New plans at Manchester Uni: compulsory work placements and doing away with ‘traditional content delivery’

[BlossomBlossomBlossom]

Aka ‘lectures’

University will make all students go on work placement

https://www.thetimes.com/article/0095e04e-4307-453c-a964-06ffcbe1e712?shareToken=6677ef624558a383f9dda5fd72f7fc3d

Wonder how quickly these ideas will spread to other institutions.

@HighLadyofTheNightCourt Respecting the idea isn’t the same as if being practical and doable. Yes switched on dc can find placements and work/internships but it’s very very difficult. It’s not clear what Manchester will actually do - maybe help with cvs and circulate positions but the ambition calls for more than that. It’s a mystery as how they will do it.

@HighLadyofTheNightCourt I think the issue is a number of us have experience of DC and/or their peers not being able to get a placement, so wonder how this will work. I would have liked DS to get a placement but he couldn’t get one. He also tried contacting a company via a contact of DH’s but they weren’t able to offer him a placement as they didn’t fulfil all requirements so not all industries will be able to offer places

It’s a news article. It’s not going to have all the detail is it?

It will look different for each subject area and even between courses.

For some students it will be a formal placement. For others it will be a project integrated into a taught module. Plus a whole range of initiatives in between.
The concept isn’t new or particularly innovative. There are universities who very established work integrated learning strategies and have been delivering it for years.

Convenient. News articles about AI coming didn’t have all the details about how humans with no inheritance are going to live as all the jobs vanish either.

Just the occasional bit of crap from the chancellor about how we should all eat cake become investors.

But they aren’t promising a placement to every student. They are saying that students will have opportunities for work experience. That can take many forms and is an approach taken by many universities already.

It can be yes. I believe ive noticed a growing inability to articulate teaching and lessons over the last few decades, replaced by this demand for ‘experience’. As with other skills we are losing the ability to explicitly train and describe processes of learning because it isn’t done very much anymore. Look at self-training books over the last few decades, recently published ones are very poor quality.

Are you comparing a university education to self help books?

In addition you don’t consider my other concerns at all. For the last placements of teaching you can effectively be left to teach the class. There’s experience and then there’s taking the piss.
Why is that taking the piss? How do you know if someone is an effective and competent teacher if you don’t observe them doing it? I’d be very concerned if a student wasn’t ready or capable of teaching a class on their own by their final professional placement.

It would be different if this was happening in the economy of the 60s or even 90s, when the degrees were free, housing costs were proportionate to wages, and there was plenty of employment. But none of those are happening now. How do you propose to fix the economy and make work pay while you are forcing youngsters to pay to work professional jobs?

Why is it my job to fix the economy?

Whats the point of education now?
Is this a serious question?

Look at internships and the impact that has had on the labour market as well as young people ....

Questions about the wider economy and economic matters are perfectly viable when you are forcing youngsters to pay to work, and then when they’ve qualified, there’s no paying jobs.

Yes, I am seriously asking what the point is of education now. I watched my sector destroyed by computers, I’ve watched other professions change beyond recognition with wages pushed down over just the last 20 years. I’ve watched the number of paying jobs fall everywhere. I’m now watching more sectors being destroyed by AI, more jobs going, and watching the news threatening more. For those of us who make a living by working, the system we were forced into 400 years ago, it’s all a total joke. I’ve been asking these questions for 20 years now. I’m also watching society slowly collapse because there’s so few opportunities for people like me. And then we have universities, institutions once devoted to education (I worked in one myself back then) turned into businesses, making ever more dramatic statements about how computer driven they are or how they’re going to make more money by doing less work, while forcing youngsters like mine to work for nothing.

I find myself in the position where I can make more money cleaning - a job requiring no literacy and only the smallest basic need to follow simple instructions - than I can teaching kids maths (as a TA, because where I am TA s are more than pot washers). So yes, it’s a very serious question.

The rest of your questions - I could be here all night and as someone without an inheritance I do not have the time, but if you do not know how writing transformed the scope of human ability to pass down skills and information over thousands of years then I suggest you don’t know the first thing about the purpose or method of education either. I was thinking of the books written to support universities, or has everyone now forgotten that you used to ‘read a degree’ in the rush to convince us that certain jobs are sacrosanct from computers and business both, and take responsibility away from learners?

Absolutely. It's a truism that lectures are the worst form of teaching. But anyone who has attended a well structured and well delivered lecture knows that they can work brilliantly. Seminars can be great - or they can be dull, slow, artificial, confused.

