Are degrees in the UK value for money?

GreatApe

Windofchange wrote: »

I worked in private for a bit, but didn't like it. Different kind of pressure - pressure to keep patients coming back to get more cash from the private healthcare, as opposed to pressure to discharge them as your waiting list is 12 weeks long.

The shortages of staff is pretty widespread news now. Despite the opinions of some on here that it is an easy fix, or that there is just no problem at all, believe me, there is. I could give you a hundred anecdotes from the past year alone about people quitting, moving out of London, London trusts being unable to recruit secondary to nobody being able to afford to live here, cancelled operations, dangerous working conditions etc etc.

To get somewhat back on topic, the degrees that lead to NHS jobs are essential. Are they value for money? That question is probably largely subjective, but as it stands at the moment, the taxpayer gets their pound of flesh out of me and my colleagues. There is more trouble coming - medical courses for the first time are in clearing. Nursing, physio, occupational therapy etc etc courses aren't fully filled. The government has killed off the bursaries and the support and shock horror, we will have fewer graduates in these disciplines to add to the huge shortages we already have. What with Brexit pretty much eliminating the desire for foreign professionals to come here to work, there is a very dangerous storm brewing.

Looking London centrically as this is my experience, so many are packing up and leaving. As a newly qualified nurse / physio / whatever, you can quite easily spend half your post tax takehome on a bedsit before you've even thought about bills / expenses / student debt / having a bit of fun. Interestingly, we can't currently recruit to senior positions either. Reason being, you are looking at people in their mid 30's - 40's for these posts, and they want a house with garden to bring up their brood. No chance in London on anything under 100k per annum. Result? Locums costing twice as much. An orthopaedic consultant friend of mine worked a couple of weekends ago to cover an emergency list on Saturday - £150 per hour!

Speaking from within my own world - the NHS, you can't get anywhere without a degree. Therefore, a degree is a must. Problem being that degree is now a whole lot more expensive, so although you may kill off some of the mickey mouse courses, you are also killing off essential ones such as Nursing, medicine, physio.

If housing is a problem in London, which I am not convinced is true but let's say there is a problem. A big part of the problem is the fact that the labor councils over built social homes in inner London. Places like hackney Islington tower hamlets etc shouldn't be over 40% social housing. Those areas should be closer to 4% social housing.

BobQ

GreatApe wrote: »

People don't value money that they didn't work for

All students should have to pay their tuition upfront.
But since the country can't/won't just stop funding universities the next best thing to do is give the kids money but give them choice on how to spend that money.

If you say to the kids OK we will give you £30k to go to university or £0k not to go then its not surprising that too many of them opt for the £30k instead of the £0k. Give them £30k up front and let them buy an education or a house or a pension and with choice only 10-15% would opt for the university IMO.

Giving them money to spend as they please allows them to waste it

I would prefer to give it to an 18 year old who demonstrates they have the ability to be a professional engineer (or whatever the nation needs). I see no point giving the money to someone who barely qualifies for university and chooses to study something we do not need.

BobQ

Windofchange wrote: »

Speaking from within my own world - the NHS, you can't get anywhere without a degree. Therefore, a degree is a must. Problem being that degree is now a whole lot more expensive, so although you may kill off some of the mickey mouse courses, you are also killing off essential ones such as Nursing, medicine, physio.

I agree with much of what you say but while it may be true that you cannot get anywhere in the NHS without a degree ask yourself why this is?

If NHS employers demand it, they do not need to do so in all occupations. If its the professional bodies who allows them to do it?

We have seen a trend since the 1970s that have led lots of employers to require degrees (which they do not have to pay for) rather than internal training schemes (which they do). Not every job needs a degree and a near monopoly employer can decide its requirements.

Saying jobs need a degree is all part of the con perpetuated on young people

Cakeguts

The point about the nursing degrees is that the entry requirements are so low. The degrees when finished would not be worth more than about 5 old O levels. You can't teach high level difficult courses to someone who can only pass 2 A levels the students wouldn't manage the course. So why not do the training as an apprenticeship? An apprenticeship is much cheaper and the people not suited to nursing would become more obvious quicker? The government has indicated that it needs fewer students to drop out of nursing courses. It seems to me that the entry requirements are either not high enough or the course needs to be provided a different way. There is also a possibility that some courses do not deliver what the NHS wants in terms of employees but once someone has paid £9k plus living expenses to start a course if they then drop out that time and money is wasted. With an apprenticeship there is always the possibility of them changing to a job in another department. So going from a nursing apprenticeship to a carer course?

Cakeguts

BobQ wrote: »

I agree with much of what you say but while it may be true that you cannot get anywhere in the NHS without a degree ask yourself why this is?

If NHS employers demand it, they do not need to do so in all occupations. If its the professional bodies who allows them to do it?

We have seen a trend since the 1970s that have led lots of employers to require degrees (which they do not have to pay for) rather than internal training schemes (which they do). Not every job needs a degree and a near monopoly employer can decide its requirements.

