to think that Higher Education is not a right, it is a privelidge

[hairyfairylights]

Although I do think it's something which ought to be funded (at least for the less well-off).

I do believe in HE where it's appropriate, but I also know that HE doesn't necessarily make for a better, richer, more fulfilled life either!

I think the move to encourage more and more people into HE whether or not they have a thirst for or aptitude for study was a cynical move to keep unemployment figures down. I think there should be more variety, apprenticeships etc and not a feeling that university is the ideal next move for all. It clearly isn't. I do think university should be about ability and not wealth though. But the numbers going to 'academic' courses should be much much smaller.

I think a lot of this shows how out of touch some people are, assuming unversities only offer academic courses, the narrow sense of the word. I should imagine a degree in lighting technlogy for example would be pretty useful if you wanted to work in television or theatre in that area.

Or we redefine what a univeristy is nd see it as a hub of training for the post 18 group, covering many areas from non academic to academic.

The post 16 college I went to was much like that- ranked best in country for a time- coverd everything from Oxbridge to SEN; bloody wonderful place to be, changed many lives.

Not all kids are suited for academics; all kids deserve a chance to pursue a qualification ins om,ething, whether it be as a Barrister or as a Gardener. Separating these into diffent institutions is devisive and puishes towards the university-superiority mindset which will always make people see it as the thing to aim for.

Whereas, excellence in your own career and field is something pretty much everyone can manage and that has big paybacks too for society.

That doesn't mean closing Oxbridge but it does mean not sneering at other establishments and what they do; just seeing it as part of a bigger picture.

The academic / not academic things makes me laugh as well: Dh's technical course- lots of industry input, high graduate level employment rate- my academic degree- nothing careers wise at all, apart from a few teachers everyone else works in Tesco or as TAs.

I think we need to move with the ties and accept degrees for what they are now, essential to open any door but basically O'Level standard of ye olden days and really you are looking at a masters at least to prove academic ability.

*ties lol i mean times

They're not all O Level- Dh did O Levels, he'd know I think. He got an A in the O Level closest to his study.

Cannot answer for some of course (mine was certainly above my school level and I am- erm- old) but no, not as challenging as I hoped, hence the MA. I do think an MA is the key needed for academic fields now.

at what point do we accept that for some careers you need training that you have to pay for first - airline pilots for instance. My BIL has a Canadian license but in order to work as a pilot over here he will have to source a bank loan of many thousands. there is no suggestion that anyone other than him should pay for this since HE will be the one ultimately to benefit. In what way is uni education different? the proposals DO NOT require the money to be found up front and the fees should be seen as an investment in one's future. FWIW I was also the first in my family to go to uni, took on debt to do so and spent my 20s paying it off. Education beyond 18 really is a choice, not a right or a privilege and with a choice comes consequences.

The idea that everyone should go to uni is ridiculous. Higher education in this country has been expanded to unsustainable levels and needs to be cut back.
However it should be the brightest people that go not the richest.
If we didn't have everyone getting into uni on artificial exam results (ie. exams made easier) we wouldn't need as much money to fund it and wouldn't need tuition fees at all.

Society - and the economy - needs a highly skilled, highly educated workforce. In ye olden days when only seven per cent went to university, the economy rested on manufacturing and primary industries. There were lots of unskilled jobs and skilled manual labour that could be learned on the job or via apprenticeships and day release.

The world is different now. Doesn't mean everyone needs a degree but it does mean we need far more graduates and far better training and education for non-graduate jobs.

And we also need more graduates because it's a more complicated world. A society with plenty of people who have had time to think and to develop their thinking process is A Good Thing. (Although it throws up dunderheads as well as bright young things, of course - expensive education does not necessarily equal wisdom.)

btw, higher education also pulls in lots of foreign students, including postgraduates, who bring money but most of all talent, creativity and insight. To take just one example, Imperial College is full of different nationalities - and some of them may just be on the road to transforming our understanding of and treatment of cancer.

Pull the funding for higher ed and you risk losing that and losing all the equivalents in other fields of study, too. Drug companies aren't going to do it - basic research into cell biology isn't going to give them a quick return on investment.

