Are degrees in the UK value for money?

westernpromise

The majority of degrees either have no content that the graduate therein will actually use in their job, or if they do, are in any case subject to / recognised under an existing transnational standard. Eg someone with a degree in accounting would have been taught about how it is done under GAAP etc regardless of whether they learnt this in Hatfield or in Heidelberg.

I think it exceedingly unlikely that a European architectural practice thinking of employing an engineering graduate from Imperial will reject him in favour of someone from the University of Lower Silesia because EU. Generally speaking you look first at where the degree is from and only secondarily at what it is in.

Generally I find science graduates disappointing. They tend to need to be told the question, what to do to answer it, how to do that, and ideally what the answer will be. Arts graduates are less needy in that they're accustomed to having to figure out what the question is and then identify the range of relevant opinions or views and hence what the answer is. I would generally prefer a numerate arts graduate over a literate science graduate for that reason.

GreatApe

chucknorris wrote: »

I'm not saying all lecturers are perfect (just like any other profession there is good and bad), but I would definitely expect that if you selected 65 (the number of students on my module) randomly chosen level 5 quantity surveying students, that they would NOT learn more efficiently from a book as they would from my lectures/tutorials etc. (supplemented of course by private study).

How can that be true?
A non interactive lecture can be done just the same on video. Even yourself you may have given the same lecture dozens of times. Each one would not be exactly as good as the other so you could record them and pick your best performance and play that back for the kids. Also generally you dont need a teacher the kids can act as the teachers where someone is stuck on something they just ask each other and get through it fine

In addition depending on the topic and lecture and the ability of the kid you can play back video at a faster speed than real life. Most educational and informative videos I watch I tend to play at 1.5x speed that means you can get through 50% more material in a given time. The same is probably true for reading. You can read at twice the pace you can listen to someone else reading while you try to make notes and copy. In fact I would go so far as to say that any kid trying to make notes of the lecture is 100% wasting their time. I did this for a couple of lectures and found it totally pointless. Like I said the lectures started with 300 people and not long into the year only about 10% would attend the other 90% found their time better spent just going through the books

The system that I use is based on 'learning by doing' over a number of sessions. First I deliver a lecture on a particular topic, then they tackle a formative exercise based around that lecture, and I provide tutorials on an ad-hoc basis with them to assist them when they need help. After they have completed the exercise, I will then go through the model answer with them, as well as anonymously marking one piece of student's work (so that they appreciate how I will eventually mark their exam paper). The next session will be tutorials again to explain anything that they didn't fully understand from the previous session, then I repeat that process with another topic.

I dont doubt that people can learn in a lecture or learn in tutorials I am questioning which is the faster method (and to an extent the value/cost of each method) and to an extent which is the method that lasts longer in the memory. I dont see how a live lecture can be better than a recorded lecture. In the same way that a movie with a big budget and professional actors and multiple takes is going to be much better than a live performance of the same movie doing it live. Tutorial are good but I dont see it as necessarily in a university if a course has 100 kids the chances that all of them get stuck on the same bit and need a teacher is close to nil. Good books also address this problem by having multiple explanations and questions/answers. Add in the internet and there is no need at all. There are forums like this one for specific subjects.

GreatApe

Arklight wrote: »

They expect to see sports facilities, restaurants, cinemas, and shops on campus, and that their university has an exciting and active personality that reflects them. None of this has anything to do with teaching but it is how the industry has changed as successive governments have monetised HE.

Absolute nonsense.
We ask 17 year old children to make these decsions maybe 10% know they really want to be x and can go study the relavent subject and hopefully become x down the road. For the other 90% of kids its just a promise it is hope. We compensate adults for being 'mis sold' PPI insurance but we think its ok to con 17 year old kids into a £50,000 decision

Kids dont expect those things, the universities highlight those things to try and herd the dumb their way

Current students are dissatisfied about the number of contact hours they receive and do not feel like they are getting value for money with quantity of teaching, even if they are happy with teaching.

No. They are unhappy with the contract they signed up for. They thought they were signing up for a middle class (or at least upper working class) life if they took on the £50k debt and give 3-4 years of their life and they passed. What the parents and kids have found out that even though they did what was expected of them and they went and passed their lives are not notable better.

The real important question then becomes, can we actually send more kids to university and have a higher paid higher status workforce as a result? And if not what the hell are we doing?

I would suggest that there is no need for mass higher education. If there was a magic method of making everyone a PHD student all 100% of the population guess what? We would still need refuse collectors and shelf stackers only instead of leaving school at 16 and doing those jobs they would leave school at 25 and do those jobs.

