Are degrees in the UK value for money?

economic

why does it cost £9,250 a year to do a maths and finance undergrad at Luton university when a maths degree can be done for the same price at UCL?

Who sets these costs? Isnt it a form of price fixing?

Arklight

GreatApe wrote: »

Why stop at 3 year courses?
If education is a universal good why not have everyone do a masters and then a PhD and then a second PhD? Why even stop at all why not educate our people from age 18 to age 40 with multiple degrees? There is never any diminishing returns?

Let's try and agree on one point.
People should walk before they run
In which case why are universities allowed to recruit students that have failed or barely passed their A-Levels? It is absurd. I am happy to pay for the students to redo one year of college to actually learn their a-levels and pass it with a grade B or above and then go to university.
Likewise people should not be admitted to A-levels before they properly pass the relevant GCSEs and again I am wwillong to pay for the kids to redo one year if GCSEs
That kind of education can be transformative I have known people go from grade D/Es to grade As once they try a second tim whereas going to do university education while you already failed your a levels is just wrong.

So I am with you let us have an unlimited place for students that get a 2 x B grade and one A- grade. For everyone else they either start working or try again next year to improve their grades.

Actually a C grade at A level is meant to indicate competence in the subject. I would normally agree that those who score lower than this should think carefully about whether higher level study is right for them, were it not for the fact that I know people who have got Es at A level, 3rds in third rate universities, and then gone on to do very well for themselves.


They weren't thick, they don't regret going to university, and they felt that the time they spent studying was worthwhile because while the clearly didn't excel, they did learn and grew as people. Whether they'd be in the same careers if they'd shrugged their shoulders at age 16 and signed up the nearest McDonalds, I somehow doubt.


What appears to be the problem is that you lot have some kind of fixed concept of a university being a seat of elite learning that should be denied to all but the most privileged, and everyone else mills around waiting to be told what to do.

economic

economic wrote: »

why does it cost £9,250 a year to do a maths and finance undergrad at Luton university when a maths degree can be done for the same price at UCL?

Who sets these costs? Isnt it a form of price fixing?

if you look at the course requirements for luton maths you dont even need a maths alevel. UCL you do and the entry requirements are generally a lot higher. UCL degree is also far superior if you look at the course contents. i would think it is very likely that even obtaining a 2:1 or above at luton maths the person is still of alevel calibre and not university level. hence the degree is a waste of time and money.

you could say the price being as high at luton makes sense if you have many people applying for the course who really want to do maths and cant gain entry to UCL because UCL maths entry is very competitive (relatively).

Arklight

economic wrote: »

why does it cost £9,250 a year to do a maths and finance undergrad at Luton university when a maths degree can be done for the same price at UCL?

Who sets these costs? Isnt it a form of price fixing?

Partly because the maximum fees universities can charge are set by the government and it isn't necessarily cheaper to educate someone at a low ranked university, and partly because £9k a year isn't a lot.


Lecturers and admin staff aren't paid vastly less, electricity, land and building isn't any cheaper because you are London Met rather than UC London. If anything students need more support not less.


Some courses barely break even, some run at a loss. Universities make up a lot of income from third stream activity, research, and international students. UCL


If the Tories get their way they will uncap tuition fees, then the UCLs will straight away be charging fees mostly likely in the region of £30k per year (which is their international fees).


The Russell Group is not at all keen on recruiting working class kids, this will ensure they don't have to keep finding excuses each year as to why they don't. They will all just be priced out.

[Deleted User]

No uni will market itself as the 'cheap' option. So they'll all charge the same.

westernpromise

Filo25 wrote: »

Very true, boomers and those who followed just after did get free University education

But paid more tax.

Cakeguts

Arklight wrote: »

Maybe, but I am very reluctant to advocate anything that looks like reducing opportunities for young people to access higher level education.


As is evidenced on this forum, the Right thrives on ignorance and the inevitable prejudice that arises from having learned nothing and thinking you know everything.


Every surge in ugly nationalistic bigotry the human race has ever known has started with an assault on intellectuals, foreigners and places of learning.


If the cost of that not happening is a comparatively small number of people spending a few years on softer degrees and being disappointed that they aren't walking into fast track graduate careers with blue chip corporations, I am fine with that.


I am much more concerned about idiocy like people here thinking Africans all have learning disabilities because a white supremacists falsified some studies and they watched a youtube video he gave.


Education has a much wider benefit to society than financial ROI. The Right actively doesn't want that benefit because it relies on stupidity to spread its creed.