Saying jobs need a degree is all part of the con perpetuated on young people

Teaching is another one of these. All teachers need to have a degree. Some of them have degrees that are a lower standard than the entry required for the old teacher training colleges. Some degrees are such a low standard that they are only worth about 5 O levels and yet you had to have at least 1 A level to go to an old teacher training college. What this means is that the educational standard that some teachers have got to has dropped significantly since they all had to have degrees. Just because a qualification is called a degree doesn't mean that it is of a sufficiently high standard for the job that requires it. Any degree that you can do now with only a 2 A level entry requirement is not the standard of a traditional degree level. So if it isn't the traditional level of a degree why call it a degree and why does the course have to be studied at a university at such a high cost?

economic

a degree, class room based 3 year degree is absolutely the wrong way to train someone to be a nurse. nurses do not require a degree. they need on the job training. its a low skilled profession and one more about interpersonal skills then traditional academic skills.

Thrugelmir

gfplux wrote: »

If there is a shortage as you say 40% then this is clear bad planning by Government.
If they show this level of incompetence I don't know what you can do.

How can the Government plan when they've no control over the movement of people. Training qualified staff takes years. People arrive in minutes.

My nephew has lived in Berlin and commutes to London as his work dictates for the past 8 years. His partner has recently given birth and is experiencing difficulties. They don't like the German healthcare system so are moving to her parents in Scotland in order to access the NHS. How do you plan for that?

GreatApe

BobQ wrote: »

Giving them money to spend as they please allows them to waste it

I would prefer to give it to an 18 year old who demonstrates they have the ability to be a professional engineer (or whatever the nation needs). I see no point giving the money to someone who barely qualifies for university and chooses to study something we do not need.

Your not giving them money for consumption your giving them money for investment in a home or a pension or an education so they won't be wasting it. In fact of those three options the only one that can result in s total waste is the education. The house and the world tracker can't go to zero and will likely increase in value while an education can not only be worthless but could even harm your further prospects

What if the kid has the ability to be an engineer but decides they would be better off using the £120,000 or thereabouts in lost income and tuition fees over a 3-4 year course to instead buy a house or a pension why should you only reward people who follow your favoured path?

In the UK we train far too many engineers so much so that I would say almost none of them work in engineering. None if my engineering graduate friends work in engineering. They work in the city and they really don't need to know anything about circuits and electronics anything about aerodynamics anything about structural mechanics etc etc

Just give the kids the money and let them and their parents decide what is the correct path for them

Windofchange

The thing with all of this is that with the allied health professions you do learn on the job. There is a requirement for 1000 hours of clinical placement throughout the degree. You don't, contrary to what most believe on here, sit in a classroom for three years.

For those who think that we can just scrap university and do on the job training, you don't understand what the jobs entail. A large part of the course is learning the NHS yes, but then there are is mathematics, chemistry, formal exams, essays, dissertations. The need to learn about all the medications that are dished out - you can't just turn up on day one and have no idea about the drugs you are dishing out to people. The reality is that hospitals are so busy, students are expected to hit the ground running. When I have students, I'm not expecting to be watching them 24/7. I expect them to be autonomous for large parts of the day. My nursing friends don't have the time to spend two hours explaining the mathematical formula for dosing a syringe.

Then there is the legal and professional side of the career which again, you can't learn on the job. You need to understand medical ethics, you need to understand scope of practice. If as you all suggest you could just watch for 6 months and then go roam freely with potentially lethal medical equipment / drugs, why hasn't this been done already? As I said earlier, you want someone with six months of observation dosing your syringe drivers on ICU where a miscalculation could kill you?

A quick google shows you how it happens currently with people who have trained, and you want to throw people into the wards with a few months of watching? This nurse for instance didn't realise she had to re-titrate the drug into the patient.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/patient-killed-massive-overdose-anti-psychotic-5767400

Cakeguts

Windofchange wrote: »

The thing with all of this is that with the allied health professions you do learn on the job. There is a requirement for 1000 hours of clinical placement throughout the degree. You don't, contrary to what most believe on here, sit in a classroom for three years.

For those who think that we can just scrap university and do on the job training, you don't understand what the jobs entail. A large part of the course is learning the NHS yes, but then there are is mathematics, chemistry, formal exams, essays, dissertations. The need to learn about all the medications that are dished out - you can't just turn up on day one and have no idea about the drugs you are dishing out to people. The reality is that hospitals are so busy, students are expected to hit the ground running. When I have students, I'm not expecting to be watching them 24/7. I expect them to be autonomous for large parts of the day. My nursing friends don't have the time to spend two hours explaining the mathematical formula for dosing a syringe.

Then there is the legal and professional side of the career which again, you can't learn on the job. You need to understand medical ethics, you need to understand scope of practice. If as you all suggest you could just watch for 6 months and then go roam freely with potentially lethal medical equipment / drugs, why hasn't this been done already? As I said earlier, you want someone with six months of observation dosing your syringe drivers on ICU where a miscalculation could kill you?

A quick google shows you how it happens currently with people who have trained, and you want to throw people into the wards with a few months of watching? This nurse for instance didn't realise she had to re-titrate the drug into the patient.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/patient-killed-massive-overdose-anti-psychotic-5767400

If you can do on the job training with gas engineers you can do on the job training with nursing. It just needs the right mindset of the trainers.