Are degrees in the UK value for money?

GreatApe

economic wrote: »

what happens if one has an iq of 70?

that is a tough problem not only because those people will suffer but also because there is little to no way to help them as there is little to no testing of IQ to identify them.

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

that is a tough problem not only because those people will suffer but also because there is little to no way to help them as there is little to no testing of IQ to identify them.

there are ways to identify them (or at least an avenue to try identify them) - through schools.

exam results (in maths mainly but also sciences) correlates quite well with IQ. So you can identify them that way. once identified you could tailor the education and prospective jobs to suit their lower iq ability. with the advancement of tech, much like the advancement of the service sector, a higher level of iq is required to not only get those jobs, but do those jobs. im not saying einstein level (unless you want to be a top class nuclear scientist!) but a certain level that those with an iq of 70 have no chance doing.

this is really about bringing the best out of people even those with low iq. this should help with productivity and helps the society in reducing crime.

SingleSue

Cakeguts wrote: »

You have missed the single most important aspect of apprenticeships. Work experience. Because for an apprenticeship you work in the job you get very good practice at working. This is not like the work experience teenagers do at school this is real work that you get paid for. This is why a lot of apprenticeships lead to better employment than many university degrees.

Now go back to the universities. We know that about 75 of the universities offer degrees that are not of the level of difficulty that any employer would want. Also only about 10% of jobs in the UK need someone educated to degree level. This means that 1000s of students are there only to pay for the staff at the universities. They are being used to pay university staff to offer a non service. So which is worse a few apprenticeships which provide cheap labour for the employer and work experience for the apprentice or 1000s of students whose sole purpose it to provide money to pay university staff?

Most apprenticeships are well run and provide a good level of education. A few are not so well run but there are about 75 universities that have no purpose at all except as a means to provide jobs for the staff.

Actually I didn't miss it. My point was that there are some very good apprenticeships out there but there are also a fair few very bad ones too which just use the apprenticeship label to get cheap labour and which leave the young person no better off.

I have seen apprenticeships in my old sector, they are not needed and just like the old YTS scheme, the people doing those are just glorified tea makers and apart from the experience (which they could have got without the apprenticeship label and actually be paid a decent wage), get no real education or insight into the sector....they are just the bods fetching the drinks and filing.

Conversely, the good ones are generally very good with lots of training, lots of education and usually fairly decently paid and with good prospects for being taken on after the apprenticeship is over (a relative's daughter was lucky enough to get one of these, she is doing very well indeed)

Re the 10%, some graduates are not just looking at the UK job market. So where an apprenticeship may work for companies here, they most probably would have no standing abroad.

SingleSue

GreatApe wrote: »

One of the problems we have as a nation and this probably applies to most the western nations is that we seem to fool our young into this notion that work is fulfillment and the highest good to aim for.

It is true for maybe 2% of people who have jobs they absolutely love and would still go in every day with love for the job even if the wage was half what it is. But for the 98% a job is just for money and you would not do it if it paid half as much.

Kids should be encouraged to do jobs that pay well mostly because if its just a job that you would not do for free (as 98% of jobs are) then you might as well be paid well for it. Other than pay a job is just a job find fulfillment in other areas of your life as its very unlikely to come from a career/job.

I'm actually doing a job where I am being paid minimum wage, I used to be in a career where I was a high rate tax payer.

I love my current job.

Mind you, I'm getting on a bit now and the thought of being back in that rat race sends chills down my spine. It was good at the time and I enjoyed the money but boy was it a pressure laden experience which probably shortened my life and most def contributed to the mass of grey hair I have now :rotfl:

Cakeguts

SingleSue wrote: »

Actually I didn't miss it. My point was that there are some very good apprenticeships out there but there are also a fair few very bad ones too which just use the apprenticeship label to get cheap labour and which leave the young person no better off.

I have seen apprenticeships in my old sector, they are not needed and just like the old YTS scheme, the people doing those are just glorified tea makers and apart from the experience (which they could have got without the apprenticeship label and actually be paid a decent wage), get no real education or insight into the sector....they are just the bods fetching the drinks and filing.

