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!

Incidentally, a friend of mine lectures in English Literature at Cambridge. She told me that applications have dropped by a third over the past year.

That's because Eng Lit isn't going to give you the return on your money that, say, Economics will. Students are being pragmatic - who can blame them?

But, oh! We need Eng Lit students just as much as we need Economics students if we are to keep our civilisation and culture and humanity. I reckon, anyway.

People are too obsessed with the idea of going to university, it is something that is pushed and pushed on kids who show even a glimmer of intelligence as something that they MUST do.

I was one of the top kids in my year academically at school so it was a forgone conclusion to my teachers that I'd go and do A-levels, and once I'd done my A-levels I was shunted off to university and got my degree. I view those years of education as the biggest waste of my time imaginable - those were years I could have been advancing in a career I loved!

Finally, when I got to the age of 27 I decided to do what I should have done in the first place - and went back to college and trained in catering. (Something stupid boys used to be pushed into doing when I was doing career 'choices'! For a kid like me with a dozen top GCSE grades it was an unthinkable option.) I'm now a very happy chef and my degree is bloody useless to me.

I really wish I hadn't been pushed off to get a degree just because I was a 'smart' kid. People should be allowed to play to their strengths and permitted to make career choices that make them happy - and may or may not involve large doses of extra education.

I do think Higher Education is (or should be) a right - but only if it is right for the individual.

We need to make it easier for people to be flexible. University is wasted on some 18yo, but is fine for others. Once you have started earning, and have acquired responsibilities, it can feel almost impossible to go back. Many people come into their own after a few years and need to have the chance then.

I agree with piggles.

My best friend did one A level - flunked it - but was taken on by a local paper and qualified as a journalist that way. She now makes her living as a writer. She's done fine. She took and flunked one A level and I'm sure lots of people would write her off on that level.

But she's done fine in a area she was long committed to. Good on her.

I think that would be harder to do in this climate.

I hate to think we're writing off people because they are not 'academic'.

I'd either like to go back to he old system - free but fewer places and hard to get in, or if they say you've got to pay all this money for an 'academic' education, make it more flexible. Allow students to retake and retake again individual modules and get their high levels over as long a period as they wish. And make it cheaper.

But while we are all concentrating on universities, can we also look at serious and quality alternatives for the non 'academic' as well.

I had the opposite expereince to Piggles- desperately wanted to go to uni but had to battle with my family just to do A Levels; then I took the trad poor-but-bright route of nursing- and loathed it.

It took me years financially to get to aplace where packing in work was even a consideration- mainly because of debt accrued at nurse training school (I am older than nursing degree age).

Identifying and crucially making funding available for different routes pays off for all types of family income and ability level.

Agree with the OP. In fact a multi-tier system of HE has developed with the Russell Group Universities at the top and FE colleges offering accredited degrees at the bottom. Far too many job ads stipulate a degree nowadays and many of the graduates I interview from ex poly's are no better educated than people who left school with A'Levels in the 1970s.

IMO far more funding needs to be directed towards education up to and including 18 to ensure that young people have the foundation skills required for both life and employment. There needs to be a shift towards more vocational training for the less academic and far more day release leading to qualifications such as the old HNCs.

All education is a privilege and a good foundation education should be a basic human right. Regrettably IMO far too many children and young people do not receive a good basic education and yet still are progressing to degree courses and this shines though when they start work.

It is without question that no academic and motivated child from a poor background shoudl be prevented from entering a Russell Group university for economic reasons. But what needs to stop is the notion of a degree for all regardless of need or ability.

Regrettably IMO far too many children and young people do not receive a good basic education and yet still are progressing to degree courses and this shines though when they start work.

And that needs addressing, if you are saving for university spend the money on prep school instead and you'll know that the child stands a good chance of not embarrassing themselves with a half cocked CV full of spelling mistakes.

I do agree about the bad English on CV's etc but when I regularly correct DH's assignment sheets (written by the tutors) with a red pen (only his own copy LOL) it's hardly surprising.

I think the government's argument that 'why should a single mother being paying tax to fund someone else's university education' is a massive red herring. If you accept that argument then we would be means testing everything - schools, healthcare, bin collection, libraries. I think the point of general taxation is that it should fund those things that benefit society as a whole, and higher education comes within that IMO.

Yup DS- and I think as well as being awful to stereotype single mothers etc as all low earning non qualified low achievers, there is a very real argument that those who are from the poorest abckgrounds are those whose lives are changed most by education.

BIL- third class on third attempt from a poly, privately educated, has that privately educated swagger IYKWIM- trouble shooter who flies around the world making a mint.

lady I went to school with- 3 A's at A level (maths, furtehr maths, physics) in 1991. Child minder, considering hair dressing because uni not for the likes of them. many pothers packed it in at 16 to take up apprenticeships in factories long closed.

