Are degrees in the UK value for money?

GreatApe

CLAPTON wrote: »

One doesn't 'prove' schrodinger's equation.
Its applications, like the entire semiconductor, electronic, computing industry seems to have some real life implications.
Truely Physics at Imperial was wasted on you

by prove I mean derive. And yes it was wasted on me, but so was it on I would say 95% of all those that study it.

Physics is very useful and has very important applications that does not mean it is useful to everyone who studies it. One of the smartest people I know was an electrical engineer who started up a clay company and become a multi millionaire. Clearly electrical engineering is important but it does not mean it was useful or directly important to him. It did not help progress his life, his well-being or his wealth or the course of human history in any way.

zagubov

GreatApe wrote: »

Its a massively outdated way to learn when you sit in a lecture hall with 250 others and you have one guy at the blackboard doing his thing. You cant stop him you cant talk or debate. About half the kids (often the lessor half) would spend the hour or two just copying out what the lecturer was writing. This was a waste as no information or learning was happening just photocopying. The other half of the students were a mix of those who did not care and those who already knew the stuff being lectured on as they read the material before hand.

So overall I will stick with my view that it was a middle of the road university. The reason the kids there do quite well is simply because the college can take the cream at A-Levels. When they only take in triple A students they could put them in a tent with a kerosene lamp and a cell phone and the kids will still more or less get the same grade at the end of the year despite no lectures or tutorials.


As for physics being a useless course it really is for about 95% of those who study it.
It is perhaps very useful for society to have lots of kids study physics in the hope that a few of them will push the boundaries of science and discovery further but for the individuals doing it its largely a waste of time and resources as they are not going to become one of those 1/1000 that will push things forward

Are you not aware that most lectures are like that? They're not lessons. Students are meant to be past that stage of learning by the time they attend university.

GreatApe

westernpromise wrote: »

It's certainly useless in most jobs. It evidences numeracy but few jobs that require numeracy require physics-degree numeracy. Engineering's another useless degree and computer science yet another unless you're going to be a coding / IT peon.

Exactly, the subject can have great value to society but little value to the individual

Jobs that require good numeracy should specify a good grade at A-Level mathematics. However the HR girls and company bosses that hire for jobs needing good numeracy specify mathematics heavy degrees so kids need to do 'useless' degrees like physics and engineering so they tick one of the HR girls boxes.

Jackieboy

westernpromise wrote: »

It pretty much has actually.

When we had O Levels and CSEs, the former were sat by fewer than 50% of candidates. We now send 50% of da yoof to university from which it follows that some kids who would have been thought of in the past as CSE material - in the bottom half of the class - are now considered university material. Special universities of stupid have been set up to accommodate them.

http://www.justcourses.com/Courses/University_of_Northampton/F8WM-Wastes_Management_and_Dance/348206-1-0.html

No, that course is not a joke.

I agree that the course looks like a joke but your figures are wrong on O levels/CSEs as plenty of students took neither and plenty of students took a mixture of both. Also, although the intention was for 50% of 18 year olds to go to university, that figure was never reached - in 2014 the rate was about 35%.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/university-application-rate-at-record-high-for-18-year-olds

Jackieboy

GreatApe wrote: »

Exactly, the subject can have great value to society but little value to the individual

Jobs that require good numeracy should specify a good grade at A-Level mathematics. However the HR girls and company bosses that hire for jobs needing good numeracy specify mathematics heavy degrees so kids need to do 'useless' degrees like physics and engineering so they tick one of the HR girls boxes.

The "HR girls"!:eek:

Jackieboy

michaels wrote: »

Either this is double irony or try rereading the post you commented on with an irony detector enabled

I doubt it and, in the light of later posts, I seem to be right.

GreatApe

zagubov wrote: »

Are you not aware that most lectures are like that? They're not lessons. Students are meant to be past that stage of learning by the time they attend university.

The college should have done away with lectures years ago and just put videos of past lectures up. Given a reading list and a website list and told the students to go away and come back in a year to be tested. That would likely be better if not better certainly not worse.

But then the pretense of needing a big fancy expensive campus in kensington, big expensive fees, lots of teaching staff and support stuff, all of that as vital to learn would be shown to be false.

The truth is and has been for a long time that the best most efficient method to learn is simply reading material. In the past this would have been books and now it is books+net. Society no longer needs universities for teaching its a pretense. You can lean the highest levels of science mathematics and engineering from the comfort of your own living room faster quicker and in more depth than doing a 3 year uni course.

michaels

Jackieboy wrote: »

I doubt it and, in the light of later posts, I seem to be right.

My bad (Keele)

Mea culpa (UCL)

GreatApe

silvercar wrote: »

You'd be surprised. The idea of student life for 3 years vs low paid employment is an attractive option.

This is the big problem, the current choice facing a 17 year old is to either 1: stack shelves at tesco or 2: go to university and cross your fingers that after 3 years the options are better than 1. This largely applies to even A-Level students who have good grades. How are kids meant to make an informed decision about £30k and 3 years of their lives when most of them have never had more than £30 in their wallets.

The funds should simply be given to the students to put down as a deposit on a house/pension or to go to university. With choice most would opt to buy a house or put it into a pension rather than do the uni thing.

Totally accept your point, but I'm not sure it is so easy for current 20 year olds.

Life has never been easy.
To have a decent chance at a good comfortable life you need to be born into a good stable family ideally a family which already has the backing of multi (or at least 1) generational inheritances/wealth.

The lucky few will make it dispute not having that, the majority will just plod on

The good news is that hopefully the number of good families is increasing as society develops and gets kinder and the amount of wealth in the nation is increasing each year as the saving rate is still positive so the number and amount of gifts/inheritances will keep growing.

The notion of university education somehow propelling people into the good life is false it probably always has been

theoretica

Of course a university education - and school education too - are useful for more than the facts acquired. When an employer asks for a degree they aren't usually just asking for someone at least 21 with a nice collection of facts at their fingertips. I developed my learning skills dramatically, so that now I can pick up new information and venture into new fields much more rapidly and efficiently than I could have without the university time and structure. I developed my learning skills to cope well when I wasn't being taught, or not being taught well. I practiced thinking logically and making connections between disparate things. The environment and like-minded people were amazing, and I am sure affected how I matured.

I would not have my current job without my university education, and I do use it. I could of course list huge quantities of facts I haven't ever needed since I learnt them, from primary school on up. How many people do need to name the wives of Henry VIII or use Pythagoras' theorem? But the skills learnt around those facts - them I do use.