Are degrees in the UK value for money?

Cakeguts

kabayiri wrote: »

I do think the pastoral care side has come on leaps and bounds since my Uni days.

They recognize that it's an important part of student acceptance. Your son will most likely receive a good level of support.

Sadly that varies too. Some places give a lot of support. Some very little.

kabayiri

beecher2 wrote: »

All Scottish schools have a Skills Development Scotland careers adviser assigned to them. They need to have the PG diploma in Career Guidance. We're very lucky still to have such a good service, particularly in signposting young people to suitable opportunities.

I would hate to have to rely on teachers for careers advice as they tend to be stuck in what was good advice when they were 17 - not usually applicable to the situation now.

There is one variable you can not control.

It is the fact that a reasonable number of students at this age will either not know what they want to do, or change their mind half way through.

I personally think we need to move to a model of life long learning, rather than front loaded education.

It's not a good idea for a student to feel railroaded into an option they can't exit from, because of cost issues. That is what we have in England now.

kabayiri

Cakeguts wrote: »

Sadly that varies too. Some places give a lot of support. Some very little.

I would not be surprised if you are right.

The question is, does a move to sales led education, increase transparency or decrease it? (particularly on things like labour intensive one on one support)

I have known major commercial product successes which were not really all that special under the hood, but they were sold remarkably well.

The same could equally apply to University. The first place we were taken to at one Uni was the brand new accommodation complex. Honestly, it looked like a really decent hotel. The intention was obvious; they wanted to give showroom appeal from the off.

zagubov

kabayiri wrote: »

I would not be surprised if you are right.

The question is, does a move to sales led education, increase transparency or decrease it? (particularly on things like labour intensive one on one support)

I have known major commercial product successes which were not really all that special under the hood, but they were sold remarkably well.

The same could equally apply to University. The first place we were taken to at one Uni was the brand new accommodation complex. Honestly, it looked like a really decent hotel. The intention was obvious; they wanted to give showroom appeal from the off.

I think that's what's happening already. There's no guarantee that 17-year olds are savvy enough to make the best choice out of around 170-odd HE institutions, each with their own idea of what a degree should consist of and how it should be delivered

SingleSue

Tabbytabbitha wrote: »

I'm assuming that this was only a small part of the course because I can't imagine that the study of a major part of the course could be more shallow at a RG than in an ex poly.

Does your son appreciate the role of sales and marketing in university literature or does he take what he reads very literally?

He is complex autistic so is able to think more outside of the box rather than just literally unlike his brother who has Aspergers and is very literal (frustratingly so). He didn't just rely on their headline information of what was covered but dug deeper into what was actually covered and the depth of that, he drove me bonkers to be honest.

The RG uni was a very close second in the end with an 80% fit to what was required by his prospective future employers and his own particular needs due to disability.

We had to think very carefully about things outside of the course such as distance from home, from shops, from the train station etc . We also had to think of the surrounding area, the buildings and their acoustics as all of those will impact on his wellbeing and subsequent ability to learn or cope.

I was the one who was more inclined towards the RG uni but it just wasn't quite what he wanted/needed..close but not close enough to meet all his needs.

To be honest, where ever he ends up in life is still so much better than what was predicted for him..we were told he would never even take GCSEs or go to a mainstream school but his determination and stubbornness to succeed has won through. I'm proud of him and although his choice may not be seen by some as the best one due to an inferior ranked university , it is the best and most suitable one for him to move forward in.

Tabbytabbitha

Cakeguts wrote: »

What I think happened is that ex technical college (if this is Lincoln it never got to be as high as a poly) listed the whole of the course that would be covered in lectures. RGs don't cover lectures on parts of courses that they expect their students to do on their own. It is back to the contact time again. For someone who has never been to university it is really difficult to understand the difference between real university courses and the ex poly, ex technical college type courses. A real university expects the student to do a lot of the course on their own. An ex poly or technical college will teach a lot of the course.

I would expect that if someone looked at the course content of an Oxford course they would think that it didn't go into as much complexity as a Lincoln course? You have to be so careful of the marketing and remember that the marketing is aimed at the students that they want to attract. A university that used to be a technical college knows that it isn't going to attract students whose parents went to a real university so it has to make its marketing look good to someone who doesn't understand the difference between courses.

It's certainly difficult to explain the difference between a poly type course which is about being taught and a "proper " university which is about learning independently with academic staff as a resource and as facilitators. Unfortunately, some parents and students and (heaven forbid) some teachers look at contact time and assume that, even for a very academic student, more is better and, of course nowadays, better value.

Tabbytabbitha

kabayiri wrote: »

There is one variable you can not control.

It is the fact that a reasonable number of students at this age will either not know what they want to do, or change their mind half way through.

I personally think we need to move to a model of life long learning, rather than front loaded education.

It's not a good idea for a student to feel railroaded into an option they can't exit from, because of cost issues. That is what we have in England now.

Actually, England is more inclined towards life long learning than it ever used to be because you can get extra funding if you have children and, in some cases claim benefits as well. There are also plenty of part time degrees and alternative entry qualifications (like Access) for adults.

Changing your mind half way through would be tricky but changing your mind at the end of the first year isn't because you can still get funding for that extra year. In the past, once you'd had funding for even part of a year, all other funding became discretionary and people could find that they had completely closed HE to themselves forever by dropping out after a term.

preciousillusions

Not read half of this thread but just wanted to say that sometimes what you get from uni is more than just qualifications and a career route. I am saddened that I didn't go into the job I wanted to do post-graduation (largely down to health issues more so than the course) but still I would not take away that experience and the skills (no, not just life skills, but development of character & the people I met & my professors which were huge inspirations to me and one I can now call a friend of mine) despite the cost that still hangs over my head.

Voyager2002

justme111 wrote: »

Exactly what I was worried about. I am foreign and find the HE system extremely confusing here. Can someone please advise me on what to look for when assessing HE establishments? Recently I looked at league tables and descriptions; the only parameter I found that could be of value was contact time. I was shocked it can be as low as 15-20 hours a week! All the scores - I know scores are pretty meaningless when looking at schools so I have no reason to believe they have any purpose in higher education.

A lot of the answer will depend on your objectives... if you want an academic education then the prestige of the university will be important to you, and a lot of that depends on the quality of its research. So look at how well it scores in the Research Excellence Framework, and at scores from the older Research Assessment Exercise. These scores are given for each department, so there will be many different scores for a university. Even if the department where you are planning to study has good REF / RAE scores, poor scores from many other departments could drag down the reputation of the whole university.

The government also used to conduct a Teaching Quality Assessment: obviously these scores would be of great interest to you.

Contact the Careers Service of each of the universities that interests you and ask them what happened to the people who graduated from the courses that you are considering.

Arleen

preciousillusions wrote: »

Not read half of this thread but just wanted to say that sometimes what you get from uni is more than just qualifications and a career route. I am saddened that I didn't go into the job I wanted to do post-graduation (largely down to health issues more so than the course) but still I would not take away that experience and the skills (no, not just life skills, but development of character & the people I met & my professors which were huge inspirations to me and one I can now call a friend of mine) despite the cost that still hangs over my head.

And that is part of the problem! Yes, most people enjoy the "uni experience", but then a lot of them wind up with qualifications that did not justify the cost of it. And people should be going for HE to either gain skills that will increase their marketability in the work place, in which case doing so on the loan is perfectly fine. The other is for pursuing ones interests, which doesn't have any marketabiltiy, and should only be done if you can afford it, without relying on public funds.