Mulled when I said their interviews and PSs I wasn't really meaning whether or not they'd done volunteer work in a Namibian orphanage, or have been selected for the Olympic team in 3 day eventing (although I agree the UMC kids do have the advantage on all those interesting impressive things - and it's no wonder really - they don't need to spend all their spare time working in McDonalds!) but I think the tutors see through all those middle-class cliches, and look for something more interesting about the candidate. I was referring to how articulate, confident, knowledgeable on their subject etc., they sound, on paper and in person.

But yes - if the UMC and MC kids have been lucky enough to be coached thoroughly in what to say and how to say it, well good for them. These are not mysterious secrets that are off-limits to all but Old Etonians, you know. Any school or college could, and should be priming their students in how to come across well at interview, and I really doubt there are many very bright, academically committed kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who are not being championed and coached by their teachers to some extent. I know at my son's (state) sixth form college his personal statement is not sent until it has been vetted and approved by his tutors. If top public schools are doing a more thorough job in this regard, well, it's hardly their fault if everyone else is doing it poorly! We've known for long enough what the competition is like.

As for who is the better candidate - well, everyone bothering to apply to Oxbridge will be anticipating top grades (though they will look at lower grades for kids from 'challenging' or 'unorthodox' backgrounds or under-performing schools) it must come down to each student's own personal USP; their self-assuredness, their drive, their spark, and wheter or not they just come across as very, very sharp. I don't know how you can begin to decide whether that is 'taught' through privilege, or just an innate skill, but I'm quite sure the selection panel know it when they see it - even if it sometimes presents itself as an unpolished diamond.

I think it is too easy (and too patronising to certain social and ethnic groups) to assume that the only reason they fail to get ahead is because other people conspire to hold them back.

If only 10% goto university, what do the other 90% do?

The trouble is if we accept that you need to pay/fund certain careers we will revert to the days where rich people were lawyers and doctors just because they are rich no other credentials required.
I don't know what the answer is, the bar to gaining employment has been set so high now to do anything above a minimum wage job is a uphill struggle.

As for Personal Statements, mine was vetted by a college tutor very recently, this year. It was crap but approved.
I happened to run it past a mumsnetter and also the head of biology at my kids private school and it was virtually rewritten. Now I don't know whether I'll get an interview but I know I would not have if i'd sent the first draft which my college tutor thought was perfectly acceptable.
I would have serious reservations about letting my child leave sixth form and attend a college of FE with the intention of going to university. They do not prepare you for interviews either, at all.

But that is the fault of our state education system - it is not the fault of public schools that they ate getting it right!

I've just read Mulled's link and there was a pretty good explanation in there about the black student statistics that made good enough sense to me. Basically, they apply hugely disproportionately to the three most heavily over-subscribed courses.

they are getting it right - sorry.

"If only 10% goto university, what do the other 90% do"

What they used to do, get jobs and train in the work place!

But the workplace doesn't want them, the won't/can't spend the money and they have their pick of graduates so the kid who is smart and didn't go to university doesn't even get an interview in the multi nationals.
Fingers crossed the coalition will support MSE and they will be the more forward thinking employers of the next 10 years.

mama sixth forms vary- where I grew up there was and still is only an FE college, hence they were equipped for the brightest students.

I agree about the whole game having changed. Some people feel dh's career does not need a degree. Well eprhaps but the only way people can get the licences needed legally to do the job ATM (unless they gahve many, many pounds spare anyhow) is to do the degree he is doing: whether or not people on MN consider it a good enough degree, it's the only one that equips him so not doing it would be beyond stupid! Likewise when we had the 10% student nurses did an entirely different training scheme, people managing a nursery did not require a degree in Early Years Ed..... it's a different world and if you woudl eprsuade your child to skip uni and compete in a field where for the past ten yeras people ahve been ging to uni- that seems rather odd to me tbh. Tool up to be as competitive as possible, surely?

Back in my day (talking late 80's) matriculation to any UK uni or poly was two E's. So people with CDD could get onto quite a few courses. And they did fine.

Are you saying that today's a-levels are not worth as much?

Is it that you think that current a-level grades are not worth what they were.

