The university funding problem

[Sput]

1. Why have you replied to such an old post? It's a bit annoying
2. Perhaps you should use work-hours rather than jobs as your metric since so many people apparently took cuts to the length of their working weeks to keep everybody employed.

1. The topic has featured heavily in the news today and what with this being a forum and not a communal blog, people might wish to discuss it.

2. I see your unquantified 'so many people' and raise you 1.3 million job losses. Clearly not every company was able to cut hours at the expense of output. Several tens of thousands of businesses also went bust each year.

1a. I didn't realise the minimum wage was being so fiercely debated today
2a. you have out-sputted me there! that said, you can't lay the blame for 1.3 million job losses at the door of the minimum wage when credit to businesses seized up. that took out some big ones.

[Alexia]

I'd rather have an uncomfortable national deficit than work for the likes of Tesco for £2 an hour.

If they could, they would.

[Chie]

I'd rather have an uncomfortable national deficit than work for the likes of Tesco for £2 an hour.

Except they didn't, Alexia. They were already paying their employees more than the minimum wage before the minimum wage was introduced.

If they could, they would.

If they did, you could strike.

1a. I didn't realise the minimum wage was being so fiercely debated today

Sorry Sput.

I watched the Channel 4 News debate this evening. All a group of students could say about the reforms was "but it will disadvantage the poor!" with typically abstract contortions of confusion on their faces.

How will the reforms disadvantage the poor when university remains free at the point of use? Does not compute.

When asked why three-year university courses with 4 - 6 hours 'contact time' per week couldn't be condensed into one year, some university worker said, "well... it takes three years for students to get used to university life". No, it's because you get more funding the longer they're there!

Which is disappointing, because if I was allowed to complete a degree in one year, I'd go to university. I also think A-levels should be one year, with two subjects. Life's too short to have to keep jumping over all these hurdles they keep putting in the way on this perpetually extending obstacle course.

Using my journalism example again, university has become a barrier to getting a job in the industry, whereas 10 or 15 years ago it was much more accessible, because a degree wasn't a prerequisite for the job. But if you flood the market with journalism graduates, then news outlets will see degrees as an easier way to sort the wheat from the chaff and take advantage of it. And has the quality of journalism gone up? No.

I've decided I would be quite happy working on a checkout than having any part in this contrived bull poo.

[Sput]

perhaps silly 6th forum students should stop thinking they are entitled to a university education, and if they truly want it, they've got to work hard for it not just now, but probably for most of the rest of their working life.

Yay at "forum". Shows your allegiance! I think among my peer group that "argh it's gonna be expensive in the long run" sense was always there, among the few that actually made it to uni. That was the case despite it being "only" living expenses that most of us would owe because tuition fees were means-tested. I think that even though the cost at point of use is nil, a big debt is still more offputting to poorer students than rich ones, not least because of the extra subsidy the rich ones get from mammy and diddy. Chie might be right about that audience or he might be wrong, but it's a dud assumption to think all students are intrinsically well-off.

Finally, chie, you need to understand (maybe you do but it's not evident from the post) that every university student, by the end, will have spent a lot more time studying in the library or at home than they spent in the lecture theatre. For humanities degrees the contact time can be less than 4 hours a week, but the purpose of that 4 hours is to lay down concepts and ideas with no small amount of reading to do in between. It's that independent part that gets people to understand properly by seeing the impact of those ideas. Personally I did science so I had 20-25 hours of contact time a week for 4 years. That on its own wouldn't be enough either, but each year was worthwhile in its own way.

I think the problem, chie, (and I won't even start on why I disagree about reducing the number of A levels to 2 and trying to compress them into one year) is that you're stuck in the school classroom model of learning. It's functional but not amazing for building instincts and understanding, and it's about 50% homework instead of 90%. It also doesn't really encourage you to go and look in a book for yourself if you fail to grasp something. Having spent a fair bit of time working at that school-to-university interface I can tell you that people genuinely benefit from university, at least in the course I'm involved in, but that takes more than a year to achieve. When they talk about university life, there IS a step change in the learning process and that itself needs learning. Hell, it took me more than a year to figure out the stuff in my second paragraph for myself.

[marksi]

What jobs are worth less than £5.93 an hour?

[Chie]

No Sput, I'm not stuck in the school classroom model of learning. :)

People should have the option to complete certain degrees in one year if they're capable of doing so (capability being determined by the individual themselves, not someone else's measurement), instead of being held back in life by having to work at everyone else's pace.

The person who brought it up during the debate was in her third year, by the way, so obviously had a pretty good idea what she was talking about. If she thought she was capable of completing her degree in one year, she should have been free to do so. Who is anyone to tell her different?

What jobs are worth less than £5.93 an hour?

It's a matter of relativity, as explained by cwathen.

[marksi]

What jobs are worth less than £5.93 an hour?

It's a matter of relativity, as explained by cwathen.

Sorry, no, I'm looking for specifics.

What jobs are worth less than £5.93 per hour?

