Are degrees in the UK value for money?

NineDeuce

economic wrote: »

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.

We are generalising about the value of a degree. The OP has clearly made a cost comparison between a degree and an A-Level. No speak over whether the subject is worthwhile - everybody knows that you can do a degree in Maths and then a third rate degree in a fairly novelty study; and you can make that observation about any level of study - from A-Levels to PhDs.

And again, nobody contemplates the tax payer element when deciding whether to do a degree.

"Shall I do a degree?"

"Hold on a minute. The taxpayer is paying for that. Perhaps I should restrict my progression and do a course completely off my own back"..... said nobody ever. Nor does the individual levels motivation of students come into the pricing of a degree. All of the 'what ifs' are irrelevant, and we could be here all day talking about a number of things'

The point is that professional qualifications are expensive. They are much more targeted and degrees represent good value in comparison - per hour of study and per grade/education level.

economic

NineDeuce wrote: »

We are generalising about the value of a degree. The OP has clearly made a cost comparison between a degree and an A-Level. No speak over whether the subject is worthwhile - everybody knows that you can do a degree in Maths and then a third rate degree in a fairly novelty study; and you can make that observation about any level of study - from A-Levels to PhDs.

And again, nobody contemplates the tax payer element when deciding whether to do a degree.

"Shall I do a degree?"

"Hold on a minute. The taxpayer is paying for that. Perhaps I should restrict my progression and do a course completely off my own back"..... said nobody ever. Nor does the individual levels motivation of students come into the pricing of a degree. All of the 'what ifs' are irrelevant, and we could be here all day talking about a number of things'

The point is that professional qualifications are expensive. They are much more targeted and degrees represent good value in comparison - per hour of study and per grade/education level.

you can not compare two qualifications purely on cost alone. you and/or the OP are the ones who are generalising.

Forget professional qualifications for now. If you have two undergrad degrees in maths, one at middlesex uni and one at oxford uni. both cost the same. 9k a year. who do you think stands a better chance at gaining a job? who do you think stands a better chance gaining a well paid job? who do you think stands a better chance at earning above average? i would put money on the oxford grad - a very easy decision.

now the above clearly shows that some degrees are more valuable then others even though the cost is the same.

if the profesisonal qualification costs a LOT more, why do you think that is? why should a degree at middlesex cost the same as a degree at oxford for the same course despite the oxford grad standing a much better chance in employment and earning potential?

you need to look at what the professional qualifications once achieved gets you. you need to look at what an oxford degree gets you. and you need to look at what a middlesex degree gets you. the true value is looking at cost AND what your earning potential/career prospects are by doing that qualification.

NineDeuce

economic wrote: »

you can not compare two qualifications purely on cost alone. you and/or the OP are the ones who are generalising.

Forget professional qualifications for now. If you have two undergrad degrees in maths, one at middlesex uni and one at oxford uni. both cost the same. 9k a year. who do you think stands a better chance at gaining a job? who do you think stands a better chance gaining a well paid job? who do you think stands a better chance at earning above average? i would put money on the oxford grad - a very easy decision.

now the above clearly shows that some degrees are more valuable then others even though the cost is the same.

if the profesisonal qualification costs a LOT more, why do you think that is? why should a degree at middlesex cost the same as a degree at oxford for the same course despite the oxford grad standing a much better chance in employment and earning potential?

you need to look at what the professional qualifications once achieved gets you. you need to look at what an oxford degree gets you. and you need to look at what a middlesex degree gets you. the true value is looking at cost AND what your earning potential/career prospects are by doing that qualification.

"you can not compare two qualifications purely on cost alone."
Yes I can. And I did. And I made the broad point on face value that some courses cost thousands for a week, where as uni degrees cost £9.5k for a year, which is good value. The costs of running professional courses in general is expensive.

"you can not compare two qualifications purely on cost alone. you and/or the OP are the ones who are generalising."

Yes. That was the point. It didnt seem a discussion designed to add as many technicalities as possible into the mix. The OP didnt mention comparing degrees in Middlesex to Oxford... We would be here all day with your in-depth nit picking....

Herzlos

NineDeuce wrote: »

And again, nobody contemplates the tax payer element when deciding whether to do a degree.

"Shall I do a degree?"

"Hold on a minute. The taxpayer is paying for that. Perhaps I should restrict my progression and do a course completely off my own back"..... said nobody ever. Nor does the individual levels motivation of students come into the pricing of a degree.

You're making the assumption that a good education only benefits the student, when in reality it should benefit everyone, and potentially be a cost benefit to the economy. Better educated people (generally - there are always outliers) get & generate better jobs, drive more innovation, pay more tax, etc.

