Who said anything about worthless degrees? It's not the 19th century anymore. We need people who at least not complete Sarah Palin's to work in the modern western economy. Not everyone is going to make it into CERN, sure, but everyone should at least have the opportunity. At the very least, it'll reduce the level of cluelessness of the general population.Originally Posted by TheAnimus
Unfortunately, doing a degree does make you any less clueless, a couple of my colleagues are proof!
I have a friend with a phd, a university lecturer - if you had a conversation with her for an hour you would assume she finished school with no qualifications, completely clueless on everything, she presents presents herself as an unwashed badly dressed teenage girl, not as a qualified Dr in Social Statistics.
I thought all Ph.Ds in the social sciences present themselves as unwashed and badly dressed.
All joking aside, again, that still doesn't mean such education opportunities should only be available to those who are born into wealth.
The problem really seems to be that University is considered the only option to "build character", rather than the institutes of learning they once were.
No but they should only be made available to those that are willing to work for it.
Expecting they should get tax breaks and discounts is just wrong.
You want something you work for it or you get a loan and work to pay that off.
At the end of the day nobody is entitled to a free ride and nor should they be.
There is no free ride. They're still going to be paying for it in spades when they enter the workforce. As I said, it's an investment in the future, it's the same reason why government ponies up lots of £ for scientific research, well, that's useless without scientists trained to do it. The only difference is with your way, they have to waste more time, money, and mental effort worrying about money, juggling their time and attention between lectures, studying, and generally inflexible employment, cannibalising the unskilled labour market, creating big job market ripples between semesters, and then there's dealing with the bureaucratic mess that is grants (requiring more civil servants) and loans (costing poor students even more money they don't have). These are all pressures which can drive a student away from, or out of higher education, and potentially still leave them saddled with huge debts, a pressure those born into wealth don't have to deal with at all.
You say no, but you're still perpetuating plutocratic rule by promoting practices which give far greater favour to the already wealthy, and inflate the size of government which has to go into finer micromanagement to pidgin hole, authorise, and deal with all these tiny transactions (tiny by government scale), and then there's the repayment mess associated with paying them off. Horrible system.
I'd further argue the need for reforming the education system itself to reduce it's overall cost per student. Current technology no longer requires a physical classroom format, taking notes, and all that nonsense. So there's a tonne of room for improvement there as well, and at least with the government paying for it outright, there's at least current tax payer pressure to optimise the education system. Right now there's every incentive there to keep ratcheting up the cost burden on students and pricing out the most vulnerable.
Last edited by aidanjt; 08-03-2012 at 06:31 AM.
I'm not being funny, but if people want to learn for free, what is wrong with using books and other freely available resources?
Obviously there may be a people-volume issue compared to book resources, but as I say I'd lay a LARGE sum of money that the amount of people on degrees who are there because they want to learn about the subject is very low next to those using it as a stepping stone for a meal ticket.
That's mostly because research jobs are so underfunded, badly-paid and hard to come by that most Social Science Dr.s can't afford running water or new clothes
And I'm not being entirely flippant there, either. Same applies to most research jobs. The well-paid ones tend to be highly technical and require a lot more practical experience that academic excellence - to get onto the academic research ladder, even with a PhD, you have to start pretty low down the scale and scrap your way up...
Only if those people are a) equipped to do that in the first place, and b) taught well whilst getting that university education. The sheer volume of people going to university now means that neither of those postulates holds. We are giving sub-standard candidates a sub-standard education, and screwing over the good candidates into the mix. Higher education is not currently serving its intended purpose in this country.
hmmm, I appear to have climbed back on my soapbox! Sorry
What is our value as a society if we work to stamp out culture?
I don't think you need a bit of paper from an institution to allow you to make a significant cultural contribution, should you so desire.
Maybe not, but you get a lot more from 3 - 4 years at university than just a bit of paper - particularly if you're artisitic in some way. How many bands and other collaborative projects started when people happened to meet up at uni? We wouldn't have Fry and Laurie (as a combination, anyway) for a start, and I suspect there are far more besides (I believe Queen only really got together because they were all at Uni in London at the time...).
My point was simply 'culture' or contribution thereof is not (and never has been) dependent on going to university.
Whos future though? the students or the countrys?
If its investing in the countrys future, then it is only fair that the country determines how the investment is made.
If its investing in the students future, then it seems only fair that they be willing to invest in themselves.
I love how the middle-aged men deciding on these kinds of policies had 0 fees, and were given grants - i.e. paid to attend Uni.
"I got it for free, well better than that I got paid for it, but YOU must pay tens of thousands because that's life!"
Do we not have many, many more people attending and are running into serious funding issues? I wasn't under them impression that it was a spiteful/'because we can' thing, more a (fairly severe) financial issue?
But its a differen't thing, when my grandfarther went to uni, on a full scholarship, he was in the top 3% of the country, not by wealth, but by academic merit. The issue is that might have been down to his parents, the good schools he went to as a child say, but at uni he was there, because compared to everyone else, he had the better ability and aptitude.
Now however anyone can go and study anything. In some ways its better, but its simply not fair to charge those who don't get the benefits, I don't want to call them the bottom 50% but thats what they are, to pay.
Personally I think we don't need so many people have university degrees, we need to snap out of the "degree required" culture because it simply isn't needed for many jobs which now use it as a filtering mechanisim.
I think we should also have sliding rates, we need more people in certain science and engie degrees so they should be made more accessible, we don't need half as many people studying Physcology say, so we can offer less money to the univerisities for certain subjects like that?
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