University fees.

Cakeguts

Sharon87 wrote: »

Who says Media degrees don't lead anywhere? I done a Media with TV Production course, now I work in TV.

Where as English - what do you do with a BA in English?

Anyway university isn't just about leading to jobs, it's about education and life experience. I do agree the fees are ridiculous and I don't see how they can justify 9k a year when it was a lot less when I went.

I agree but when you went there were fewer students and the fees for a life experience were not about £50,000 if you include living expenses. You won't get a media with production course now because it is too difficult for the level of university that would run it. You have to remember that A levels are easier to pass then they were so about 40% of students who are now at university wouldn't have got good enough A level results to go in the past. The universities that cater for the 40% of students that wouldn't have gone to university in the past have to run easy courses or none of the students would pass them.

The problem with some of the easy courses that they run is that although the courses are nice for life experiences and wasting 3 years doing a hobby type course they don't do anything for either the country or the students' futures. Students are paying roughly £50,000 for courses that used to be run by adult education classes for people to do as hobbies after work. These hobby level degrees don't lead to employment and they are very expensive for what they are. Some of these creative hobby type jobs are becoming obsolete due to the advances in IT however some universities are still expecting students to pay to study them. Two that come to mind are fashion and photography. Fashion needs a lot fewer people working in it due to online shopping and the reduction of high street shops. The new jobs in fashion will be working in a warehouse. These warehouses for goods for online shopping are already being built. So fashion degrees are slowly becoming hobby degrees. Photography is another shrinking area. This is due to the quality of the digital cameras. Anyone with a small amount of training can now take a good photo because the camera does most of the difficult stuff for you and there are more photographers. Anyone with a mobile phone has the opportunity to get a really good photograph just by being in the right place at the right time.

I am sure that there are other degrees that are turning into hobby degrees that would normally be the sort of study you would do at evening class and not pay £50,000 for it.

Cakeguts

Mrs_Ryan wrote: »

Medicine and law are muppet courses?! :eek:
I hope you never get ill or you might find yourself being treated by Kermit in a white coat :rotfl:

Maybe I shouldn't admit I'm studying for a BA in English and there is plenty you can do with it. Teaching/lecturing (my chosen career) journalism, publishing, writing.... My niece is studying for one of those Media/film study type degrees. She's a bright girl but I have no idea what she will do with it. I'm studying with the Open University where it is harder to get a high mark as the grade boundaries are higher; I'm on course for a 2:1 and it's blinking hard work- as it should be. I get a little bit annoyed when people say it's easy- maybe it is if you're some kind of genius but it's certainly not easy to me.

The situation of your niece could start me on another vent. You will understand this because you are doing an English degree. When you read the advertising that a university produces about its courses you have to read it like advertising that hasn't been vetted by advertising standards. It can be very misleading. For example a university says that 97% of its students are in employment, training or further study 6 months after leaving university. It took me ages to work that one out. I couldn't see how they had managed to come up with that figure from a type of university that offered the kind of course that you would normally do as an evening class for a hobby and that had extremely low entry requirements. Then I realised that what was missing was the word graduate. It was especially important that it was missing before the word training and before the word further study. So the training could be training to be a barmaid or any other training that anyone needs for any sort of job it didn't have to be post graduate training which is what it implied. What this means is that the figure of 97% could be 2 people in graduate level jobs and the rest doing some sort of training and some sort of other course. In other words only 2 people from a university with that percentage could have actually got jobs.

Going back to the course descriptions. You have to be very careful to read what it says. I would expect your niece's course to say something like "completion of this course could lead to x, y, z? The important word here is "could." It doesn't say it will. I would also expect that the advertising for the course would be done in such a way that it would appeal to young people?

The government figures for a couple of years ago were something like 50% of graduates worked in jobs that did not need a degree. 20 something percent of graduates were unemployed. I don't expect your niece looked for figures like that before deciding to go to university? The chances are that your niece will be in the 50% of graduates that work in a job that doesn't need a degree. Did either you or she realise this? Did she realise that there would be a high chance of her getting into serious debt for an interest in a subject that is always going to be a hobby? This is one of the reasons why I think that some courses should be cheaper.

ARandomMiser

agrinnall wrote: »

Perhaps if you had a BA in English you might be able to write a properly constructed sentence. It's "I did" not "I done". Although the fact that you now work in TV, where basic skills seem to be beyond the requirements of the job, doesn't surprise me.