[Sput]

Well that girl might be amazing. Or less intelligent than she thinks. Either way I've never met anybody who thought they could do their degree in less than 2 years. Half the problem (again I'm lapsing into science from hereon in) is that the university has to spend a fair bit of the first year getting people up to basic scratch because of the variation in abilities and backgrounds. That new-fangled A-level replacement might help the situation a bit.

There's also the fact that a lot of university modules lead on from previous modules so there's a narrative that wouldn't work if it wasn't done concurrently. There is some flexibility in the system (well, I mean there was for ME) in that you could take third-year courses in your second year, subject to your whims. Ditto for fourth year courses if you didn't want to stick around beyond three.

Ultimately there are good (i.e. non-cynical) reasons that degrees take a while to complete. Also, on a purely practical level, this idea of a one year degree with the same content as a three-year degree would be a nightmare to administer and would probably cause a fair few spectacular failures because students would try and cram the whole thing into a shorter, cheaper, package. At that point they'd probably have to start again because they didn't get the basics right.

[Chie]

Ultimately there are good (i.e. non-cynical) reasons that degrees take a while to complete. Also, on a purely practical level, this idea of a one year degree with the same content as a three-year degree would be a nightmare to administer and would probably cause a fair few spectacular failures because students would try and cram the whole thing into a shorter, cheaper, package. At that point they'd probably have to start again because they didn't get the basics right.

Well, you could limit the one-year degree to mature students! It's ridiculous to expect someone who's 24 to a) spend two years resitting two A-levels* in order to meet the requisite number of points and then b) spend a further three years studying at university for a degree you shouldn't even need anyway. That's five years.

*I should explain that I didn't do very well at college because I, stupidly, took all theory-based subjects. Wish I'd taken fact-based subjects like biology and maths now, but hey-ho.

The university system is only one half of the problem though. The other half is journalism itself (and other sectors) for ignoring people who don't have degrees. And to be honest, not bothered anymore, if they don't appreciate my skills then that's their loss. I'll take my ball somewhere else.

[Sput]

Well, you could limit the one-year degree to mature students! It's ridiculous to expect someone who's 24 to a) spend two years resitting two A-levels* in order to meet the requisite number of points and then b) spend a further three years studying at university for a degree you shouldn't even need anyway. That's five years.

*Didn't do very well at college because I, stupidly, took all theory-based subjects. Wish I'd taken fact-based subjects like biology and maths now, but hey-ho.

Biology? Facts? AHAHAHA

Aaaanyway, if anything I'd say mature students suffer more. It's surprising how quickly first year undergraduates can't even remember GCSE stuff. Mature students have a better attitude to study in general, but they actually can be quite a bit rustier! It varies, of course, but knowledge fades fast once you're not in contact with it several days a week.

The university system is only one half of the problem though. The other half is journalism itself (and other sectors) for ignoring people who don't have degrees.

Aren't you sort of castigating these newspapers for not being forced to stump up a load of money to bring non-graduates up to the same level of [at least legal] training when they can go and get graduates who have that knowledge for free? If so, isn't that effectively at odds with your position on the minimum wage? Don't get me wrong, I understand the principle, but the business case is a different matter. Why would they spend money when they don't need to?

[iSon]

Hi everyone. Remember me?

Well, you could limit the one-year degree to mature students! It's ridiculous to expect someone who's 24 to a) spend two years resitting two A-levels* in order to meet the requisite number of points and then b) spend a further three years studying at university for a degree you shouldn't even need anyway. That's five years.

I'm afraid, as I seem to be reminded on a daily basis that wisdom doesn't always come with age. The idea of someone who's a few years older being any more capable of doing a truncated degree is silly. I can appreciate your point, but I think "time" is something that is needed when studying a subject at degree level. It's not a case of handing out some theory, understand and then complete an exam - that could all be done in a day. No, studying at university is about taking to time to understand a subject, look at arguments for and against and apply your learning in different ways. Take away the time element and you also take away large amount understanding. As Sput says, you don't always understand a subject straight away and if you were to fire facts and learning at students one after the other then where does that leave those who didn't grasp it in the first place?

*I should explain that I didn't do very well at college because I, stupidly, took all theory-based subjects. Wish I'd taken fact-based subjects like biology and maths now, but hey-ho.

You can still do well in theory based subjects too? Have you considered that you just weren't that good at them as opposed to the subjects being flawed?

The university system is only one half of the problem though. The other half is journalism itself (and other sectors) for ignoring people who don't have degrees. And to be honest, not bothered anymore, if they don't appreciate my skills then that's their loss. I'll take my ball somewhere else.

I cannot think of any sector that ignores people without university degrees. I think it's fair to say that any potential employer will always look favourably on someone who has studied something relevant. However, it's not the be all and end all and people - both with and without degrees get jobs every day. To take your journalism example - I never graduated but I found my way into journalism. Had I wanted to go on I could have. I'm thankful I didn't do a degree in the subject because I think I would have felt bound to continue on that career path even though deep down it wasn't the answer to my dreams.

If I can get on then so can others. There's point blaming the employers when it's the people themselves that might be at fault.