Do we have too many students?

[Saracen]

Students currently at Uni might want to not read this. It's only a starting point for a discussion, but it might be a depressing perspective for you.



I'm all in favour of everyone being given an equal chance and opportunity to make the most of themselves, but in light of recent funding announcements, and a couple of stark statistics (from the BBC) I have to ask .... are there too many students at Uni?

Which leads me to :-

- as a country, can we and should we fund it?
- if you're thinking about going to Uni, is it a smart move?

We all know Labour set a target of 50% of school leavers going to Uni, but was this either realistic or sensible?

It seems to me that the issue of tuition fees for students is at least partially about volumes of students. Universities need to be able to fund their teaching, and it's self-evident that as numbers go up, so do funding requirements. That's at least partly what led to the scrapping of the old grant system - the taxpayer funding 5% of school leavers going to uni is a problem of a much smaller scale than funding the current 40% plus, let alone the 50% target.

So does more than 40% (I think 44% or 45% was the last figure I heard) make sense?

And those BBC stats? ...


.... first, for jobs requiring a degree, the number of applicants per job has risen from 28 in 2006 to 69 in 2010

.... 4 out of 5 employers now insist on a 2:1 or better

.... the number of employers that won't even look at a student unless he/she graduated from a Russell Group (top 20) Uni has tripled.


So .... we have a whole swathe of our youth coming out of Uni with a degree, a honking great debt (that's about to get a whole lot worse) and one hell of a challenge finding a job that does justice to a degree. So not only have they acquired a £25k (or a lot more) debt, and given up three or four years of earnings, but they've also given up three or four years of job experience that might well be worth more than the degree is, and taken an epic-sized gamble in the process as to whether they can get a half-decent job.

Does not the law of supply and demand suggest that when employers can be that selective, supply far exceeds demand?

Yes, we need students. And yes, for some jobs/careers it's absolutely mandatory or very close indeed to mandatory. But .... do we need, and can we gainfully utilise, anything like the numbers we have? The employment situation would suggest not.

So .... is not Labour's long-supported target of 50% of kids going to Uni merely perpetuating a huge politically-motivated fraud on our kids? Because unless have jobs for that 50%, all it does it stokes up expectations that, increasingly, are going to be unfilled and that's a recipe for frustration.

To what extent is this a supply-side problem, and to what extent a demand-side problem? Should we be grinding up students and hoping there's high quality jobs, or should we be creating high quality jobs and then fulfilling the increasing demand for qualified students? Or better yet, aiming for somewhere in the middle .... support and encourage industry to create excellence and innovation, foster the science and engineering climate, create the jobs and , in a balanced way, adjust the education system to feed the demand.

It seems to me that Uni's have become a factory turning out goods in far greater quantity than the demand that exists, no doubt in part at least because of empire-building by the academics running the uni's. Going for 50% of school-leavers might be a wonderfully noble objective, but it seems to me to be incredibly naive, and it hasn't done the large numbers of unemployed graduates with three or four years that are close to wasted any favours at all.


And kids .... if you're going to go to uni :-

- make sure you're very careful about what degree you choose,
- make sure you go to a Russell Group uni,
- and make damned sure you get a 2:1 or better

.... if you don't want a future involving menial jobs or a lot of time on the Job Centre website.




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Declaration of vested interest - I did get a degree, did get a 2:1 it better, did do it at a Russell Group uni and did it on a grant (though the Bank of Mum and Dad paid a 'parental contribution' that was most of the grant, and we were not wealthy) at a time when it was 3% going to uni and didn't involve a huge debt. Despite getting that so-called grant, I don't feel guilty about it - it was just the system at the time, and I worked jobs in just about every term break to pay my way. I do feel sorry for the burden imposed on youngsters to get a degree these days, though.

[scaryjim]

Do we have too many students?

Long answer short, yes.

Although obviously it's not quite as straightforward as that

But I am absolutely convinced that we have far too many university students obtaining Bachelor's degrees. The fact that we are having to continually cut funding and increase student payable fees should make it patently clear that the current numbers attending university are unsustainable.