If you are correcting English, then you should not use contractions in the written word except when quoted - slovenly practice.

GwylimT

Cakeguts wrote: »

Open University courses are know to be more difficult not only because as you say the grade boundaries are higher but also because you have to organise your own study time.

As some who attended a physical uni and the Open Uni, while grade boundaries are higher with the Open uni, content of lectures and exams in my experience were far easier.

Leo2020

Cakeguts wrote: »

The government figures for a couple of years ago were something like 50% of graduates worked in jobs that did not need a degree. 20 something percent of graduates were unemployed. I don't expect your niece looked for figures like that before deciding to go to university? The chances are that your niece will be in the 50% of graduates that work in a job that doesn't need a degree. Did either you or she realise this? Did she realise that there would be a high chance of her getting into serious debt for an interest in a subject that is always going to be a hobby? This is one of the reasons why I think that some courses should be cheaper.

I don't have a Degree but a HND, I never looked at how likely I was to get a job in my chosen field. Of course I should have looked at how competative it was but it was also never mentioned by any lecturers or the college either. I started down the career path early by choosing a BTEC course, no one at my school when I was still only 15 said anything either. As it is possible to specialise so young I think schools should offer real careers advice. After the BTEC it was only possible for me to study a limited number of HNDs or Degrees, if I wanted to branch out then I would have had to study either another BTEC/NVQ or A-Levels before moving on.

Jackieboy

ARandomMiser wrote: »

If you are correcting English, then you should not use contractions in the written word except when quoted - slovenly practice.

Bloomin' 'eck - that's a bit archaic, even for me!

agrinnall

ARandomMiser wrote: »

If you are correcting English, then you should not use contractions in the written word except when quoted - slovenly practice.

There is nothing incorrect about it though, it is just your opinion, whereas my comment related to an actual error.

Gloomendoom

I must admit that it wasn't tolerated when I was at school.

agrinnall

Gloomendoom wrote: »

I must admit that it wasn't tolerated when I was at school.

But presumably is now you're in the real world

Sharon87

Cakeguts wrote: »

I agree but when you went there were fewer students and the fees for a life experience were not about £50,000 if you include living expenses. You won't get a media with production course now because it is too difficult for the level of university that would run it. You have to remember that A levels are easier to pass then they were so about 40% of students who are now at university wouldn't have got good enough A level results to go in the past. The universities that cater for the 40% of students that wouldn't have gone to university in the past have to run easy courses or none of the students would pass them.

The problem with some of the easy courses that they run is that although the courses are nice for life experiences and wasting 3 years doing a hobby type course they don't do anything for either the country or the student's futures. Students are paying roughly £50,000 for courses that used to be run by adult education classes for people to do as hobbies after work. These hobby level degrees don't lead to employment and they are very expensive for what they are. Some of these creative hobby type jobs are becoming obsolete due to the advances in IT however some universities are still expecting students to pay to study them. Two that come to mind are fashion and photography. Fashion needs a lot fewer people working in it due to online shopping and the reduction of high street shops. The new jobs in fashion will be working in a warehouse. These warehouses for goods for online shopping are already being built. So fashion degrees are slowly becoming hobby degrees. Photography is another shrinking area. This is due to the quality of the digital cameras. Anyone with a small amount of training can now take a good photo because the camera does most of the difficult stuff for you and there are more photographers. Anyone with a mobile phone has the opportunity to get a really good photograph just by being in the right place at the right time.

I am sure that there are other degrees that are turning into hobby degrees that would normally be the sort of study you would do at evening class and not pay £50,000 for it.

I disagree with the fact you think you can't get media with production courses - the one I was on is still available! You may get less people deciding to do the course, but those courses were oversubscribed anyway.

Nowadays you may get in a lot of debt going to uni, but as you say if you don't earn a lot of money you don't pay it back. Just another way the Tories want to bankrupt the country! Whereas I have to start paying money back when I earn 15k or more, future students pay when they start earning more. The courses aren't the issue it's the tuition fees and student loan conditions that are the problem.

Fashion and Photography I sort of get - although there's a lot more to fashion and photography than you're suggesting. Yes digital cameras are more sophisticated, but knowing how to use them is a different story. Believe me I used to do motor sport photography for a race team when I was younger and it's a lot harder than point and shoot. Having a degree in photography could help, but also any other courses could help. As for fashion, it's more about designing the clothes people go uni for, not for working in the shops! I know people who work at online fashion companies and they have degrees (not sure what it was in though)