Are degrees in the UK value for money?

GreatApe

Cakeguts wrote: »

The big problem is how to get the message to basically unintelligent people that the degrees they are studying are worthless and they are only being allowed to do them so that people can make money from them. The intelligent students don't do these silly degrees at universities where everything is made easy so that you don't have to learn anything. If you were intelligent but just bad at exams you would find a different way to get qualifications like an apprenticeship or working your way up. So the problen is all the students who wouldn't get As at A level because after all the A levels now are a lot easier than they used to be so it isn't all that difficult to get an A. Anyone thinking of doing a degree could just start from there.

Somehow there are so many vested interests that no one wants to tell all these unintelligent students that they are being conned. Really it is like being conned by a con man where something looks too good to be true. If you can't get 3 As at A level any university you get into is going to be one of these ones that is too good to be true and your degree is going to be worth nothing. One person told me that he reckoned his degree was worth less than the envelope the certificate came in. Doesn't anyone think that these students are going to be bitter about this situation? They feel as if they have been taken for a ride and that is because they have. 3 years of completely wasted time and money but actually the time is more important because you can never get that back.

It applies to most degrees and most universities

The need for university level education is no more than 5% of the population and perhaps as low as 3% that means its not just the ex poly lower ranking subjects but it means many departments even in the top 10 universities would need to shrink or close.

The kids and parents dont know any better
The politicians are not going to kill this scared cow 95% of the public would be against shrinking the sector. Not to mention the million people who will be actively protesting the loss of their current way of life. If closing the pits was difficult this is 100x more dificult

The only option is to give the kids choice and if the 17 year old child chooses to use their coupon for something else then no one can string up the 17 year old and their decisions resulting in half of universities closing

kabayiri

I thought posters might be interested in this short clip from the USA, also questioning the value of Higher Ed.

https://youtu.be/5Fh6LtBYmiI

You will recognise many of the themes that have come up on here. One which I have not noticed discussed here is the increase in radical politics.

If you believe we have followed the USA model in terms of funding (loosely), then it may be worth while to see what they do to address the issues they face. We might share same.

Cakeguts

BikingBud wrote: »

Who's paying for that?

The same people who pay for the loans that don't get paid back. People who have been to university and earn over £25k pay off their own loans and the loans of people studying silly hobby courses. Future taxpayers.

I don't think many people realise that tax payers are ultimately paying for these silly courses.

What I can't understand is why they can't say that everyone gets to pay the loan back however much they earn. That would get rid of most of the silly hobby courses at a stroke.

SingleSue

GreatApe wrote: »

The problem is you assume wrongly that the degree created the job.
It does not matter on aggregate if you think the degree got your son the job the fact is that job would have been advertised and filled almost irrespective of 5% of the nation going to university or 95%

Marginal additional university education is only valuable if it has a marginal improvement in productivity. That is to say we should only be sending the marginal kid to university if it is a net benefit to them and the nation

We are so past that point that the marginal university kid is creating negative productivity to the tune of around £100,000

I wasn't assuming anything, just responding to a previous post about parents and their knowledge of university choices and giving an example of my knowledge (woeful with the first child)

Cakeguts

SingleSue wrote: »

I wasn't assuming anything, just responding to a previous post about parents and their knowledge of university choices and giving an example of my knowledge (woeful with the first child)

My point is that you shouldn't have to know about university courses. Unless you have a good knowledge of how universities attract students you as a parent can't be expected to help your child choose a university that doesn't con them out of a lot of money. For any other dodgy business you can contact trading standards but most of the laws on cons don't seem to apply to universities and there is no way that most ordinary people can get the information that they need to make a good choice. Now if an adult can't do it how can anyone expect a 17 year old to do it? This is exactly why this university con works so well. The universities know that the average 17 year old can't work out which university is worth attending and which one isn't. Of course the ones that aren't worth attending work hard at their advertising to make is attractive to 17 year olds.

The answer is by A level entry requirements but you need to know this first and how on earth are you supposed to find out if no one working in education will tell you the truth? If is like trying to find out about a secret society.