Note that I'm not saying everyone should go out and find a job at sixteen, however (although I have no issues with people doing that). We need to offer better alternatives: more vocational courses post-16, and apprenticeships and in-work training post-18 for those careers that require specialist skills and knowledge without requiring the academic rigour that degrees *should* develop. You'll also get better graduates by having fewer students (hopefully!) working at a higher academic standard.

Like the short version of my answer?

[Phage]

The job market is competitive, and therefore leads to a continually escalating barriers for entry. It's fairly clear that the increasing population (4.5% since 1990) means that all the relatively inelastic goods and services will have higher prices attached.

In other words, yes, supply exceeds demand. (The destruction of our manufacturing and primary production industries hasn't helped.) The same effect can be seen in the competition between parents for places at the best schools.

[kalniel]

No.

I think increasing the base education level of a larger proportion of society will enable us to better compete internationally and bring productivity and economic benefits - regardless of achieving further education in a subject directly related to vocation.

At the same time I think we should question the idea that getting a degree guarantees you a job - it shouldn't, and doesn't. It's a way of raising the quality of workforce but we still need to look at increasing the jobs market in the UK, rather than cutting it back so harshly as the current govt. are doing.

[TheAnimus]

Before I start I would just like to say quite how much I enjoyed Uni, the learning the like minded people the ability to explore new ideas and activities "just because". I honestly wish everyone could have such oppertunities, and not just for the drinking and sex.

However a strange effect of the 50% going to uni target is that 50% are now worse off than they were before. If only 10% achive something the class devide is quite minimal, the larger the 'excellence' group becomes the more those outside will suffer. If there is a shortgage of graduates, they might have many a chance, if there are a plathora of graddies, then this is unlikely.

But in the same way when kids all get A's and A*'s employers find new ways to sift through the applicants, there is an unfortanate fact taht a large percentage of people are not desired by employers due to bad work ethic etc, never independantly appling themselves.... So with unis more and more its you have to get a first, you have to have shown some outside interest, you have to have done a degree that the interviewer knows is challenging.

There are far too many people doing 'soft' options that really are useless and produce the kind of people you see on the Apprentice.

So do we need such a large number of graduates, maybe? But that is the wrong question, we need to realise the days of the Civil Service highering all graddies who've done a degree from oxbrdige regardless of subject are gone.

We need to provide people the ability to be educated in areas which have an industry demand, and not look down on vocational training for the others.

In short, more sciences, less nonsense.

[abaxas]

The issue not the number of students. It's that people assume that all education has value.

A degree has no educational value, it is a bit of paper that defines that you have done a degree. You don't have to have done any work or had any education to obtain a degree. It is at the discretion of the university to give them out.

Ie a degree's educational worth is based on the belief that is has value, rather than it actually having any value itself.

* I used to work for university, degrees were routinely given out without work/exams etc etc. My favourite being a man who 'came out' in his 2nd year, failed it, then failed his 3rd year too. He was given a 2-1.

[Flibb]

This subject was aired down the pub the other week, although the group mulling it over included two senior university lecturers. Even they thought the answer is yes, there are too many going to uni. A year or so ago I got involved with recruiting two lab technicians, pay was £16-18, no real chance of promotion, and three quarters f those applying had at least one relevant degree.

Having talked (probably in the pub) with friends working in other industries, one thing that comes up often is that business shows little interest in building people up. Many of the best engineers and chemists I have worked with started out as a technician, then had help with a part time degree or a vocational qualification, and worked their way up to better things. Now business seem to be grabbing people with a degree as they don't want to invest in training, the problem with this setup is that graduates often need as much training as a beginner once they hit industry. The growth in outsourcing has also fueled this, prior to being made redundant I worked for a large service company, when hunting contracts they would highlight the percentage of graduates they employed.

[barker967]

I think the problem these days is that everyone leaving school seems to think they have to go to University, the reality is that is complete nonsense and is also making a degree a less important commodity, a lot employers care more about work experience than degree level education.

