Are degrees in the UK value for money?

Windofchange

Cakeguts wrote: »

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?

Ok, I'm going to leave this here with you.

1) There is no scandal of nurses doing degrees and then not pursuing a career in nursing. It is more prevalent that they go on to work and then get burnt out in 5 years and leave. This is the problem, not what you think.

2) Your point about people being too stupid, a degree is not worth more than 5 O levels etc etc. The degrees are standardised by the professional bodies. Wherever you study, you need to pass the same identical set of requirements. If you don't meet the competencies as laid out, you don't pass, and you don't become a nurse. So, regardless of whether someone has 2 A levels or 5 A*'s, they need the same standard. If this standard is somehow too low, I would suggest you are far from best placed to judge.

3) There is a change afoot within the allied health professions in that apprenticeships are coming. My trust is targeted on having 5% of it's workforce in an apprenticeship as of next financial year. This came out of the five year forward view review a couple of years back in case you want to read it. It however won't negate the need to do all the other things around the actual working on the job such as essays, exams, dissertations etc. The course for allied health professionals is set to take 4 years as opposed to the usual 3 (not sure about nursing), and will as a result likely cost more - you are paying the person to do their job during the day and providing them with time away from work to do the rest of it. This will need covering by locums.

4) The courses do absolutely cover what the NHS wants. I have mentioned above the courses are standardised in liaison between NHS England and the various professional bodies. Universities are not given free range to just teach what they want - it is a set curriculum, and other than a bit of difference between universities in the order things are taught, it is the same.

As for switching from nursing to a carer course, I've already covered this. Carers (HCA's) are not professionally regulated. There is no course per se. There are courses you can do, and competencies you can study for, but there is no obligation. You could turn up tomorrow at your local recruitment centre and become a carer by the end of the week (pending DBS clearance).

An apprenticeship is no more likely to weed out the slackers from the good than a degree. As mentioned, there is no bursary anymore for the degrees, so the money it is costing the taxpayer is no different to anyone else at uni.

Windofchange

Cakeguts wrote: »

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.

Based on your in depth experience of nursing degrees and the job in general? As per my post above, I'm leaving this here with you as in the nicest possible way, you don't understand what you are arguing about, and therefore it is impossible to have any sort of educated discussion.

GreatApe

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

Almost everyone accepts that most courses are pointless that you feel you can find a few specific examples does not change the fact that most courses are pointless. Even courses that have some value like Engineering Mathematics Chemistry etc are pointless for the 9/10ths of the students that study the subject but go work in completely unrelated fields.

And you seem to not understand what learning on the job means, it doesn't mean you turn up and start injecting drugs into people. Learning on the job means you shadow someone who teaches you as you go along as when they are confident you are competent they let you make decisions and practice the trade while under their supervision and only once they see that you are dong it all correctly and know what the hell it is your doing do they let you go do it yourself

ukcarper

I don't think people realise how good old fashioned apprenticeship were. My apprenticeship consisted of, on the job training, practical and specialist training at company training schools and theoretical training at technical college. I don't see why many of the jobs that now require a degree can't be done similarly.

It obviously cost the company I worked for a lot and I think many companies would be prepared to fund it, leaving the tax payer or student to pick up tab.

GreatApe

Windofchange wrote: »

Based on your in depth experience of nursing degrees and the job in general? As per my post above, I'm leaving this here with you as in the nicest possible way, you don't understand what you are arguing about, and therefore it is impossible to have any sort of educated discussion.

Education is just transferring data and algorithms into your brain.
That is not only possible in buildings we call universities

And employers can and do train their workforce. I recall one of our employers sent most of their workers on some Excel course to learn from the basics all the way to lower level VBA programming. In your mind that is impossible if a kid doesn't go into a building named university they cant learn.

I also recall teaching some of my underlings statistical analysis techniques for instance what a Fourier transform is and how they could use it to detect the difference between various fluids flowing through a pipe. That is university level mathematics that they were learning on the job they didn't need to go to university a high IQ A-Level student is all that is needed.

I have also worked in R&D labs, guess what, we were doing things never tough to us and facing problems we had never seen. People have the capacity to learn and to teach each other outside of higher education institutions

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

Education is just transferring data and algorithms into your brain.
That is not only possible in buildings we call universities

And employers can and do train their workforce. I recall one of our employers sent most of their workers on some Excel course to learn from the basics all the way to lower level VBA programming. In your mind that is impossible if a kid doesn't go into a building named university they cant learn.

I also recall teaching some of my underlings statistical analysis techniques for instance what a Fourier transform is and how they could use it to detect the difference between various fluids flowing through a pipe. That is university level mathematics that they were learning on the job they didn't need to go to university a high IQ A-Level student is all that is needed.

I have also worked in R&D labs, guess what, we were doing things never tough to us and facing problems we had never seen. People have the capacity to learn and to teach each other outside of higher education institutions

absolutely spot on. and the ultimate question we should be asking ourselves is: is the 9k a year in tuition fees we are funding a good investment for this country? if not where is the fair value (could very well be 0 or even negative, in fact many are actually negative value - students should be paid to do some of these courses)?

i am confident the answer is its not a good investment for by far most degrees and the least we should be doing is let the free market decide on tuition fees and encourage more apprentice style training for a lot of jobs.

