MSE Parents Club Part 15

Somnium

Wow 8.15 and I'm the first on! Hope everyone is having lovely lie ins No more snow over night here wanted to go out with T on the sledge again. Going to do a ton of housework and then start putting up the Xmas Decs, they never normally go up this early but as T loves shiney stuff we thought it'd be nice for her. Also gotta pop to inlaws and stash the new car seat (till its needed) and T's 3-6month clothes.

3 - I wasnt planning on printing up any photo cards as we dont send to that many peeps, but I do have some of those cards you can slide pics in so I may use it in those, I want to see how the pics from the photo shoot yesterday come out first tho, but Thankyou x

Edit - oops posted while Aless was, hope Finn gets better soon x

Becles

Morning

Weather is till bad here. Secondary school is closed today but haven't heard if primary school is open yet. Just going to cancel all my work and stay home. Have got some online work that I could get on with if Charlotte goes in this afternoon.

Charlotte is pleased with her advent calendar. She got a candle this morning.

Have a good day everyone and stay safe and warm xx

SugarSpun

3onitsway wrote: »

Yes! I watched it on the news earlier and said out loud 'get a f'ing job' - I didn't like to say as I thought it was me being contraversial!

I think they have a valid point tbh, it's only 13 years since university education was free and now they're expected to take on up to £36k of debt that they'll still be paying back 20 years after they graduate. If there wasn't this ridiculous target to get 30-40% of people into university many of them wouldn't be aiming for it and there wouldn't be a shortfall in funding. I also think that if people aren't aiming at the sort of jobs that need a degree it can be a disadvantage; a pass rather than honours degree looks bad but a good degree makes them overqualified. When I worked as hospital admin I had a second CV with no mention of anything beyond my work experience and medical typing qualifications - there's no way they'd have hired me if they'd known I was so overqualified but I needed the position.

Gorgeous photo Som

WD would writing it down help?

SusanC_2

Becles wrote: »

Charlotte is pleased with her advent calendar. She got a candle this morning.

Alice got a candle in hers too. She was more excited about getting Santa out though. (We have a cuddly toy Santa who comes out at the beginning of December and goes away when we put all the Christmas stuff away and she's been looking forward to it ever since he was put away in January.)

SusanC_2

SugarSpun wrote: »

I think they have a valid point tbh, it's only 13 years since university education was free and now they're expected to take on up to £36k of debt that they'll still be paying back 20 years after they graduate. If there wasn't this ridiculous target to get 30-40% of people into university many of them wouldn't be aiming for it and there wouldn't be a shortfall in funding. I also think that if people aren't aiming at the sort of jobs that need a degree it can be a disadvantage; a pass rather than honours degree looks bad but a good degree makes them overqualified. When I worked as hospital admin I had a second CV with no mention of anything beyond my work experience and medical typing qualifications - there's no way they'd have hired me if they'd known I was so overqualified but I needed the position.

I agree with the principle of paying for higher education but the change has been very dramatic over a short spell of time - I was the first year to pay and I'm sure they only announced it when I was in sixth form which doesn't exactly give much time for planning for the expenditure.

I agree that lots of people who go to university don't really need to and probably haven't really thought their plans out but just do it because it's what everyone else is doing. Schools also pressure people into applying so that they can quote statistics about what percentage of their A-level students have gone on to university. It would obviously have been a complete waste of time for one of my brothers to attempt university but his school still made him go to all the talks about filling in application forms and student life etc. because they wanted everyone to get a university place regardless of whether they actually would succeed on a course.

But even if the speed/scale of the change is excessive I do think violent protests are rather OTT.

r.mac_2

morning.

housework for the day done, baking in oven, washing has been 'assessed' and doesn't need done today. only job left is cleaning the bathroom. Then what on earth will we do for the rest of the day!!! Back to playdough, sticky pictures and painting I think!

We opened our old fashioned advent calendar. I tried my best to explain the concept to A. She keeps going up and pointing to it saying 'pretty sparkles', and 'open one door'. It's very cute.

Lovely photos of E, Bruno, though sorry to hear about is candle experience. Hope the shock didn't send OH into labour

Lovely photo somn.

Welcome back 3 lovely see you and hear about V.

Caz - is the snow worse with you today? We are now on a 5 min respite from falling snow but have so much snow it is ridiculous! Not sure we'll make that tuesday meeting we had planned.....!!!

