Are degrees in the UK value for money?

GreatApe

Let's suppose all universities were closed does anyone here think GDP would drastically fall?

I think its not likely. We would quickly find out 95% of jobs didn't require any higher education. The employers would likely just hire based in their own internal criteria and examination or fall back to A-Levels. If training is required the employers would pay for it and it would be only training that is needed so it would be targeted no need for a 3-4 year general university course a 3-4 week targeted course would do.

We would be just fine with 10 universities and close the other 100+
Or better yet keep them all and spend £1 billion advertising to foreign students and their parents to increase their numbers by 300,000 a year

GreatApe

westernpromise wrote: »

It's not that they're conditioned, it's just that now that everybody and his dog has a degree you might as well ask for a degree.

Historically the value of a degree was that it showed you could stick at something for three years and that you could manage your time. The actual subject matter was relatively trifling because it is the applicable skills that matter.

It is quite surprising, as I observed upthread, what degrees lead to employment and what don't. Effete Oxbridge ponces with degrees in things like art history typically struggle to find a job - not because they can't get a job at all but because they can't get one that they consider worthy of them. People with media studies degrees from the former Luton Poly OTOH do quite well. You can get in to do Broadcast Television and Radio with Foundation Year BA (Hons) with just one A Level at grade C. The employment rate is 75%. That, I would suggest, is quite a bit better than the employment rate for people with one A Level.

Any university whose degrees don't improve employment prospects should be allowed to go bust.

People without degrees have an employment rate of over 95% jumping to over 98% if you exclude those in between jobs (is unemployed for a month or two)

For all intents the UK has full employment irrespective of your education level. We even have migrants that can't speak a word of English yet they have employment.

So universities shouldn't be judged on their kids employment and unemployment they should be judged on their kids wages and even then you need to control for prior achievements. If a university is taking in gang members whose life was going to be drugs and prison and manages to get them into a low level office job that's a good outcome. If another university only selects students with the best grades and 140+ IQ who were privately educated and gets them into say a three year zero pay internship followed by a decade of min or close to min wages working in a fashion outlet well then that university has added no value and likely reduced the earning capacity of that kid.

[Deleted User]

GreatApe wrote: »

Let's suppose all universities were closed does anyone here think GDP would drastically fall?

About 5 years after this, we'd see a steady decline in GPs. We'd immediately see a teachers shortage. Large firms would be unable to hire qualified, educated people and maintain their presence in the UK. We'd be dependent on educated immigrants. Their salaries would rise due to scarcity.

No, we wouldn't see an impact for 5-10 years. Then we'd see the decline of the UK on the global stage in terms of engineering, banking, software development .. We'd have a massive decline in design, marketing ect..

Losing our graduate supply would be a massive problem to the UK. We are in an information age and competing against other educated nations

steampowered

GreatApe wrote: »

Let's suppose all universities were closed does anyone here think GDP would drastically fall?

And we'd quickly find the UK slipping into third world status.

I think your world view is remarkably complacent. The UK is one of the world's richest countries. We don't occupy that position as of right.

If the UK doesn't focus on ensuring that a large body of its people are highly educated, it won't remain one of the wealthiest countries. It is very possible that we might slip to being a mid-table country over the next few decades.

There's nothing inherently wrong with about 50% of the population going to university and the other 50% not going to university.

The UK still pays a very high wage premium to graduates over non-graduates. See this interesting graph https://1843magazine.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/Lifetime%20net%20benefit-x2040.jpg. Which suggests that having a large number of graduates is actually pretty worthwhile.

GreatApe

ringo_24601 wrote: »

About 5 years after this, we'd see a steady decline in GPs.

We can train doctors outside of a traditional university

ringo_24601 wrote: »

We'd immediately see a teachers shortage.

Why do you think that? We can hire A-Level students that get 3 x As to teach primary and secondary students. Do you really think you need a degree in physics to teach 8 year olds maths and science?

Public schools also do hire teachers without degrees

You just need to get away from the indoctrination that universities are the only place kids learn

Large firms would be unable to hire educated people and maintain their presence in the UK.

Why do you feel you need to attend a university to be educated?

Here is a guess, a 17 year old kid with a further maths A-Level exceeds the intelligence of 90% of our grades aged 22

We'd be dependent on educated immigrants. Their salaries would rise due to scarcity

Of the 32 million jobs in the UK how many require degree level education and knowledge? less than 10%? Of the less than 10% that need a degree how many could be trained on the job or sent to study just the relevant bits of a degree maybe two thirds?

No, we wouldn't see an impact for 5-10 years. Then we'd see the decline of the UK on the global stage in terms of engineering, banking, software development .. We'd have a massive decline in design, marketing ect..

Why would we see a decline in banking and engineering? A student with an A in Physics is already smart enough to be a competent engineer if they started working in an engineering company their 3 years saved not going to university would be 3 years more experience. A student with a mathematics or Further Mathematics A-Levels could do most banking jobs

Losing our graduate supply would be a massive problem to the UK. We are in an information age and competing against other educated nations

Scrap all but 10 universities and you can cut corporation tax to 2%
Which is better for companies, a 2% corporation tax or having the ability to hire lots of graduates that are in reality are lower skilled than a competent A-Level kid

[Deleted User]

Don't forget we'd also DIE in terms of R&D. Academic research would, technically, not exist any more. So lets forget all that stuff like cancer research that academics do. Pharmaceutical firms wouldn't be able to hire PhD students anymore.