Conversely, the good ones are generally very good with lots of training, lots of education and usually fairly decently paid and with good prospects for being taken on after the apprenticeship is over (a relative's daughter was lucky enough to get one of these, she is doing very well indeed)

Re the 10%, some graduates are not just looking at the UK job market. So where an apprenticeship may work for companies here, they most probably would have no standing abroad.

You have to be a bit careful about UK qualifications and working abroad. Some UK degrees are not recognised in other countries. Anything to do with Law usually comes under this because laws in each country are different and so you need to have a degree in the law of the country which you can only do in the country where you are going to work. A lot of the UK degrees are not recognised in the US without further studies to qualify. For medicine you have to be fluent in the language of the country you are hoping to work in or you will not be able to communicate complicated medical diagnosis to your patients.

It is not as simple as getting a degree if you want to work in another country.

Some employers in the UK want a degree because the level of the job requires that level of knowledge. For something like some forms of engineering the degree has to come from the type of university where the degree awarded is a higher standard of education than an old A level or students won't be offered a job because they wouldn't know enough to be able to do it. Basically there are some jobs that need degrees where the degrees start from the top grades at A level. So someone with an A level at less than a top grade already doesn't know enough to start the degree.

gfplux

SingleSue wrote: »

For the companies my son would like to work for and in the area he wants, an apprenticeship won't do, he has have a degree and other accreditations due to them not being UK based (a lot of the UK based companies also require a degree and don't do apprenticeships).

I'm not against apprenticeships but I do despair when jobs which have no need to have an apprenticeship attached are being offered, it's then becomes cheap labour for the companies involved rather than a benefit to the young person.

You might want to know that degrees and qualifications under EU law must be recognised across the present EU28. It is not a perfect system as some Country's drag their feet and put hoops to jump through to become recognised.
One of the hundreds of things that have to be agreed during the Brexit talks is wether this will continue for British qualifications.
It was originally going to be discussed within Citizens Rights in Phase 1 of the talks but has been put on a "side table" and probably have to compete for attention amongs those 100's of subjects and the trade talks during phase 2.
If it is a concern for you I suggest you take it up with your MP and MEP. It presently is not a priority for either side.

SingleSue

That indeed was one of our concerns gfplux pre referendum and even more so post referendum! It's one of the reasons he went for a degree that has additional accreditations that are recognised/accepted much further than the UK and the EU as a just in case measure plus doing a lot of finger crossing regarding free movement.

Arklight

Cakeguts wrote: »

You have to be a bit careful about UK qualifications and working abroad. Some UK degrees are not recognised in other countries. Anything to do with Law usually comes under this because laws in each country are different and so you need to have a degree in the law of the country which you can only do in the country where you are going to work. A lot of the UK degrees are not recognised in the US without further studies to qualify. For medicine you have to be fluent in the language of the country you are hoping to work in or you will not be able to communicate complicated medical diagnosis to your patients.

It is not as simple as getting a degree if you want to work in another country.

Some employers in the UK want a degree because the level of the job requires that level of knowledge. For something like some forms of engineering the degree has to come from the type of university where the degree awarded is a higher standard of education than an old A level or students won't be offered a job because they wouldn't know enough to be able to do it. Basically there are some jobs that need degrees where the degrees start from the top grades at A level. So someone with an A level at less than a top grade already doesn't know enough to start the degree.

Please ignore this completely useless information.


There is no global accreditation body for degree level study. However under the Bologna Process, UK degrees are recognised as equal to all other EU degrees and confer the same level of ECTS credit as those awarded by European universities.


I am not sure what UK degrees the poster thinks are "not recognised" in the US. The US doesn't even have a national accreditation system for itself, let alone the UK.


Every year 20,000 odd US students access US federal loans to study British degrees in British universities. Universities who's alumni are unable to find work and pay off their loans are banned from admitting federally funded students. This hasn't happened to a single UK university.


If you want to do a career that is controlled in any way by a government, like Law, then you will need to do their training. If you have a degree in English law in the US then you can still apply to sit the bar exam. Passing that is the only way to become a lawyer in America, and you will need to know topics that weren't in your British LLB.