You are working on the basis that university education is the ONLY form of education for school leavers that everyone should be able to access. This is not the case. Many people do not go to university because they don't take A levels or BTECs because academic education is not a suitable pathway for them. What we have now are about 75 universities that offer silly degrees to people for whom an academic education is not suitable. This is the problem it isn't to do with money so much as ruined lives. Lives where valuable non academic learning time has been wasted on a silly university degree. Hundreds of university degrees are leading to nothing for students. How do you think that affects their self esteem?

The universities and teachers in the schools who can't see past their own interests are joining together in causing people to have to admit that they have wasted their time at university for nothing. Can you imagine how that feels? You have been told at school that if you don't go to university you will be a failure. You go to a bottom level university because that is the best you can do and after you finish the degree you find that the "failures" at your school and other schools have jobs which give them a feeling of satisfaction and you are at the bottom of the heap for jobs. You can't get the kind of jobs they have because they have had 3 years of training/job experience and you have got nothing except a piece of paper that is worth less then the envelope it came in and also huge quantity of debt.

I feel extremely sorry for the lady who went to Sheffield Poly. She is a victim of a too many vested interests. She is a victim of the people who feel that a university education should be the only education open to everyone even those for those for which it is not suitable.

What the country needs is fewer universities and more colleges like the old technical colleges. Non academic students need to go to an institution that suits their personal learning needs not an easy version of the system designed for academic minds.

The problem is the "one size fits all." It doesn't. Highly academic intelligent people benefit from highly academic intellectual study. A highly intelligent very practical person doesn't. Take my local barber who could probably have done a degree in some silly subject. I would love to know why people think that a degree in a silly subject would be better for him than 3 years learning the skills needed to become a barber? The problem is that there isn't enough choice. Now it is university or nothing especially if the school makes people doing apprenticeships into failures.

Some people need an education in how to do and some people need an education in how to think. At the moment there is nowhere for the how to do people there is only how to think. The people who lose out at the moment are the non academic students. They have no choice. It is either a university degree at a level that they can't reach or they become a means of paying for the universities to exist with nothing in it for them.

Non academic students are getting an extremely bad deal at the moment. Either they pay the salaries of the university staff and get nothing or they are labelled failures because they can't get a university place or choose not to.

If it was down to me I would close all but the top 30 or so universities, I would bring back the polytechnics with their vocational courses as an alternative to university and then I would invest all the money wasted on the other unversities on education and training designed to help non academic students get jobs and become something. The people going to university and polytechnic would pay for their courses. The non university or polytechnic students would get their education for free and it would start after GCSE and lead to a job like the education at the old technical colleges did.

westernpromise

economic wrote: »

i wouldnt care about getting re-elected.

Then you'd never get elected in the first place!

GreatApe

Arklight wrote: »

Actually a C grade at A level is meant to indicate competence in the subject. I would normally agree that those who score lower than this should think carefully about whether higher level study is right for them, were it not for the fact that I know people who have got Es at A level, 3rds in third rate universities, and then gone on to do very well for themselves.

They weren't thick, they don't regret going to university, and they felt that the time they spent studying was worthwhile because while the clearly didn't excel, they did learn and grew as people. Whether they'd be in the same careers if they'd shrugged their shoulders at age 16 and signed up the nearest McDonalds, I somehow doubt.

What appears to be the problem is that you lot have some kind of fixed concept of a university being a seat of elite learning that should be denied to all but the most privileged, and everyone else mills around waiting to be told what to do.

Why not just do more years at a lower level and master it rather than fail at the lower level and go on to fail at the higher level? And a grade C is nowhere near mastery of a subject.

Also if you know the answer why is university so much costly than A-Levels per kid per year?

westernpromise

phillw wrote: »

And the employees would be forced to take those jobs.

The current system at least means the people are a bit more mature by the time they realise that they're not going to get the job they wanted.

The degree isn't the only thing you get out of University. A lot of comedians went to Cambridge for example, their degree is also useless. But without funding then you find it's only the rich people who get that kind of opportunity and is that what we want?

University is where you forge ahead with your career. When we hire people they are often people we've known since or before they were at university. The schmo who waits till graduation to look for a job reveals him or herself to be unable to think ahead as well as the candidate who established a relationship with us years before. Such are easily spotted and weeded out. Likewise the loser who graduated, then did an MSc, but has an odd gap on their CV. This is someone who gave up trying to get a job and did some more study as displacement activity.

The same applies to bankers, comedians, luvvies, aspiring journalists, whatever. If you seek a particular career path, university is where you get started with it. You won't get far trying to become a theatre director if you suddenly decide after graduating that that's what you want to do. If that's true you'd have done it already.

University is for burnishing your CV. The degree may or not be a big part of that.