am planning on a career in research, but if that doesn't work out then I will probably go on to do something related to my degree, but not entirely. A degree has lots of uses, as does the general opportunities a university offers.

MrsManda

iamana1ias wrote: »

Excluding medicine, science etc, how many useful degrees are there?

All depends on what you do with them. A well structured degree should teach you alot about a specialist subject but also allow you to develop transferrable skills such as time management, communication, critical thinking, analytical skills etc...
Whether you take the chance to develop those skills and gain experience is up to you. What the student does with that knowledge and those skills after graduation is also up to the student.
University isn't the only way or even necessarily the best way but to say that degrees aren't useful is as untrue as saying that having a degree is the only way to have an education.

iamana1ias

poet123 wrote: »

Well of course they start work with considerable debt, how else would they fund unversity? but they, and their parents, are investing in their future careers. I am sure they are not as work savvy, how could they be? but they are generally more independent as they have lived away from home and stood on their own two feet whilst doing so.

Do you have a degree?

I do now. Studied later in life (I'm mid-30s now). Now in the process of becoming an educational psychologist (related to my field of work anyway).

Having not gone to uni at 18 I was able to buy a house at 20, establish a career and, having tried out a few different jobs, discovered what I wanted to be doing. Have been working towards it for about 8 years. I have no debt (except a very small mortgage) but a very nice house. 90% of my classmates from high school went to uni. I met up with most of them at a Christmas re-union. Few earn what I do, never mind more, and most still have many years to go before they can reach a level where they will feel they have achieved success.

I was chatting to a head of dept of a university recently. He told me that he'd had to make all of his undergraduate degrees 4 years long, because the students aren't being prepared for university by their courses. They don't have the background subject knowledge. Books that would have been read by A level students 10 or 15 years ago haven't been read or even heard of by this generation. So he has to spend a year getting them up to scratch before he can even start the advanced stuff. There's no time to get them job ready because they aren't as motivated as their earlier counterparts. Everybody suffers as a result.

iamana1ias

The_One_Who wrote: »

I don't consider my loans as debt. My credit card (which incidentally I have a dd to pay it off at the end of each month) is debt, my student loan is not. Not really. .

Yes, it is absolutely a debt.

The_One_Who wrote: »

I hate this attitude that only vocational courses are 'useful'. How many law graduates go on to become lawyers? Probably not that many. I am planning on a career in research, but if that doesn't work out then I will probably go on to do something related to my degree, but not entirely.

Research doesn't pay much (my cousin is a researcher). He even has a PHD and earns about half what I do.

The_One_Who wrote: »

A degree has lots of uses, as does the general opportunities a university offers.

Student card and cheap beer?

The_One_Who

iamana1ias wrote: »

They don't have the background subject knowledge. Books that would have been read by A level students 10 or 15 years ago haven't been read or even heard of by this generation. So he has to spend a year getting them up to scratch before he can even start the advanced stuff.

This may depend on the subject, but there are few books that would have been read from that long ago that I would recommend reading now, and even then it would be as a base before reading more current thinking. Things move on. Books are already out of date by the time they are published. Also, school and university are completely different and teaching completely different things.

The_One_Who

iamana1ias wrote: »

Yes, it is absolutely a debt.


Research doesn't pay much (my cousin is a researcher). He even has a PHD and earns about half what I do.


Student card and cheap beer?

1. Yes, it is debt, but I won't need to pay it back until I'm earning a set amount and it will come out of my salary anyway. It also has no impact on my credit rating.

2. It's not all about the money. In fact, the money doesn't really feature at all. It's about liking the job. Great if you can get a job you love which has a good salary, but not all do.

3. You have an incredibly low opinion of students. Some are like that, a lot are not.

iamana1ias

The_One_Who wrote: »

This may depend on the subject, but there are few books that would have been read from that long ago that I would recommend reading now, and even then it would be as a base before reading more current thinking. Things move on. Books are already out of date by the time they are published. Also, school and university are completely different and teaching completely different things.

The idea of A levels is/was to prepare the intelligent kids to think in the way that university would need.

The university head I was talking to runs English courses, including classics. He's had to put Harry Potter on the syllabus, but kinda hard to leave out Shakespeare, Dickens, The Bronte Sisters................ :rotfl::rotfl:

poet123

I and my OH took the same path as you did, and have a very similar story. The difference is that today the jobs we started out in now all require a degree for entry. There are few apprenticeships which is how my OH started on the path to his Masters degree, and so students have no option but to play the game and start out on the path to HE and a qualification which will allow them a foot in the door.

We were much luckier than they are in that respect, we had a variety of roads open to us. It was harder on a day to day level, working, keeping a house, raising a family and studying, but the option was there.

The fact that the Tutor you spoke to stated what he did is not a reflection on the students, as much as a reflection on the system, and the tick box mentality of the curriculum today, and the testing, etc etc. If they are not being prepared, that is a shame, and a sad endictment of the education in the UK today.

The_One_Who

I would be the first to say that the current schooling systems are not adequate either for preparation for higher education or for going into employment.

I'm not an English student, but I see little wrong with including Harry Potter. It depends what sort of thing is being covered. Would be interesting to see why such a badly written book (imo) can be one of the fastest selling (the fastest selling?) and popular books of recent years. There are plenty of 'respectable' courses that include modules on children's literature.

iamana1ias

The_One_Who wrote: »

I would be the first to say that the current schooling systems are not adequate either for preparation for higher education or for going into employment.

I'm not an English student, but I see little wrong with including Harry Potter. It depends what sort of thing is being covered. Would be interesting to see why such a badly written book (imo) can be one of the fastest selling (the fastest selling?) and popular books of recent years. There are plenty of 'respectable' courses that include modules on children's literature.

Absolutely, and that is why it's now included. But someone wanting to study a course which is predominently about classic literature (which has by definition remained popular for centuries) should not need to start from scratch!

So we agree that school does not prepare kids for uni, and uni does not prepare kids for work. Bit of a waste of money, really.