Are degrees in the UK value for money?

GreatApe

zagubov wrote: »

One positive aspect of the waves of new university building is the transfer of students and money out of London which already has enough of both to places where money and the young used to leave.

???

Central London is perhaps the countries biggest university town

UCL alone is going to expand to become the countries largest university with >60,000 students and there are more than a dozen other big universities in London

Definitely the higher student numbers over the last two decades is one of the contributors to the boom in inner London house prices and rents.

GreatApe

Cakeguts wrote: »

Just now I was reading something interesting. There is a university in the West Country that that would be top of my hit list to close and turn into something else. It only runs courses in useless degrees. However what I read was that the university and students inject £60m into the local economy and a lot of people are making money because this useless university is there running useless courses. It is one of the universities that people go to if they can't get into anything better so if it was closed students would be better off but the area that it is in would lose £60m of taxpayers money.

That university is being run in order to inject taxpayers money into that part of the country. How many other places are getting taxpayers money by this method?

Lots

One of the reasons for the concentration of wealth into main cities over the last tow decades is the university factor.

Perhaps as many as 500,000 people in London alone work directly or indirectly in higher education and its majority concentrated in zone 1

This is one of the reasons why inner London has grown in price twice as much as outer London. Doubling university student numbers doesn't help Enfield all that much but it does help boost prices in Hackney/Islington/Kensington/Westminster/etc

GreatApe

SingleSue wrote: »

It was already happening a generation ago.

I left school at 16 (over 30 years ago now), I didn't do A levels or a degree and went straight into employment. Imagine my annoyance after working hard and moving up the ladder at my company to then be given recent graduates on a graduate scheme to train.

You didn't need a degree to do my role, you didn't even need A levels but here we were in the very early 90's with graduates on a fast track management scheme, coming in on more money than my basic (but not actual earnings - you didn't get to where I was working 9-5) and they didn't have the first clue what to do. It was my job to train them not just in the sector but also in management and because none of their degrees were related to the business, I really had to go right back to basics and explain absolutely everything, just as if it was 16 year old school leaver in front of me.

Was I peed off? You bet your botty bot I was!

Not only that but for all intent and purposes roughly 5% of your income tax goes to writing off the bad student loans

GreatApe

Universities could be accused of 'mis-selling courses'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-42264434


I have been saying for a long time we see that we need to compensate adults who bought PPI yet somehow CHILDREN are expected to be able to make a £50-£100k decision with little to no knowledge of what they are getting themselves into

The students need to be given choice asap
Just give the kids £60k each let them buy an education or a house or start a business or just keep it and draw it down over a period of 6 years. With choice the kids would consider the value of university before making a decision

economic

Companies should also be forced to employ non graduate for entry level or junior jobs. So for every 10 graduates say they need to employ 1 non grad. Then as demand for degrees come down and less graduates you reduce this ratio until it’s not needed.

SingleSue

GreatApe wrote: »

Not only that but for all intent and purposes roughly 5% of your income tax goes to writing off the bad student loans

Back then, those graduates didn't have student loans...but they were still entering graduate schemes not related to their degrees.

zagubov

GreatApe wrote: »

???

Central London is perhaps the countries biggest university town

UCL alone is going to expand to become the countries largest university with >60,000 students and there are more than a dozen other big universities in London

Definitely the higher student numbers over the last two decades is one of the contributors to the boom in inner London house prices and rents.

I'm not denying that. London Uni's expanding from a massive base number.
However the new university boom has probably boosted student populations and local economies in countless other towns and cities like Plymouth, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Luton, Bedford, Buckingham and points north. A map of university locations would show them to be much more widely dispersed than back in the 70s/80s. I can remember when the only universities in Lancashire were Manchester Victoria, UMIST, Salford and Liverpool.

I'd be interested if any county town with a new uni was undergoing a long-term decline in local student population.

What would once have been polytechnics or specialist HE colleges available to potential students via the GTTR or PCAS are now able to recruit nationally via the massive central HE clearing house UCAS.

I think the new unis have have a regionally redistributive role to play by shifting educational money, staff and students around the country into almost every county. That's a side-effect of HE expansion that I think is very positive.

westernpromise

SingleSue wrote: »

Back then, those graduates didn't have student loans...but they were still entering graduate schemes not related to their degrees.

No graduate scheme related to my degree. The idea that a university degree should consist of information related to a job misses the point of a degree. A degree is not a form of apprenticeship. If constructively it is, it shouldn't be a degree.

economic

zagubov wrote: »

I think the new unis have have a regionally redistributive role to play by shifting educational money, staff and students around the country into almost every county. That's a side-effect of HE expansion that I think is very positive.

Well of course it will be positive for the economy in the short run if free money is thrown at a county via student loans.

The quesiton is will it be sustainable? Once the student loan tap is turned off, what will these counties have to replace the funding that is helping their economy? Since they have been complacent they will be in one hell of a shock.

it is purely just a redistribution of wealth. i.e a form of socialism.

SingleSue

westernpromise wrote: »

No graduate scheme related to my degree. The idea that a university degree should consist of information related to a job misses the point of a degree. A degree is not a form of apprenticeship. If constructively it is, it shouldn't be a degree.

I know that and you know that but others appear to struggle with this concept.

I was merely pointing out that the same was happening over 25 years ago (nearly 30 years ago...eek, I feel old!) as now when graduates leave university, i.e. going into unrelated businesses to the subject of their degree.