Labour Govt - waste of time

lynzpower

ts_aly2000 wrote:

Rubbish. Oh here we go. The sanctimonious perfect people are coming with collective thanks for each other. Take shelter everyone!

what? Would you care to explain what you mean?

nelly_2

Why the hell are they commuting 30 miles a day?

If their renting, why not rent closer? I know I would!

[Deleted User]

On a more proactive and less flamey-note.. can the father-to-be suspend his course for a year (or more)? Just like some students do gap-years of work during their course, could he do some kind of industrial placement to increase their finances. This would hopefully stop the 'dropping out' of uni, and give them a stop-gap.. plus increasing his future employability if he does something relevant to his course.

meanmachine_2

Sadly, too many people are going to uni now, when they'd be better off - and happier - if they learnt a trade.

Schools should offer much more vocational than they already do.

Luckily I got a grant and free tuition. But I could tell then that many uni students shouldn't have been there.

whambamboo

ts_aly2000 wrote:

It's becoming clear that you went to Cambridge.

Well I did say that in the second sentence. Excellent powers of observation all the same.

Your attitude is pretty sad by the way - any other country in the world people would be proud of having world-leading educational institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge which have produced over 100 Nobel Prize winners, and the likes of Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Ali G, John Cleese, Wordsworth, Wilberforce, and many thousands of others of people to whom we collectively owe a major debt.

But no, in this country it's perverted by people like you into a term of abuse.

Ah well, I've obviously been wasting my time with this 'educashun' nonsense - I'd best put my name down for Big Brother now.

Jags_2

Maybe we should extend the Student loan system to the rest of the Benefit system - not got a job? we'll Lend you the money until you get one - then you can pay us back - same thing!

Education should be free to any level - the better educated you are , the better our country and the planet will be. Do you want the next genius who's about to solve the oil problem or world hunger to not bother going to uni because he's from a deprived background and can't afford to be saddled with £30k worth of debt and no guarantee of a job at the end? Or are you happy that 18 yr olds with no education / experience of debt should all be given huge loans, and end up on the debt free wanabee board, having moved it all onto cards once graduated and declared themselves bankrupt?

Or should we loan children the money it costs to put them from 5 - 18 through school, and they can pay it back afterwards?

At the same time, Uni's should be much more heavily scrutinised for the courses they run - David Beckham studies etc, and other courses requiring no A levels, with 3 hours a week teaching are a joke, and uni's offer these just to make extra millions. sensible courses, with vocational options, with degrees that mean you're not just qualified to work in a call centre.

[Deleted User]

The university system isn't working right when big old institutions are closing their physics departments

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/29/reading_closes/

westernpromise

ringo_24601 wrote:

Once, university was elitist. Only the best students went and the results of higher education were significant for future earnings. Because few people went to university, the state could afford to pay for them.

So, do you want your kids to be able to go to university if they're average, but it'll cost a lot, or only if they're top-grade and it'll be free?

Very well put and exactly the point.

Universities pursue academic excellence, so they select academically. This government is implacably opposed to academic selection. So what the government is aiming for, I think, is to somehow extend the comprehensive principle to universities. Only when they're all equally mediocre will equality be achieved.

It's going about this in two ways. One is the dumbing-down of entrance qualifications. If everybody gets a grade A in everything, having had a better education than others gets you nowhere, see? You can't take someone's education away from them, but you can debase it by giving everyone the same grade.

Of course all that happens is that you are impressed by a person's A Levels or not according to his background, and where he got them. If he got his 5 A-grade A-Levels from Eton, he is probably well-taught and able. If she got hers from East Gorbals Fight Club Comprehensive, she is probably a "quota queen" who scraped her A-grades because the pass mark has been lowered to 7% for people with her post code, for reasons of social inclusion.

The other is by introducing this idea - which they seem to be thinking of abandoning - that 50% of the population should go to university.

When we had CSEs and GCEs, it was always the case that GCSEs were sat by a minority of the population - about 45% I think. If 50% are to go to university, that would mean that some people - about 5% or so - among the current university intake are what we would once have considered CSE material. Now, miraculously, they are university material!

Eventually, the only way to get into Oxford or Cambridge will be to live there or to be an ethnic minority. After that, degree classes will be awarded based on your parents' postcode or simply abolished altogether.

Meanwhile, if you're having to pay to get one of these worthless degrees, you'll probably choose instead to go abroad and get one that still means something.

theGrinch

it surprises me that its taken 9 years to conclude as the title says. anyone with experience of the 1970s would have know this pre 1997.

Ian_W

But just out of interest what has this to do with

House Buying, Renting, Selling & Property Prices

Surely it should be on the benefits thread, the vent thread or in Moneysaving Arms?