I went to uni on quite good grades and it was free and I've got to say that for me and many of my uni friends it hasn't led to ceo jobs. We didn't go for that but rather to have a 'good' education, the HE lifestyle and to find ourselves. We've been happy with our lives post graduation. The lives that we chose to have. And I've got to say I only bothered to climb the 'corporate' ladder for a few years and don't feel it's a given that if you are educated you MUST dedicate your life to work and expect a huge salary. I'm more than happy with what I've done (although I'd admit a degree did help).

So now given the increase in places uni is a choice and therefore paid for? But it's bloody expensive. Back in the '80's there were plenty of people from poorer backgrounds at my university.

I'd like to see A levels being a great qualification in their own right again.

I'd also like us to FINALLY get away from the idea that someone is academic or nothing. That's really holding this country back.

My dh is from another eu country - you chose the secondary education and if you choose a 'technical' (non academic) ducation it certainly doesn't prevent you from going to university and studying pretty much everything. And their version of a-levels is marked by the school so pretty much anyone could go to uni. And, guess what, they do absolutely fine.

re - ''needs a highly skilled, highly educated workforce. In ye olden days when only seven per cent went to university, the economy rested on manufacturing and primary industries. There were lots of unskilled jobs and skilled manual labour that could be learned on the job or via apprenticeships and day release. ''

That's because we have moved to a service/finance market based economy - and allowed manufacturing to decline - which is one of the main reasons we have been so vulnerable to the crunch and world wide recession - have a huge negative trade balance and fail to make the most of the incredible amount of innovative products and inventions we produce which go on to be produced abroad.

It should be a right, not a privilege, and obviously it should be a choice. The reason students are rightly protesting, is that the tuition fees are being tripled and with very little to offer in the way of jobs to offer at the end of their courses (however vocational). That is not a fair rate of inflation in any one's mind (I would hope)!

don't feel it's a given that if you are educated you MUST dedicate your life to work and expect a huge salary. I'm more than happy with what I've done (although I'd admit a degree did help).

Would you still feel that way if it had cost you £30k though ?
I went to university because i was homeless, it was Birmingham uni or the YMCA so off i went to uni, how ridiculous is that ?

Now i'd have probably been a lap dancer or something

The thing is, there's lots of guff here about people being 'thick' and 'bright' and whathaveyou, and how this should be the determining factor in acceptance to a university. This ignores the fact that applicants do not all start on an equal playing field.

Yeah yeah yeah, there are those who get fifteen top grades despite being a crack addicted orphan in a school in Special Measures in Barking and these people should be Given A Chance. Let's ignore them for a minute, I'm not talking about them.

I'm talking about those average Janes and Joes who aren't super-bright but aren't idiots either. The type who'd get some Bs and Cs and maybe an A or two at GCSE if they were given a private tutor and had lots of pressure support from home / school (your basic middle ability, middle class kid if you like).

But if you start out with a slightly chaotic homelife and attend a not-great school with a bit of a culture of underachievement then you are highly unlikely to achieve sparkly A* grades, regardless of innate ability.

This does not make you thick, not by a long chalk. Someone who comes out with a C and two Ds from such a background is probably relatively on-the-ball.

And lots of institutions actively cater for such students. London Metropolitan (just 'cause that's the first one that comes to mind, and it's near me) actively recruits students with grades from the lower end of the spectrum and this, I think - is to be applauded.

It is giving an opportunity to those who, for a variety of reasons (and "being a bit thick" is really only a small percentage of these), have not got a clatter of 'A's. They turn out lots of students with decent degrees, and good for them. Why should a slightly less than ideal start in life condem you to scrubbing toilets for the rest of your life?

And these are the young people who will really suffer with this tuition fees business. And if you're ok with that - these middling kids without many advantages being denied a university education, then... Well, I dunno. I guess that's where we come to an impasse, because I'm not ok with that, not at all.

(I'm not too worried about the crack-addicted-orphan poster girl and boys - there will always be someone to fight for them - and rightly so).

I don't think it is either. I think it is a facility which should be accessible to anyone who can make good use of it. And by "good use" I mean learning something at a high level, whether for its own sake or for employment reasons.