Where is the evidence that young people are being forced to pay to work?
A year in industry is a paid placement.
Unpaid internships are frowned upon in the sector and while I can’t talk for all universities I know that mine and others I’m familiar with don’t offer them.
Micro internships might be unpaid but they’re often very short (a week or two)
Live projects are often part of a taught module so will involve significant input and support by academic staff.
Teaching and health related placements are integrated into the course and a requirement for qualification.

And where is the evidence that universities are trying to make more money by doing less work?

What are you talking about?
What does having an inheritance have to do with anything?
Where did I say I didn’t understand how writing transformed society and knowledge exchange?

Fewer lectures and more work placements? Bet the tuition fees won't go down!

A well-run work placement module is actually quite labour-intensive for academics. In the models I've encountered, there is still assessment; also work on job market, CVs, networking, social media, applications, project design, risk assessment - all honed to the particular subject. Often site visits, meetings with employers, individual student updates and presentations.

I'm sure they aren't always run that way but until you have details, I wouldn't assume they are an easy option for the university at all.

Why would they?
Fewer lectures doesn’t mean less teaching. It just means teaching delivered differently.
Placements are in addition to taught hours and content.

Evidence of youngsters being forced to pay to work??? Thats an obvious perspective to take when youngsters are charged thousands for degrees then sent on working placements. I can assure you many of the healthcare students and teaching students I’ve met and worked with are fully aware and fully on board with it.

I find it interesting how you seem to be jumping down my throat in irritation at me asking questions. Which I find funny on a thread about universities, which once were dedicated to discovery and asking questions. Did you ask for this thread to be started or something, as a free bit of marketing, or are you just AI?

Anyway I have to get ready for work, in my unskilled job paying more than using my education does.

Works really well, in Manchester. I lecture here and I think it’s a brilliant idea, I’ve been calling for it for years. When I did my undergrad we had to do a mandatory work experience module in second year- 100 hours over the year. It was brilliant! Not only did everyone leave with something to add to their CV, they also learnt a lot about the industry they wanted to go into following uni. Some realised they definitely didn’t want to go into that industry which is every bit as beneficial as those who loved it.

I’ll add a caveat. It works well in big cities with lots of opportunities like Manchester or London. It wouldn’t work as well in smaller towns and cities without expecting students to travel.

Evidence of youngsters being forced to pay to work??? Thats an obvious perspective to take when youngsters are charged thousands for degrees then sent on working placements. I can assure you many of the healthcare students and teaching students I’ve met and worked with are fully aware and fully on board with it.
As I’ve said. Health related degrees and teaching do have integrated placements which are necessary. How else do you expect the students to learn to do the job? They’re an important aspect of the course.

A year in industry is a paid placement.

I find it interesting how you seem to be jumping down my throat in irritation at me asking questions. Which I find funny on a thread about universities, which once were dedicated to discovery and asking questions.
I’m not jumping down your throat in irritation. You’re the one coming across as irritated and confused. What was the point you were trying to make when you mentioned inheritance?

Did you ask for this thread to be started or something, as a free bit of marketing, or are you just AI?

This isn’t my thread. I don’t work for this university- in fact they’re a direct competitor of my university so it’s not in my interest to promote them!

Anyway I have to get ready for work, in my unskilled job paying more than using my education does.

You sound really bitter. Your current situation is not my fault.

Most unis have courses with work placements and many students don’t get a placement even in cities with good links. Most students are prepared to travel and are free to apply to any placement they like. Students everywhere are struggling to get placemats. There are 46,000 students at Manchester uni. Where are they going to find and guarantee 46 000 placements that any student in the country is free to apply for?

@Sartre So are you finding the placements then? How would you go about it? Most employers are cutting back due to Min wage and NI increases. The sheer numbers wanting the placements makes it sound dubious.

Being discussed on BBC Radio 4 PM program right now with the President and Vice Chancellor of Manchester, Duncan Ivison. From 17.20pm. ‘Creative responses’ was a term he used …

DS is at Bath on yr 3 placement, which is a full time job with a 12 month contract, to be done alongside dissertation / lab report / presentation to enable masters in yr 4 (integrated masters course) Students apply for placements essentially in the open job market (which as everyone knows is currently a nightmare). Yes the uni ‘help’ by offering assistance with what to do, and ask for lots of updates of what applications / progress you’ve made, but you are on your own in finding a job.

On his course some found paid placements, some weren’t successful so went straight to yr 3 as Bsc and some had to take unpaid placements in order to progress in the integrated masters course. It’s a great course IF you can secure your placement - which you will spend a lot on your 2nd year trying to secure - it is not for the faint hearted.