It also doens`t help when there are a lot of courses that exist that are , imo, pointless to most students doing them, Media studies, critical thinking, Business management, etc. These just seem to exist so students can go and get drunk for a few years before the career at Macdonalds. It`s also one of the reasons why I hate students moaning about having to pay more for the courses they do, in my world only those doing courses that are needed by the world they live in would be able to do them for free, doctors, scientists, Nurses and so on.

[jim]

Yes. And, by and large, I agree with what barker967 posted.

A 50% rate of people going to university would be a very noble cause, if everybody went there and got a good degree in science or the arts.

In reality though, and I'm going to put this bluntly, people are too thick. 50% of the people in the UK are not capable of getting a degree in physics, english, law, medicine, etc. Consequently, the universities have to aim lower - so they start bringing in pointless courses like film studies.

Then, as a result, employers begin to expect a degree. Even if they're hiring for a menial video game tester, they'll find that a good proportion of applicants have a degree - so there's no need to take somebody who doesn't have one. As a result, it becomes a fairly convenient sorting method.

Now you're in the situation where people know they need to get a degree to get even any kind of job, so no matter whether they hated school, or whatever, they're trotting off to uni to get their degree in something pointless. They get there, realise they really didn't want to do it, so they forget about the course, and spend three years either plodding along, or getting pissed as much as possible and barely achieving the minimum requirements to stay there.

I realise I'm generalising a lot, and there are a lot of people who don't fit into those stereotypes, but as a rule, at least one of them will apply to a huge number of university applicants these days.

The people I feel most sorry for are the students. If you're not interested in education, your uni, or your course (don't forget, if you're thick, you probably won't end up with what you want at all - on the results day you'll have to ring a uni in the middle of nowhere begging for a place on any course they have spaces for) you're going to have a miserable three years - or at the very least, a wasted three years. But they've got to try, because if they don't try, they're basically consigning themselves to the scrapheap from day 1. Nice position to be in.

[Hicks12]

Always an interesting subject, i also thought that the 50% target was way to high and that now we are paying the price as University education is going to be like it was before where it was expensive and only the brighter of the bunch (or the ones that put a lot of effort it!) will get into uni. As people have pointed out, the degree has pretty much been made useless by the amount of people who have it.

Fees have to paid for somehow and i guess the current system needs to change but not to the extremes i keep reading about. Now mines course is 5 years, i have 2 years worth of tution fees saved up by the help of my parents and also me doing poo jobs and putting some away all the time, my parents arent that well off so the rest would have to come from SFE but im happy to pay that back as it is my "fee", id much rather the tution fees kept the same ~3k and them add the grad tax because if im unlucky then i wont get a good job and ill be paying for something that useless.

Someone mentioned about apprenticeships and the like, yes they need to push this greatly! I was constantly looking for another option to university but it seemed anything that was to do with programming/software development required a degree! Unbelievable tbh, i would have to go uni just to go and do an apprenticeship afterwards, if i wanted to go into engineering or something then it would have been alright as it seems in my area at least the government has pushed this area. I know 5 people who have gone to do engineering and skipped university, they are enjoying themselves and learning a great deal as well as i getting paid so it works... well so far.


Its a shame that times have changed, i remember my dad went straight from O levels (doing pretty bad, D's/fails etc) applied to the company he did his work experience with a few years before hand and they gave him a job as a technical engineer or something (managing the fabs machines etc). Was an OK wage, like 15k but he kept going up the company with proper hard work, hes now on 36k a year and doing very advanced stuff, showing that people can learn when they get older (hes been there for 30+ years now). If i remember rightly they also gave him money to do a course at the OU to get even better, didnt manage to finish it due to health problems.