So, sure, we'd be able to manage stuff we did in the 1950s-70s.. but the world is more complicated now. Our employers don't 'train people on the job', and I highly doubt they would. They'd hire as many experienced staff as they could and try to retain them. We'd hit a giant brick wall as 'experience' died out.

It would be quite funny to see what would become of the country if big firms could only hire 18 year olds with A Levels.

GreatApe

steampowered wrote: »

And we'd quickly find the UK slipping into third world status.

No we wouldn't our GDP would stay more or less the same. I dont think anyone can credibly argue that more than 5% of the workforce actually uses university level education in their work. That means a maximum of a 5% contraction in GDP which still leaves us well ahead of even most developed countries. However we would not see this 5% of the workforce just disappear they would just be trained outside of universities or directly by employers.

Also in the not too distant future a lot of the knowledge jobs are going to go to near AI software

I think your world view is remarkably complacent. The UK is one of the world's richest countries. We don't occupy that position as of right.

We were the worlds richest nation 150 years ago when closer to none of the population were university educated. Why we are rich, or rather why other nations are poor is an interesting discussion but not for this thread

If the UK doesn't focus on ensuring that a large body of its people are highly educated, it won't remain one of the wealthiest countries. It is very possible that we might slip to being a mid-table country over the next few decades.

What do you mean by highly educated, I am highly educated yet used none of my higher education in any of my jobs I have also forgotten 9/10ths of everything I have learnt. Even when I worked in R&D labs I did not use any of my higher education I could have done just as good a job had I stopped at A-Levels

The reality is that actual intelligence is not easily improved. It is a combination of genetics and early years brain development. You can no more easily improve someones intelligence than you can improve their height

There's nothing inherently wrong with about 50% of the population going to university and the other 50% not going to university.

Why this magic 50% number? If higher education is of actual value in an of itself why not 100%?

It is also not free so you need to make a statement like the following

Having 50% of the country go to university is better than having 25% go to university and using the now surplus £25 billion from the education budget for better healthcare. Can you make such a statement?

The UK still pays a very high wage premium to graduates over non-graduates. See this interesting graph https://1843magazine.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/Lifetime%20net%20benefit-x2040.jpg. Which suggests that having a large number of graduates is actually pretty worthwhile.

I am a graduate and I earn within the top 1% of earners yet my degree had absolutely zero to do with it. So why use people like me to make having a degree look so great?

There is also another bias, the very wealthy send their kids to university those kids inherit huge sums of capital and their earnings look massive thanks to the returns on that capital. If a son of a £10 billion wealthy man goes to university and inheirts the lot just after university when his father dies he could spend his entire life not working and just playing video games but his income would be in the region of £500+ million annually so was it his degree that made him so wealthy or his situation before even going to university?

If you look at the data and strip away all other factors, IQ conscientious family-wealth family-connections nepotism previous-achievements etc etc you will likely find very little maybe even no financial bonus to going to university.

And once more there is the finances to consider. What is better sending 50% of kids to university or sending 5% to university and reducing all income taxes by one third?

GreatApe

ringo_24601 wrote: »

Don't forget we'd also DIE in terms of R&D. Academic research would, technically, not exist any more. So lets forget all that stuff like cancer research that academics do. Pharmaceutical firms wouldn't be able to hire PhD students anymore

Why? I used to work in R&D labs I even won some awards and none of the R&D required my university education. Hire smart A-Level students they are just as capable you dont need to send a 160 IQ A-Level student through 4 years of undergrad work and 3 years PhD to figure out that he is a 160 IQ individual.

If anything more education could be a hindrance to highly intelligent individuals. Would facebook market value $500 billion have happened if the creator had decided not to drop out of university but to do another 5-10 years until he had a PhD. Would spaceX have existed had musk continued on with his PhD?

So, sure, we'd be able to manage stuff we did in the 1950s-70s.. but the world is more complicated now. Our employers don't 'train people on the job', and I highly doubt they would.

Most jobs dont need much more than on the job training/learning

It would be quite funny to see what would become of the country if big firms could only hire 18 year olds with A Levels.

Why do you feel a not so smart 21 year old with a degree from some third rate university is more capable than a 18 year old with top grade A-Levels?

[Deleted User]

I'm just going to remind you that Google was founded by two Stanford PhD students as part of a research project...

Would Facebook have managed to expand itself without all those university educated computer scientists?

How is this AI going to be written without all those PhD students?

If you want a modern world with advancements in science and technology you cannot ditch academic research and university education

GreatApe

ringo_24601 wrote: »

I'm just going to remind you that Google was founded by two Stanford PhD students as part of a research project...

Would Facebook have managed to expand itself without all those university educated computer scientists?

How is this AI going to be written without all those PhD students?

If you want a modern world with advancements in science and technology you cannot ditch academic research and university education

Why are all the new big tech companies american?

Why are our world class £50 billion a year higher education institutions not creating the Amazon Apple Google Facebook Ubers of the world?

Maybe we are not sending enough kids to university, perhaps the target should be 50% doing PhDs that will do it...right?