The UK needs a small number of graduates. Those graduates will have come from the top universities so entry requirements of AAB and above. The country doesn't need any graduates from universities which accept less than this. All knowledge and skill needed for jobs that don't need graduates from top universities can be acquired without attending university. Adult evening education covers a lot of what the university courses in practical arts subjects cover and for a fraction of the costs. There are arts colleges so no one needs to go to university to study any practical art subject. Courses at university that advertise in practical arts with more emphasis on doing than learning about should be an immediate red flag but of course you have to know that this is the case. The lower the A level entry requirement the more likely the arts course will have doing on it rather than academic study. It is obvious when you think about it because you can give any mark you like to a piece of rubbish art but it is more difficult to give a high mark to a rubbish piece of academic work although I expect many universities manage to do this as well.

There doesn't seem to be enough public information about the downside of attending rubbish universities.

Cakeguts

There is a really sad article on the BBC today about someone who wants to be the first person in their family to go to university. Unfortunately the university they have chosen is one of the rubbish ones that used to be a rubbish ex poly. They want to go there to get a career and so far no one appears to have explained to them that a) their degree in psychology won't lead to any career it is a non vocational course and b) that university doesn't offer degrees that are hard enough for anyone to get a career as a direct result of the degree so the whole experience will be a complete waste of time and money. The student has got caught up in this major con. The rubbish university in question says that 97% of its students come from state schools so this shows up another huge problem in that the teachers and careers departments if there are any are not doing their jobs properly or they would be steering their students away from universities of this level. So ultimately the teachers and the schools whose students attend this university are allowing the university to continue to con these students. Of course you don't need very good A level results to go there so as usual it is the less gifted who are being used by the university to pay their staff.

What disgusts me about this whole situation is that his poor student is being used to pay someone else's salary while having no chance at all of ever getting the career they are being led to believe is possible. There are two universities in the city and the other one is the one that offers "real" degrees but of course it is more difficult to get into.

Nothing is mentioned in the BBC report about the possibility of not getting any career after getting a degree from this university which will be one of the ones that is worth less than the envelope the certificate comes in.

The worst bit about it all is that the university in question is running a sort of scheme to catch these students because obviously if it didn't do that it wouldn't be able to fill its places. The whole thing is just awful and I feel so sorry for these students. Not only that but the low expectation of the teachers in their schools in that they encourage them to attend these rubbish universities. No one seems to be prepared to admit that this is not fair on the students.

GreatApe

This monster is too big to kill there is no hope you have to just accept it is with us for the foreseeable future.

The only thing you can do is insulate your own kids from it. Apart from a few professions like doctors and dentists etc there really is no point in your kids going to university unless they are the 1 in a thousand with a extraordinary gift in a certain field. Sort out them a good job or business or a self employed profession save the £60k in debt and 3-4 years lost earnings.

Cakeguts

GreatApe wrote: »

This monster is too big to kill there is no hope you have to just accept it is with us for the foreseeable future.

The only thing you can do is insulate your own kids from it. Apart from a few professions like doctors and dentists etc there really is no point in your kids going to university unless they are the 1 in a thousand with a extraordinary gift in a certain field. Sort out them a good job or business or a self employed profession save the £60k in debt and 3-4 years lost earnings.

Actually the more I think about the BBC article the worse it gets because if you actually were a university interested in social mobility which is what they claim you wouldn't offer courses like psychology which leads to a job stacking shelves in a supermarket you would offer vocational courses with training a bit like an apprenticeship as soon as I realised that the courses on offer didn't do what the university said that they were doing I realised that this whole First Generation thing is a marketing and advertising system to fill the places at a university that most people would want to avoid going to and that makes me really annoyed because we are back to the conning of gullible unintelligent students again! But not only is the university doing it but the teachers in the schools that these students attend don't realise what this university is doing and are supporting their students attendance. State schools. So back to unintelligent teachers again.

If this university was a car no one would buy it.

ElwoodBlues

Cakeguts wrote: »

The UK needs a small number of graduates. Those graduates will have come from the top universities so entry requirements of AAB and above. The country doesn't need any graduates from universities which accept less than this.

GreatApe wrote: »

This monster is too big to kill there is no hope you have to just accept it is with us for the foreseeable future.