Unless HE is demonitised then we will inevitably drift into the same model as the US, where students have a high number of spoon fed contact hours and additional support, learning programmes that are very dumbed down.

Remove all forced funding of universities. Give the kids a choice. Say to 18 year olds here you go a £30k cheque spend it on an education or use it as a deposit to buy a home or put it into a pension. With choice I suspect less than 10% of the kids would go for the university education the other 90% would opt for a house or a pension

But we do not give them choice we say, ok go to university spend 3 years and £50k and cross your fingers you come out of it and someone will give you a decent job. Or dont go and go get a job at McDonalds frying chickens. With just those two options its no surprise even the kids who totally fail their college (16-18) education are also herded into universities. I had a Friend that failed two of his A-levels and one with just a D. Sure he went to university the university dont care about him his grades or his future if they did they would have said to the kid look just do another year of college its free and come back if you have an A or a B but right now this is not for you

Before people say that the US produces some of the finest academic output in the world, yes this is true, but there is an invisible segregation in even elite US universities, of people learning advanced calculus alongside other people taking classes in fencing and pop culture.

It is not the universities the general population has variation and some people are smart and some people are dim and there isnt much you can do to change that.

The advantage the USA has over say India is that in the USA very few children are malnourished while in india a much larger number are. Another advantage is that in india or other poor countries economic conditions might mean even if you are smart your only options are to work the family farm in which case even if you have an IQ of 160 you wont do much with your life. This means in india if you are born with the genetics for high IQ there is a chance that can be destroyed by diet or economic circumstances.

Pennywise

westernpromise wrote: »

The majority of degrees either have no content that the graduate therein will actually use in their job, or if they do, are in any case subject to / recognised under an existing transnational standard. Eg someone with a degree in accounting would have been taught about how it is done under GAAP etc regardless of whether they learnt this in Hatfield or in Heidelberg.

Accountancy graduates can't usually actually prepare a set of accounts. They come out of uni knowing all about international standards, analytical analysis, etc., but don't actually have the faintest idea how to turn a business's core book-keeping records into a profit & loss account and balance sheet, and even less of an idea how to prepare a tax return!

I discovered this when I started employing trainee accountants and, having myself qualified as an accountant via a non university route, naively assumed that someone with a degree in accounting would actually know the basics of accounts preparation. Once I realised that it wasn't actually beneficial to employ an accounting graduate for a trainee accountancy position, I opened our recruitment to any graduates which gave us a wider choice. If an accountancy graduate still needs to be sent on a basic book-keeping course before they become useful, then I may as well send any other kind of graduate on that same course!

GreatApe

Pennywise wrote: »

Accountancy graduates can't usually actually prepare a set of accounts. They come out of uni knowing all about international standards, analytical analysis, etc., but don't actually have the faintest idea how to turn a business's core book-keeping records into a profit & loss account and balance sheet, and even less of an idea how to prepare a tax return!

I discovered this when I started employing trainee accountants and, having myself qualified as an accountant via a non university route, naively assumed that someone with a degree in accounting would actually know the basics of accounts preparation. Once I realised that it wasn't actually beneficial to employ an accounting graduate for a trainee accountancy position, I opened our recruitment to any graduates which gave us a wider choice. If an accountancy graduate still needs to be sent on a basic book-keeping course before they become useful, then I may as well send any other kind of graduate on that same course!

Try hiring A-Level students with a good grade in mathematics and see how it goes with them

I think someone posted earlier that the biggest indicator of later lifetime success was not looking at how they did at university but looking at how they did in A-Levels. I suppose that makes sense as A-Levels are somewhat standardized so an A at one college in England is the same as an A at another college in England even if a different exam board is used between them. Whereas with universities it appears as sometimes a first in one is worth less than a third at another.

chucknorris

GreatApe wrote: »

How can that be true?
A non interactive lecture can be done just the same on video. Even yourself you may have given the same lecture dozens of times. Each one would not be exactly as good as the other so you could record them and pick your best performance and play that back for the kids. Also generally you dont need a teacher the kids can act as the teachers where someone is stuck on something they just ask each other and get through it fine

In addition depending on the topic and lecture and the ability of the kid you can play back video at a faster speed than real life. Most educational and informative videos I watch I tend to play at 1.5x speed that means you can get through 50% more material in a given time. The same is probably true for reading. You can read at twice the pace you can listen to someone else reading while you try to make notes and copy. In fact I would go so far as to say that any kid trying to make notes of the lecture is 100% wasting their time. I did this for a couple of lectures and found it totally pointless. Like I said the lectures started with 300 people and not long into the year only about 10% would attend the other 90% found their time better spent just going through the books



I dont doubt that people can learn in a lecture or learn in tutorials I am questioning which is the faster method (and to an extent the value/cost of each method) and to an extent which is the method that lasts longer in the memory. I dont see how a live lecture can be better than a recorded lecture. In the same way that a movie with a big budget and professional actors and multiple takes is going to be much better than a live performance of the same movie doing it live. Tutorial are good but I dont see it as necessarily in a university if a course has 100 kids the chances that all of them get stuck on the same bit and need a teacher is close to nil. Good books also address this problem by having multiple explanations and questions/answers. Add in the internet and there is no need at all. There are forums like this one for specific subjects.