The poster has such a confused concept of what A levels are, and their relation to qualifications that last existed when people literally used slide rules and copied things out longhand in libraries, I'm not going to go there.

Cakeguts

Arklight wrote: »

Please ignore this completely useless information.


There is no global accreditation body for degree level study. However under the Bologna Process, UK degrees are recognised as equal to all other EU degrees and confer the same level of ECTS credit as those awarded by European universities.


I am not sure what UK degrees the poster thinks are "not recognised" in the US. The US doesn't even have a national accreditation system for itself, let alone the UK.


Every year 20,000 odd US students access US federal loans to study British degrees in British universities. Universities who's alumni are unable to find work and pay off their loans are banned from admitting federally funded students. This hasn't happened to a single UK university.


If you want to do a career that is controlled in any way by a government, like Law, then you will need to do their training. If you have a degree in English law in the US then you can still apply to sit the bar exam. Passing that is the only way to become a lawyer in America, and you will need to know topics that weren't in your British LLB.


The poster has such a confused concept of what A levels are, and their relation to qualifications that last existed when people literally used slide rules and copied things out longhand in libraries, I'm not going to go there.

Did you bother to read the rest of this thread? The EU qualification/degrees are discussed in two answers above yours and they are more up to date.

What the US government pays for doesn't really affect what a UK student can do with a degree.

You say I don't know anything about A levels but you haven't explained why A level papers with O level questions on them are more difficult than O levels.

Also if you had read the whole thread you would have read the comment that someone has given about the levels at some universities.

I have no idea why you want to try to make out that the education system in the UK hasn't been "dumbed down,"but you aren't actually helping young people not to get conned by the university system.

Arklight

Cakeguts wrote: »

Did you bother to read the rest of this thread? The EU qualification/degrees are discussed in two answers above yours and they are more up to date.

What the US government pays for doesn't really affect what a UK student can do with a degree.

You say I don't know anything about A levels but you haven't explained why A level papers with O level questions on them are more difficult than O levels.

Also if you had read the whole thread you would have read the comment that someone has given about the levels at some universities.

I have no idea why you want to try to make out that the education system in the UK hasn't been "dumbed down,"but you aren't actually helping young people not to get conned by the university system.

I don't have to read "the whole thread" to correct the nonsense in your one post.


"You say I don't know anything about A levels but you haven't explained why A level papers with O level questions on them are more difficult than O levels."

I'm not sure to what you are referring. O levels were last sat in 1987. What A level exams now are using O level questions from 30 years ago?


Assuming there are some questions that are the same. Do you think the marking scheme for a Level 3 qualification is the same as that of a Level 2 qualification?


"I have no idea why you want to try to make out that the education system in the UK hasn't been "dumbed down,"but you aren't actually helping young people not to get conned by the university system"

Universities might be "conning young people" by charging them £9500 a year and then giving them a poor experience, but there is no evidence that they are matriculating them with degree classifications that haven't been assessed properly.


If this were the case all those students who go to universities that take the useless C, D and E grade A levels that you seem to think barely qualifies them to hold out a tin on the street and grunt at passersby, would be being matriculated with 1sts and 2:1s.


But there is no evidence this is the case:


https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?o=Good+Honours


If you actually look at data, rather than axiomatic everyone-knows assumption, you will see that the top grades are achieved by students at the top universities.


Unsurprisingly the privileged kids who go to the privileged schools get into privileged institutions where they get high attainment in degrees that continue their privilege.


If you are choosing somewhere to go and get a 1st you better not go to London Met, languishing at the bottom of the table for grades. However St Andrews, Oxford, and Cambridge seem to have developed a pretty foolproof method of ensuring that inner city kids never get into their hallowed halls of learning.

Personally I am much more impressed by someone who goes to London Met and gets a 1st than someone who has every imaginable advantage thrown at them and gets the same from the Russell Group.


If you want to wee all over low table unis for offering bad teaching then go right ahead, but don't say that kids who do well in them have had an easy ride or somehow get their externally marked and moderated exam papers be marked more leniently.