Are degrees in the UK value for money?

Cakeguts

Sapphire wrote: »

… and if the subjects taught are likely to result in the student actually getting a job. Personally, I wouldn't feel at all happy about funding people taking 'degrees' in 'trendy' subjects, such as media studies, 'creative' arts, etc., as opposed to those studying medicine and science, say, which require high skills and some brains.

Incidentally, I've been wondering whether, considering the types of degree that many teenagers go for, they receive any good advice on what their degrees would likely achieve for them in life, in terms of earning good money and having a career. Or are they just left to pluck any old 'trendy' subject out of the air? Are they also instructed in the discipline needed to work for decades, often alongside people they wouldn't necessarily associate with, or to be high achievers, etc? It seems that this is something Chinese people, for example, are aware of, and perhaps it comes from upbringing at home, rather than instructions at school?

The good advice is one of the problems. From what I have heard from various sources what is going on is this. When students start their A level courses they are either told to apply for a university course or they are handed forms to fill up to apply for university courses. No careers advice is given and no advice is given about that fact that not all universities offer the same level of course.

What I object to in this is that the students are told to apply to university if they are doing A levels but are often not told about any alternatives. Some students are even getting the impression from their schools that if you don't get a place at university you are regarded as a failure.

Some apprenticeships require higher A level grades than these low level universities but if you are in a school where you are regarded as a failure if you apply for an apprenticeship you would have to be an exceptional student to apply for an apprenticeship.

There is a school near me that advertises on its gate the percentage of final year students getting places at university. However it doesn't say which universities so they could all be going to bottom level ones where none of them will get a graduate level job and they would all have been better off to do an apprenticeship. What chance has an A level student at that school got of being told about an alternative to university when the school is clearly using the university places as advertising for new parents.

I think schools should be banned from telling future parents how many of their students got a place at university unless they also include which university and which job they got after leaving university. I also think they should be banned from telling their students about applying to university as this is careers advice and careers advice should include ALL careers.

SingleSue

My youngest son's experience at his college was different, they had careers days where they had both universities and apprenticeship providers involved (plus other local employers without schemes).

No pressure was put on the students to apply for university and in fact, the majority of the students applied for apprenticeships. Not all of them were successful but youngest was a rarity for deciding against an apprenticeship and going for university.

At middle and eldest son's 6th form, barely any mention was made of apprenticeships.....and to go onto one of Cakeguts points, large prints were made up of previous students, their results and which universities they went to and put up all over the walls of the school. Must admit it was a weird experience for me to walk in just after they put them up and the first thing I see is a very large picture of eldest son looking down at me, must have scared the year 7s witless :rotfl:

Cakeguts

SingleSue wrote: »

My youngest son's experience at his college was different, they had careers days where they had both universities and apprenticeship providers involved (plus other local employers without schemes).

No pressure was put on the students to apply for university and in fact, the majority of the students applied for apprenticeships. Not all of them were successful but youngest was a rarity for deciding against an apprenticeship and going for university.

At middle and eldest son's 6th form, barely any mention was made of apprenticeships.....and to go onto one of Cakeguts points, large prints were made up of previous students, their results and which universities they went to and put up all over the walls of the school. Must admit it was a weird experience for me to walk in just after they put them up and the first thing I see is a very large picture of eldest son looking down at me, must have scared the year 7s witless :rotfl:

So someone applying for an apprenticeship at middle and eldest sons school could be made to think of themselves as a failure especially when they got to see the large prints of the students who had got university places and no mention of anyone doing an apprenticeship.

A university place on its own doesn't tell anyone anything unless they understand about the different levels of university education and the likely chance of getting any job like after a degree in performing arts. Performing arts is a really good example because you can't get into any type of performing after a university degree (apart from playing music.) Drama as in acting you have to do at a top drama college like RADA or Guildhall, and theatre as in dance, singing and acting in musicals you have to do at a college specialising in this kind of performing. It is all due to the fact that to work in some parts of the entertainment industry you need an agent. Basically no one studying performing arts at university is going to get a job in the subject never mind a graduate level job and yet lots of universities offer performing arts as a degree. As a parent who doesn't know anything about performing arts if their child's school shows pictures of students who have gone to university to study performing arts you aren't going to know that your child will never get a job performing. This is one of the reasons why you need to know not only the university but the job that the student got after studying and the jobs that students got after their apprenticeships.

SingleSue

Cakeguts wrote: »

So someone applying for an apprenticeship at middle and eldest sons school could be made to think of themselves as a failure especially when they got to see the large prints of the students who had got university places and no mention of anyone doing an apprenticeship.

That's exactly how they were seen (by the school that is), an embarrasment not worth mentioning....annoyed the hell out of me I can tell you.