My lectures are NEVER non interactive, I make sure that I tell the students that I do NOT want a non interactive lecture. I would retire tomorrow if I had to deliver non interactive lectures.

It is important to get the students to both engage with the lecture material and ensure that they understand it as best as I can.

A live lecture is better, because you can't say to the video, can you please explain what you meant by ..... please, I didn't quite understand it.

GreatApe

chucknorris wrote: »

My lectures are NEVER non interactive, I make sure that I tell the students that I do NOT want a non interactive lecture.

Maybe there is a difference in scale I think you said your students were about 50 kids and I assume not all of them turn up so you might be teaching to a group of 20-30

I think there were 250 students in my year (I dont remember the exact number) in which case lectures can not be interactive. If you had the lecture paused every time someone didn't understand something the lecturer would never get through his day. In fact I remember clearly that the main format was the lecturer going through the course quite rapidly and I only recall very few occasions that we did stop the lecturer was when they would make a mistake.


Anyway, lets assume you gave your 50 kids the course for that week and said ok class here is a task I want to test you on. All 50 of you go to the library together and watch last years lectures and spend some time afterwards talking though it together and helping each other out. Do you think that group would come back at the end of the term saying Mr Chuck we couldn't do it it was horrific without you. or do you think they would have done just fine. My guess is they would have done fine. They would also have saved over £3000 each

GreatApe

chucknorris wrote: »

A live lecture is better, because you can't say to the video, can you please explain what you meant by ..... please, I didn't quite understand it.

Why not, all you need to do is record some explanations they can access.
Or they can log onto an internet forum and ask others who will teach them one on one
Or they can go read the book/s which will have multiple worked through examples

Here is an example of MIT in america with a lot of online course materials and videos

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/


Think of it like this website and forum. What would be more useful/efficient. To study a 3 year course on being prudent with finances and money or to sign upto this forum read what it has to offer search for the bits that are most relevant to you and ask forum members for their views and advice if the main site cant do it for you?

chucknorris

GreatApe wrote: »

Maybe there is a difference in scale I think you said your students were about 50 kids and I assume not all of them turn up so you might be teaching to a group of 20-30

I think there were 250 students in my year (I dont remember the exact number) in which case lectures can not be interactive. If you had the lecture paused every time someone didn't understand something the lecturer would never get through his day. In fact I remember clearly that the main format was the lecturer going through the course quite rapidly and I only recall very few occasions that we did stop the lecturer was when they would make a mistake.


Anyway, lets assume you gave your 50 kids the course for that week and said ok class here is a task I want to test you on. All 50 of you go to the library together and watch last years lectures and spend some time afterwards talking though it together and helping each other out. Do you think that group would come back at the end of the term saying Mr Chuck we couldn't do it it was horrific without you. or do you think they would have done just fine. My guess is they would have done fine. They would also have saved over £3000 each

There are 65 students on my module, and about 95% on average attend each lecture.

With respect I think I know a lot more about this than you, I've been doing it for 7 years now, and I know that I have improved each year.

We get specific student feedback on each module every year, and I'm quite satisfied with the feedback that I receive. I've even been given the odd present from students (bottle of wine, amazon voucher etc.). The first time that I received one, my first inclination was to refuse it, because they don't have much money, but then I realised that that would have been extremely rude.

chucknorris

GreatApe wrote: »

Why not, all you need to do is record some explanations they can access.
Or they can log onto an internet forum and ask others who will teach them one on one
Or they can go read the book/s which will have multiple worked through examples

Here is an example of MIT in america with a lot of online course materials and videos

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/


Think of it like this website and forum. What would be more useful/efficient. To study a 3 year course on being prudent with finances and money or to sign upto this forum read what it has to offer search for the bits that are most relevant to you and ask forum members for their views and advice if the main site cant do it for you?

I'm not saying distance learning doesn't work, but it isn't as good as live contact. With respect, I think I know a lot more about this than you.