To think that if you're a student protester

[RedSuedeShoes]

You've defeated your argument when you can't even spell properly on your own placard?!

They are the types that wouldn't have got into uni in the first place before exam results were dummed down and we wouldn't have to be raising fees!

The words misspelt included:

Thought, Privilege, Student , and University!!!

And it wasn't text speak or play on words.

TBH, if this is the youth of today, God help tomorrow.

did you mean 'dumbed down'?

not that it undermines your argument or anything....

PMSL@seth

ah ah ha ha ha ha

Well I put that in as a joke to see if anyone would notice! But I was too thick to go to uni anyway so you may see that as point proved!

How do you know it wasn't a joke?

I would also suggest anyone who thinks the exams have dumbed down can kindly fuck off on the high horse they rode in on.

No spelling and grammar levels are not as good as they were. This is generally thought to be based on changes in teaching styles and shifts of emphasis in curiculum not that children are any less bright.

Increased high scores in exams are because children are coached to pass them.

with a few exceptions, exams have dumbed down.

I'm at uni at the moment and even my very own DH thinks exams have been dumbed down since he went to uni 20 years ago. Thats why I desperately want a first, to beat his 2.1

I wouldn't be too worried if a student of physics, for example, wasn't a top speller.

Your poor grammar does you no favours, OP!

Errr bit confused on this bit of your post:

They are the types that wouldn't have got into uni in the first place before exam results were dummed down and we wouldn't have to be raising fees!

What exactly have bad grammar and dumbed down exams got to do with raising fees?

I agree with you OP, to an extent.

Some people I know who are graduates or currently studying can barely spell their own names and don't know how to form paragraphs.

Not sure about the point of view that some courses have been dumbed down, but I do understand the point you are making.

My opinion is: doing a degree in some subjects will not result in jobs; so I don't even grasp why they are at uni, never mind out rioting about it!

Good to see we can discuss the topic rather than my spelling!

Exams have been dummmmmed down. On the Politics Show the other day a Mathematician had a 1950's O'level maths paper and he found current A'level and university questions in the paper. The facts speak for themselves!

Titchy, they are raising fees because tax payers cannot afford to support the 50% increase in students. Students who would have failed A'levels in the past are now passing and think they are bright enough and have the right to a university education.

I know how to save money on tuition fees - stop trying to raise the percentage of people going to Uni from 10% (20 years ago) to 50% - the population hasn't got that much brighter!

Then bring back grants for subjects that are actually useful, like medicine or engineering and make students pay full whack if they want to study media or gender studies (and I speak as a media graduate - what a useless fecking degree that turned out to be...)

One of the (many) reasons Ireland is having so many problems is because they have major IT companies based there, who recruit all their staff from abroad as the Irish kids don't want to do IT-related degrees. So there's jobs in Ireland, but not for people with arts degrees...

Didnt notice the spellings but thought it was shocking how they were vandalising that police van, they have a right to protest but that went way too far.

I see examples of the point you're making every day on another forum, OP. Students who not only can't spell or express themselves properly, but clearly aren't capable of following the thread of a discussion, yet are applying for university degree courses. So presumably they're getting high grades somewhere along the line. It baffles me.

PMSL at dummed down!

Red, part of the reason for old O-level questions appearing in more advanced modern papers is just to do with the order in which students are taught. For example, my mum remembers learning the subjunctive in French at O Level, but learned far 'speaking' skills; when I was at school you did the subjunctive at A-Level, but it was considered important to learn how to communicate with a genuine French person. Same with lots of maths.

I do get pissed off at the knee-jerk assumption that spelling/grammar is indicative of intelligence/education. However dumbed down you think standards may have got, I'm pretty sure if I'm on a PhD course I'd have got into university 30 years ago for undergraduate, and I can't spell especially well. It's not important.

Hmm not quite redsuede.....

They are raising fees because the government has found itself without a pot to piss in and is cutting university teaching funding by 40%. To save the university sector which would in all likelihood collapse with a 40% cut in teaching budgets Govn. are allowing universities to chrage up to £9k in fees.

Bugger all to do with the numbers of students going to university (numbers have been capped for the last couple of years).

Yes diamond that'll save money spent on tuition fees. Unfortunately most universities will go under if their student numbers are cut by 80%!

Too many students going to university who would never have got in years ago. Get rid of the time wasters

I think its a shame that the really bright are being penalised as they are having to share the higher-education pot with the average joe's that are wasting their time in going to Uni. I wish I hadn't bothered. It was free in my day but just a waste of 3 years.