But anyways, it shows that there are hard workers and they did get chances to progress if they did bad, now adays if you have no degree and not lucky enough to be wanting to go into a field where there are apprenticeships then you dont have much luck! I think i went off point a bit anyways but yes there are to many students going but there isnt many real alternatives to it at this time especially with more and more companies going abroad.




edit: Also, is this Russell group thing really important Saracen? I always see very educated posts from you so i presume its pretty important.... Plymouth university isnt listed there unfortunately for me . However this university is regarded as one of the best computing university's along with marine biology so i hope that makes up for it!. Another thing, about courses... its very hard to decide if they are useful or not but say for me... i did below average in my A Levels, yes i could have done better but limited by my teachers and the fact that the examining boards messed up on my whole schools business studies CW (resulting in my A* going to a mid D!), was told a story was on the BBC about this and that they are having to remark everything or something due to the amount of complaints?. But anyway, this meant going to uni was going to be hard however my local uni does a foundation year where they cover a wide variety of subjects but it means i can progress after this year to do my Computing degree course, it also provides solid grounds for my learning as the stats ive seen suggest that the foundation students generally do much better than new students as they are prepared for life at uni.

I think my course is useful but others will see it as me being to lazy or stupid so i should go university and should just get a job at McDonalds or something so its a very hard subject to sort out

[jim]

Edit: Also, is this Russell group thing really important Saracen?

I'm slightly, biased - obviously, but I don't think it is, no.

As for a few universities that aren't in it:

St Andrews (5th); Bath (11th); Durham (7th); York (8th); Exeter (17th); Loughborough (15th); Lancaster (19th)...

you get the idea

Meanwhile, Cardiff, at 31st, and Queen's Belfast, at 42nd, are in the Russell Group. Are they more reputable than St Andrews, Bath, Durham or York? I'd say not.

[SeriousSam]

In terms of Universities then yes the number is far too high with 10-20% being a far more realistc number, with the focus being on more traditional subjects that require a strong knowledge base before you can embark on working in the field. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't a place for those that don't make it within some other form of further education. There are a wide variety of subjects that would be much better served by a system which integrates work and learning. Then beyond that there are careers where you actually need to "do" in order to learn and thus less supplementary education is required but would be beneficial.

So while the ideal of educating the younger generations as much as possible is the right one, we have to be pragmatic about it and realise that not everyone is intelligent enough to be able reach the required grades in some subjects. Furthermore making them easier to allow more people to pass is actually damaging to the education as a whole, especially in combination with the farcical league table system we have now. They are not being adequately prepared for the competitve nature of our society or educated to a level to be able to properly think for themselves.

We have got to come to terms with the fact that whilst we all have the right to be able to get the best start in life that we can irrespective of background, that does not mean we are all equal in abilities.

To use myself as an example I could pass most science degrees to a high standard because thats how my brain works. Admittedly I had to work much harder for Astrophysics than Food science and engineering but thats the nature of the subject. However, put me on a language degree course and chances are I'd fail no matter how hard I tried, simply because I've never been able to get my head round them. Now that doesn't stop me trying as I'm trying to learn Japanese because of my interest in the country and culture... oh and to make watching anime easier, but I accept that it is something that I could never achieve a career in as a translator for example.

So to my my the whole system of education from primary school upwards needs a radical overhaul, not least to find ways to get children interested in learning and how to think for themselves. More importantly we have got to find a way to take the politics out of education as change take far longer than an electoral term and the current situation where each new government spends half there time dissmantling what went before, sometimes irrespective of what it is achieving, and then putting their own systems in place is just making a bad situation worse.

[scaryjim]

I think the point is that, unless you're going to look for a career in higher education, a university being good for your subject isn't going to help you get a job - most people in industry won't have the faintest idea about which universities are good for this or that subject. They'll just see if it's one of the ones they consider good - for some employers that could just be a case of if they've heard of it or not - and while they might refer to some listing or league table, they're likely to have personal biases as well.

That said, I've shortlisted and interviewed before and I personally wouldn't do more than glance at where someone got their degree from, as it simply isn't a god indicator of their suitability for the post. If it ever gets down to the point where you're making a shortlisting decision based on it, you either have two identical candidates, or you've got problems somewhere else in your recruitment process...