A poorly educated workforce on the other hand tends to be stuck with low paid manual work and are easier to control, but result in all of the skilled positions being filled with foreigners, who have the better education.

I'm personally baffled as to why England is so against good education for everyone. We have free uni courses up here (for the first course, anyway), and we seem to do alright.

Answering the question though; my uni education was well worth the money (I paid £2500 directly about 10 years ago, and the rest via tax), since it was directly responsible for me getting a job paying well above the average wage for the area, that it'd never have gotten with high school qualifications. It was worth it for the government because I pay easily double the tax I would if I didn't attend, which has easily covered the cost of my course already.

Would I have gone to uni if it cost £9000/year? I doubt it, neither my parents or I would have been able to afford it.

NineDeuce

Herzlos wrote: »

You're making the assumption that a good education only benefits the student, when in reality it should benefit everyone, and potentially be a cost benefit to the economy. Better educated people (generally - there are always outliers) get & generate better jobs, drive more innovation, pay more tax, etc.

A poorly educated workforce on the other hand tends to be stuck with low paid manual work and are easier to control, but result in all of the skilled positions being filled with foreigners, who have the better education.

I'm personally baffled as to why England is so against good education for everyone. We have free uni courses up here (for the first course, anyway), and we seem to do alright.

Answering the question though; my uni education was well worth the money (I paid £2500 directly about 10 years ago, and the rest via tax), since it was directly responsible for me getting a job paying well above the average wage for the area, that it'd never have gotten with high school qualifications. It was worth it for the government because I pay easily double the tax I would if I didn't attend, which has easily covered the cost of my course already.

Would I have gone to uni if it cost £9000/year? I doubt it, neither my parents or I would have been able to afford it.

Yeah, I would have thought about all of this... if that was actually remotely the topic subject....

economic

NineDeuce wrote: »

"you can not compare two qualifications purely on cost alone."
Yes I can. And I did. And I made the broad point on face value that some courses cost thousands for a week, where as uni degrees cost £9.5k for a year, which is good value. The costs of running professional courses in general is expensive.

"you can not compare two qualifications purely on cost alone. you and/or the OP are the ones who are generalising."

Yes. That was the point. It didnt seem a discussion designed to add as many technicalities as possible into the mix. The OP didnt mention comparing degrees in Middlesex to Oxford... We would be here all day with your in-depth nit picking....

we clearly define value differently. you think its just about cost. i think about cost and what you get for paying that cost. hence why we are going back and forth.

i bought a new computer recently. paid about £600 for all the works which i think is very good value. i could have paid £300 for a much lower spec PC but even though it is still good enough for me, i know i would need to upgrade it in 5 years (which would cost a few hundred plus time) whereas the one i bought probably 10 years. so i value the £600 more then the £300.

you would value the £300 more then the £600 if you were in my situation as you would not consider anything else at all (upgrades etc).

economic

by the way it doesnt take a maths degree to figure out something is more costly then another on an hourly or aggregate basis.

Cakeguts

The trouble is that there are about 75 universities in the UK where the degrees are not worth the paper they are printed on because the entry requirements for the courses are too low. Instead of degrees the students would be better educated if they went on a training course for a specific job rather than getting a piece of paper that no one is interested in. In fact a 3 year training course would probably be a higher standard of education than a degree from these universities.

NineDeuce

economic wrote: »

we clearly define value differently. you think its just about cost. i think about cost and what you get for paying that cost. hence why we are going back and forth.

i bought a new computer recently. paid about £600 for all the works which i think is very good value. i could have paid £300 for a much lower spec PC but even though it is still good enough for me, i know i would need to upgrade it in 5 years (which would cost a few hundred plus time) whereas the one i bought probably 10 years. so i value the £600 more then the £300.

you would value the £300 more then the £600 if you were in my situation as you would not consider anything else at all (upgrades etc).

That's just about an irrelevant analogy as possibly could be found. I advocated the cost of a degree (or in your world, the higher spec course) - the more expensive course of the two. I am sure you dont need a degree in Maths or even in common sense to work that out....

economic

NineDeuce wrote: »

That's just about an irrelevant analogy as possibly could be found. I advocated the cost of a degree (or in your world, the higher spec course) - the more expensive course of the two. I am sure you dont need a degree in Maths or even in common sense to work that out....

i really dont understand what you are on about. the title of this thread suggests whether uk degrees are value for money. your definition of value is silly as it only considers costs.

what are you actually on about? one minute you say degrees are more expensive and the next professional qualifications are more expensive???