I suspect BIL would be where he is now whatever; the others would have benefitted hugely from better educations (not an argument about keeping well off out of education btw, woudl be ridiculous, just about whom tends to miss out but could benefit hugely).

Totally, totally agree with onceamai. It's not that I object to merely average ability children furthering their education, (my own kids are not Einsteins) or having opportunities to train to do anything more than unskilled jobs - far from it. But a degree is no longer what it once was. And that's where the confusion lies. I'm all for putting practical and vocational skills and ambitions on an even footing to academic and professions - the last thing we need is a country full of Librarians who specialise in French philosophy when we can't get a plumber or a haircut - but why turn everything into a degree? Why should it need to cost so much money and take three years?

Higher education is not the same thing as industry-led training and further education. HE is supposed to be an extension of the core subjects (but in greater depth) for education's sake - with the exception of things like medicine and law, but those rely on a high standard of academic/intellectual ability in the first place.

We need a return to on the job training, HNDs and apprenticeships, and a world where school leavers can get jobs on the bottom rung of the ladder in companies/shops/trades instead of relying on cheap foreign migrants.
Yes, I know they are lovely and hard-working and everything, but we've shot ourselves in the foot there.

Also, children from poor backgrounds will continue to receive help to make sure they can go, so I don't buy the argument that increased fees will put them off. It will only put them off if they were not committed in the first place. Massive increases in debt is scary for all students - not just those from poor families! The amount of students who don't need to worry whatsoever about their debt because they have a blank cheque book from Daddy are actually a tiny tiny minority.

It will, however, put off the children of parents who cannot/will not help them out, yet do not qualify for any maintenance grants or bursaries.

Currently any student from a low income family gets just under £3k a year which pretty much covers fees, and then they can apply for a bursary - the average bursary last year was £1000. Yes, they will probably need to get a part time job to supplement that, but so do most middle class students as well, and they pay their own fees! So long as low income kids get the chance to go, and sufficient money to live on, I really don't see why it should cost them less overall than any other student.

The grants and bursaries will upped to reflect the level of the increased fees under the new system as far as I can tell.

I think we have to be realistic about this - we either massively cut the number of places and return to the top 10% ability of kids going, (and that unavoidably will be weighted towards the middle classes) or we accept that everyone must pay more. We have no choice. People are good at moaning, but I've yet to hear a suitable alternative - least of all from Ed Milliban, and it was his party that did away with grants in teh first place. All that's happened, really, is that grants are only available to WC students and those with dependents - everyone else pays.

I'm still a bit and at a system which takes parents incomes into account for people who are legally adults anyway. I don't think there should be an automatic 'right' to higher education beyond 18. Personally I think ALL students should be treated the same irrespective of background. If everyone is eligible for the same decent sized loan then no-one should be unable to go, and there should be no need for the bulk of students to pay hugely inflated amounts to supplement those who pay very relatively little.

Maybe a handful of very taxing degrees (medicine being the obvious one) should get a bigger loan because it is harder to take on a part time job and still keep up with the course, but they will be pretty much guaranteed better earning so it will be worth the extra debt.

Let's face it FN- it's not a probably get a PT job with a bursary of £1k, rents locally in student accom being £88 week and a lot of toher expenses on top, but it's a certainty.

And that's an issue becuase on many courses (an increasing number it seems) part time work is actviely banned: Dh's, certainly, and and others that are work focussed such as teacher training adn social work.

And whilst I agree wrt to HND's etc, reality is that unless they are funded and accesible, and very basically exist, then it cannot happen. DH's course is industry led; he cannot do an HND as it does not exist. Very basic, really. I am not sure his course could be condensed into two yaers tbh, looking at his workload, but certainly some of his coursemates might benefit from a less in depth route from what I have seen of their work.

They cannot ban part time work, they simply can't and there's been research to show that children who take on part time jobs actually do better in GCSE and A Levels, after all if you want a job doing ask a busy person not some zombie on the X Box.

DH was asked tif he was going to work at the start of his interview, and any people who said yes was informed then and there that the course was not for them.

You cannot really work around SW, for example, as the course itself involves fairly random shifts. Ditto teaching becuase of the workload (PGCE anyway, don;t know about BEd).

however DH's tutors have some- erm - less than professional attitudes, let us say. IMO only obv (unless responding to a cmplaint by one student by turning up en masse, shouting at the students then handing each a release form and telling tehm to sod off if they don;t like it is considered professional!).

I've had some shocking tutors, really quite crap but you just don't tell them anything they won't like the sound of do you ? simples.

Nope, not you ro I anyway- not sure all 18 year olds are quite as savvy tbh.