[TooNice]

[...]You don't have to have done any work or had any education to obtain a degree.[...]
I used to work for university, degrees were routinely given out without work/exams etc etc. My favourite being a man who 'came out' in his 2nd year, failed it, then failed his 3rd year too. He was given a 2-1.

Wait, what? Okay, I have seen spam emails from never heard before 'Universities' offering to sell degrees, but I've never heard anything like that from any properly recognised University (and I am throwing ex-poly in the mix).

I think the problem these days is that everyone leaving school seems to think they have to go to University, the reality is that is complete nonsense and is also making a degree a less important commodity, a lot employers care more about work experience than degree level education.

But if the situation is reversed completely, what employers care about would probably change again. When my dad did his degree, he was amongst a tiny minority of people to have done so. The fact that he graduated from a top University was, as I understand, something very prestigious to have.

My mum did not get the chance to go into Uni, and as a result, has been very insistent / supportive that we (my siblings and I), got into Uni (and probably would've liked nothing more if we all did a PhD as well). That'd despite the fact that she managed to get into one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world without a degree (probably impossible nowadays, at least without good connections).

[Spud1]

I agree with the majority of postings here..that in short, we have too many students going to university. Why this has happened it kinda of moot but essentially I think that it's because people have been told (ironically by a Labour government for the most part) that going to university is what you should aim for, and its what you need to do to get on in life. Not only that, but they made it easier and easier for people to get there...and consequentially harder and harder to get a job at the end of it.

Our society simply isn't build for these numbers of people going to university and getting "a degree", of any sort. We have a very triangular society which needs large numbers of people in the lower paid jobs, and less and less people as the pay rates go up. This has long been the case, and whilst it may not be ideal in terms of equality, it's what we have and it really hasn't changed in 100 years.

We're seeing the direct impact of this now, combined with the effects of immigration to make it seem even worse. We are seeing more and more people qualified (on paper) for the middle and upper tier jobs, but the number of available jobs in that part of the triangle has not changed..whilst at the same time this has created a vacuum at the bottom of the triangle (lower paid jobs) which is being filled by people coming in from other backgrounds and cultures. Please note i'm not having a go at any of these people, they have a right to the jobs as much as anyone else imo, but its a fact that it contributes.

The end result is that we have a surplus of people qualified on paper for jobs, who therefore think that those are the jobs that they should get, but they can't get them because a) half of them don't actually have the required skills, and b) where employers have taken people on based on that bit of paper, the people who actually are intelligent enough can't get a job, as its taken already. So the really good candidates end up missing out too.

This doesn't even scratch the surface on the funding issue, which is not the real problem imo, its the availability of jobs and the fact that people are deciding they are too good to work in McDonalds or Asda..when really they aren't, and we need them to do that to keep our society running.

I suspect that we've gone too far now in terms of everyone thinks they *need* a degree, so employers will have to find some other way of differentiating between good and average candidates. We'll have to deal with the fees issue (and that in itself should hopefully help reduce the number of students) and I guess see what employers come up with.

I must admit that I am a case in point when it comes to degrees being virtually worthless. I did a computing science degree at Stafford Uni - which was imo an appalling university (plus i'm glad I never went to hospital there!). Poor teaching for the most part, old/outdated technologies..and swathes of students who never did anything, and thought that 10k words was a good length for an FYP (it isn't imo, 25-30k minimum to show proper research and skills). I spent the final 2 years of my degree stoned almost 24/7 and still pulled out a 1st class degree from there. That's not saying that I am exceptionally clever, but actually the opposite..I did something incredibly stupid for those 2 years and still convinced the university I was a top grade student. Thats not what university should be about, and that wouldn't have happened in a Russell group university. Standards within the universities themselves have dropped drastically, which really doesn't help the situation.

As it happens i'm now in a decent job with good career prospects, but I got it based on my experience and the work I did running my own business after graduating, not based on my degree (my employer didn't care about it).

Who knows, maybe you will need a degree to work in a shop next? Or will masters become the old "first class"..

[redddraggon]

Education is a right, a university degree is a privilege.