A friend had promised to try and wade through the snow with some milk for us today - but thats only if this clear sky hols for long enough. Fingers crossed!

ladybirdintheuk

SugarSpun wrote: »

I think they have a valid point tbh, it's only 13 years since university education was free and now they're expected to take on up to £36k of debt that they'll still be paying back 20 years after they graduate. If there wasn't this ridiculous target to get 30-40% of people into university many of them wouldn't be aiming for it and there wouldn't be a shortfall in funding. I also think that if people aren't aiming at the sort of jobs that need a degree it can be a disadvantage; a pass rather than honours degree looks bad but a good degree makes them overqualified. When I worked as hospital admin I had a second CV with no mention of anything beyond my work experience and medical typing qualifications - there's no way they'd have hired me if they'd known I was so overqualified but I needed the position.

I agree with a lot of this - yes of course we need people to be studying physics/medicine/whatever. We probably don't need more than about 15 people with a media studies degree to be graduating each year though The bugbear in the household is archaeology degrees. Our local uni is one of the main ones for archaeology (which is a shame, becase maths is much easier to spell ) , and so we have 30 odd graduates each year, but then there are only ha handful of jobs for then to go work in. Out of all of the archaeologists we know, only one of them is working in the field. The rest are doing admin for the nhs, or working in retail. Not that I'm one to talk, with my shiny business degree, but at least I've capped that £20k per year milestone now (just about, if I was working full time anyway!)

SS I'd not thought about doing a second version of my cv with no degree mentioned. I might give that a try.

SusanC_2

r.mac wrote: »

housework for the day done, baking in oven, washing has been 'assessed' and doesn't need done today. only job left is cleaning the bathroom. Then what on earth will we do for the rest of the day!!!

Come here and do my jobs?

ladybirdintheuk wrote: »

Not that I'm one to talk, with my shiny business degree, but at least I've capped that £20k per year milestone now (just about, if I was working full time anyway!)

The most I was ever on was 14k (which I then left for a 12.5k job). Both of my "proper" jobs required me to have a science degree because they wanted people of a certain standard but both were jobs which had been done in the past by people with just O-levels so I didn't really need my degree to be able to do the job.

SugarSpun

SusanC wrote: »

I agree with the principle of paying for higher education but the change has been very dramatic over a short spell of time - I was the first year to pay and I'm sure they only announced it when I was in sixth form which doesn't exactly give much time for planning for the expenditure.

I agree that lots of people who go to university don't really need to and probably haven't really thought their plans out but just do it because it's what everyone else is doing. Schools also pressure people into applying so that they can quote statistics about what percentage of their A-level students have gone on to university. It would obviously have been a complete waste of time for one of my brothers to attempt university but his school still made him go to all the talks about filling in application forms and student life etc. because they wanted everyone to get a university place regardless of whether they actually would succeed on a course.

But even if the speed/scale of the change is excessive I do think violent protests are rather OTT.

I was the last year that didn't pay and the tuition fees were announced when I was in upper sixth. Completely ridiculous IMO, there should have been at least a three year delay to give people time to budget for the changes.

I do agree about the violent protests, but of the thousands of people who demonstrated yesterday under 20 were arrested. I don't think that signifies a truly violent protest, especially when you consider how outraged all the protestors were when that muppet threw the fire extinguisher. Any protest attracts people who aren't connected to the cause but who are looking for trouble, I hate it because it completely skews the point being made. I was kettled at a protest a few years ago right beside a woman in her 80s and it was extremely scary - this was a peaceful protest of several thousand that had been joined by (the news said later) about 50 anarchists who caused absolute chaos. I can't imagine the same thing isn't happening with the student protests.

Ladybird, lovely, can you remove my name from your post please? :A One of the reasons I decided to leave academia was the number of people using my field to get an easy degree they had no intention of using. It's so disheartening to teach people who think that because they're paying fees they're owed a good mark at the end of it. It's an opportunity to learn, not a purchase. I have a friend who just finished a PhD in archaeology - it's still hard for her to find a job because it's so competitive.

SusanC_2

SugarSpun wrote: »

I was the last year that didn't pay and the tuition fees were announced when I was in upper sixth. Completely ridiculous IMO, there should have been at least a three year delay to give people time to budget for the changes.

What was most annoying was that there were people actually in my year at university who got grants and didn't have to pay tuition fees because they'd done gap years.