NineDeuce

economic wrote: »

2k a week paid for by the employer and not the taxpayer unlike student loans. BIG difference. for the employer to pay that much for training obviously means its worth it unless they are stupid or doing it purely for political reasons.

its pretty simple really.

What on Earth has that got to do when deciding the validity of a course? Do you think students sit down contemplating the effect on the taxpayer's purse before deciding whether to take on a degree, rather than the cost to themselves?

£2k a week paid for by the employer? Again, whats that got to do with anything? Do you think the trainer thinks about charging differently for courses that are paid for by individuals? Costs are costs. Degrees are value for money in comparison to other courses.

The only simple thing about this is how simple your 'points' were to dismantle....

economic

NineDeuce wrote: »

What on Earth has that got to do when deciding the validity of a course? Do you think students sit down contemplating the effect on the taxpayer's purse before deciding whether to take on a degree, rather than the cost to themselves?

£2k a week paid for by the employer? Again, whats that got to do with anything? Do you think the trainer thinks about charging differently for courses that are paid for by individuals? Costs are costs. Degrees are value for money in comparison to other courses.

The only simple thing about this is how simple your 'points' were to dismantle....

the big mistake you make is you are comparing absolute costs and nothing else.

you need to also consider:
- who is actually paying for it (upfront and/or ongoing)
- what is the value to the person paying for it

for employer courses: they pay for it fully. they do not want to waste money on pointless courses so why are they paying £2k a week on courses for their employees? for them to become more productive and so the employer hopes to get a return from the investment into their employee training. also the employer can obviously reduce the tax burden by including the course cost in corporation tax. so the overall cost is actually smaller. also the course seems very expensive because its intense - the employer wants the employee to learn the skills quickly so they can apply those skills quickly to be productive asap. you can not compare that to a degree where most degrees most likely will not train a person to be productive in their eventual job/career.

for undergrad degrees: this is more difficult to understand the true value. there are two parties who pay for it: taxpayer (upfront and the student (ongoing once he gets a job).

to the student: he needs to decide if the degree course will be worth it for them. 9k a year for 3 years may seem cheap vs the employer course. but if he is in the same position after graduating compared to not having a degree then the value is clearly negative for the student. my feeling is the majority of courses by far are like this. however if it is a lazy person with no motivation at all to get a job then of course its better to do the course as the taxpayer will pay for it providing the student doesnt get a job paying enough to start paying off the loan.

to the taxpayer its a different story: he has to pay upfront for students to go on a degree. you need to decide whether this is worth it vs the taxpayer funds being paid for something else to get a better return. my feeling is the majority of courses by far the taxpayer is better off not paying for the degree courses and instead doing something else with the money.

the problem is the student could be making a bad decision because:
- he is young and most likely doesnt know what he wants to do in life and doesnt know about money/debt
- society kind of forces students to do a degree no matter what it is as any degree even though its a waste of time is better then none and you can only get a job with a degree.
this encourages poor decisions. by the student which is very unfortunate.

economic

also there are clearly less employer courses done then degrees in total/aggregate. this means the employer courses will be more expensive (limited spaces) and put that together with taxpayer funded degree courses and you have degree which should actually cost even less then employer courses int he free market.

if it were upto the free market, most courses would just stop existing, employers will start apprenticeship style training schemes and we should have a more efficiint education system in this country post Alevels.

then the next level will be to have courses taught online for those who really need/want to do a degree. things like medicine cant obviously be done all online, most would need to be practical. but courses like maths, physics , economics etc should be done all or mostly online with some elements done in class for practicals.

this will make it much cheaper to do a course. you dont need to pay lecturers. you dont need to buy expensive computers. you dont need large lecture halls. there can be so much done if only those in power had the imagination.

GreatApe

It also is not just about money its about the huge quantity of human resources that could be put elsewhere. You are looking at about 1.5 million additional workers both the kids and the reallocated staff in the university sector. What could you do with a workforce of 1.5 million people? I would say almost anything you can imagine. Not just anything you can imagine, everything you can imagine!

That is enough resources to do all of the following

1: Expand the NHS by 20% that is 20% more doctors hospitals equipment buildings everything
2: Build 100,000 council homes a year

That would only take up 50% of the additional resources and capital you still have so much capital to allocate. For instance you could install for free 2 million homes per year with 4KWp solar panels and that would only take up 25% of the 50% of the resources you have left!

Misallocating massive resources on higher education is a real loss to everyone in the country. £80,000 in tuition and living loans on a kid that will be stacking shelves with his photography degree is just stupid. Might as well install 20 homes with solar panels and have a return for 40+ years of free clean electricity for the same sum. The investment return in the solar is also enough to pay for 1 additional free install per year indefinitely. So over a 30 year period the trade off is a kid doing a photography degree and working min wage jobs vs 60+ homes with solar power and the jobs they created via the install and the lower imports of fuel into the country etc. You are looking at £200,000 less foreign fuel imports over the life of the panels. That seems to be some actual value as oppose to sending so many kids to be educated in worthless subjects.