The way they explained it was those who got their A levels went to university, those who failed their A levels did an apprenticeship. So very wrong but then it wasn't a great school once it was taken over and it has only got worse since.

economic

Cakeguts wrote: »

So someone applying for an apprenticeship at middle and eldest sons school could be made to think of themselves as a failure especially when they got to see the large prints of the students who had got university places and no mention of anyone doing an apprenticeship.

A university place on its own doesn't tell anyone anything unless they understand about the different levels of university education and the likely chance of getting any job like after a degree in performing arts. Performing arts is a really good example because you can't get into any type of performing after a university degree (apart from playing music.) Drama as in acting you have to do at a top drama college like RADA or Guildhall, and theatre as in dance, singing and acting in musicals you have to do at a college specialising in this kind of performing. It is all due to the fact that to work in some parts of the entertainment industry you need an agent. Basically no one studying performing arts at university is going to get a job in the subject never mind a graduate level job and yet lots of universities offer performing arts as a degree. As a parent who doesn't know anything about performing arts if their child's school shows pictures of students who have gone to university to study performing arts you aren't going to know that your child will never get a job performing. This is one of the reasons why you need to know not only the university but the job that the student got after studying and the jobs that students got after their apprenticeships.

Possibly the only place who could keep a record of graduate destinations are the universiry themselves - and of course they may not want to keep a record and publish it if it shows a poor record that would put off potential future students from applying.

kabayiri

The reality is that many students are of an age where they are still finding out things about themselves.

The ones who are lucky enough to genuinely know what they want to do in life are relatively small.

This is not a fault of young people, it's just they have not had the experience that working life provides yet.

My worry is that committing to expensive Uni funding at this stage is a bit like putting all the chips on Red at the casino.

The son and daughter of a friend both dropped out when realising the course wasn't what they expected, and now they feel stressed with debt without any return for it.

sulphate

These threads always make me giggle purely because of mine and my husband's anecdotal experiences... both of us went to an ex-poly, he studied music and I studied english. Both of us got snide remarks from others throughout our degrees, "what are you going to do with that?" "go and get a job instead". He got a job instrument teaching at a graduate level 3 months after he graduated. I found it more difficult but worked my way up and now we earn broadly the same/are at the same level job wise. We paid 3k a year though not 9k!

I've noticed that many employers now require a lot for what they are offering i.e. lots of skills and experience plus a degree required for a job paying 22k.

Also anecdotal but a friend of mine has a BA and PhD from Cambridge and now works at a travel agents.

Cakeguts

SingleSue wrote: »

That's exactly how they were seen (by the school that is), an embarrasment not worth mentioning....annoyed the hell out of me I can tell you.

The way they explained it was those who got their A levels went to university, those who failed their A levels did an apprenticeship. So very wrong but then it wasn't a great school once it was taken over and it has only got worse since.

This is the kind of attitude at a school that leads to students picking any subject so that they can go to university. It is possible that all the students on media studies, fashion, photography, film studies, ceramics, (pots) performing arts, game design, etc have been to schools where not going to university makes them into failures and they have picked these subjects because they can get a place in them at some university somewhere.

This is another reason for subjects like these to cease to be university subjects.

zagubov

sulphate wrote: »

I've noticed that many employers now require a lot for what they are offering i.e. lots of skills and experience plus a degree required for a job paying 22k.

Why would an employer want to pay for their staff to get trained up to HE level when the students and/or taxpayer can do it for them? Plus charging our students the third-highest fees in the world behind America and South Korea (well at least here in England we do; the other three home nations haven't fallen for this rubbish).

We've completely fallen for the US idea of making the workforce invest in ourselves to make us better qualified to join the workforce, by funding our own degrees.

Plus, it's not even clear that they're the right degrees so we need to do masters to correct that and make us employable. By overseas employers who don't pay taxes here anyway.

Arklight

zagubov wrote: »

Why would an employer want to pay for their staff to get trained up to HE level when the students and/or taxpayer can do it for them? Plus charging our students the third-highest fees in the world behind America and South Korea (well at least here in England we do; the other three home nations haven't fallen for this rubbish).

We've completely fallen for the US idea of making the workforce invest in ourselves to make us better qualified to join the workforce, by funding our own degrees.

Plus, it's not even clear that they're the right degrees so we need to do masters to correct that and make us employable. By overseas employers who don't pay taxes here anyway.

We charge more than the US. If you don't mind doing an associate degree in a community college followed by paying in state fees at the closest state university to you, you can get a 4 year degree for $10,000. There is no equivalent affordable option for kids in the UK.


The general attitude towards education on this thread is very depressing, and explains why successive Tory governments seem to detest education so much.