The only thing you can do is insulate your own kids from it. Apart from a few professions like doctors and dentists etc there really is no point in your kids going to university unless they are the 1 in a thousand with a extraordinary gift in a certain field. Sort out them a good job or business or a self employed profession save the £60k in debt and 3-4 years lost earnings.

Whilst I fully agree that far, far too many young people are being sent down the higher education conveyor (and rinsed along the way), I think that only AAB or above, or 1 in 1000 progress onto higher education is a bit too extreme. Although it is over 20 years since I sat A Levels, and pass rates have allegedly risen, so maybe AAB is right for current standards.

A lot of the time you can value the course by taking a step back and asking yourself "what exactly do I want to learn from this, and what I'm going to need that knowledge/skillset for in the workplace".

My point is that there are subjects (engineering, and some sciences), where the academic stuff taught in degree level education is actually relevent and invaluable - i.e. it's used every day in the careers that follow on from it. We are supposed to have a lack of engineers in this country as it is, but that would be much worse if only 1 in 1000 engineering students/graduates existed. That must be offset somewhere else by a load of other 'worthless' subjects, and what we really need to do is cull the subjects (or at least dramatically reduce them). I'd go with a minimum of there being 50% too many uni places at present, maybe 75-80%, but that's about the upper limit. We do still need some graduates in some fields.

One massive problem is the number of 'academics' employed by these institutions, that are teaching rubbish degrees. Cut the courses/number of students/places, and a huge number of people would end up redundant. And many of them are career academics that don't stand a chance in the real labour market.

Another issue is that a lot of what was traditionally further education/vocational courses have been rebranded as higher education degrees. It shouldn't be necessary to get a degree to become a nurse etc. There shouldn't be a stigma against vocational qualifications. We need more people doing apprenticeships and learning a valuable skill that way, and less packed off to uni to study a load of rubbish that they'll never, ever need again. But no, the govt has crazily decided to try and cash in on apprenticeships by recently introducing a levy on that. Lo and behold, the number of apprentices is tumbling.

My brother flunked his GCSE's and left school at 16 - he was never particularly academic or expected to do great things. But he got onto a good apprenticeship scheme with a big company, learnt a good trade (all paid for by his employer). And now he earns a very healthy wage, way better than a lot of graduates of mickey mouse subjects probably ever will. A bit of work ethic and a learning a decent trade goes a long way.

It's 9 years until my eldest child will be school leaving age. On the one hand I'd like it for my kids to be able to go to university, but only if it's a worthwhile subject, and they have a reason for doing it. But the current fee structure (actually, more the giant debts that you graduate with), leaves me wondering if it's worth it, even for a technical degree from a resepctable university. I do wonder if it might make more sense to have a gap year (or 3) between A levels and uni, where they can get a taste of full time work, and accumulate some savings to help them through uni?

Another problem is the sheer debt culture that the up front tuition fees and loans are creating. It isn't just the fees that are causing the students to get into debt, it's all the other expenses that seem to be the norm these days. They don't want or expect to live like The Young Ones any more. They want studio apartments rather than shared houses, the latest phones, sky tv, exepnsive food and drink, and many of them are even leasing cars while they study. !!!!!!, what's wrong with a push bike! I believe that a big part of the reason for these spending/debt fuelling habits is that they know they're going to graduate with massive debts just from the fees, so they might as well live it up for 3 years and spend even more of what they don't have anyway.

The current loan scheme, in terms of repayment terms and interest is pretty horrendous compared to the older schemes that were much more 'at cost'/rate of inlfation. Yet there's still a lot of graduates from the 90's and 00's with their student debts still burdening them. It's going to be much worse under the current schemes. And the debt collection companies will be circling like vultures when this loans start being sold off.

economic

ElwoodBlues wrote: »

One massive problem is the number of 'academics' employed by these institutions, that are teaching rubbish degrees. Cut the courses/number of students/places, and a huge number of people would end up redundant. And many of them are career academics that don't stand a chance in the real labour market.

Not a problem at all. We already have very low unemployment so wont make much difference. also if these academics were worth every bit they think they are they can always form a private school to teach/lecture their specialty and make money from that.