University education is not a right for everyone...

[bananasinpjamas]

University education is not a right for everyone...

But a right for those who are capable, self motivated, committed, passionate enough about the topic they are studying?

Well, I'd say it has become so much more commercial these days that the answer could be....

Right for you if you/your family have sufficient money to fund you to study a subject you really enjoy whilst having the experience of developing independence being away from your parents etc etc.

Or

Right for you if you can make a return on the cost of having obtained a degree in a particular subject in the long run.

It's one of my bugbears: the "dumbing down" of higher education :(

Whoever decided that 50% should go on to higher education should be shot.

All it has done is to ensure that the UK has picked up the worst of some American education concepts: the devaluing and dumbing down of post school education, so that for many, a first degree is not worth the debt that they have got into; a dumbing down of degrees so that there is now a real two tier system and an emergence of an "Ivy League" - which are getting more and more out of reach to the ordinary "punter", even if they are clever.

When I was at school (a looong time ago ) only a very small proportion of people went to Uni - and we knew we had to work damn hard to get there and were privileged to do so. It was a reward for hard work - not a right.

University education should not be a right for everyone any more than a 6 bedroom house with a swimming pool should be a right for everyone.

Some people are simply not clever enought to get a good, wrthwhile degree, me being one of them. There are plenty of other things that society needs from people other than intellect. More value should be placed on those things.

There are very few natural rights.

However if you want a nation to thrive, education is paramount. So I would say: education to whatever sensible level you want to take it to, but that doesn't equal a university education necessarily.
It is sad for everyone how university has been pushed as the only worthwhile option.

One of my bugbears too prettybird :(

I agree with you about shooting whoever it was that suggested that 50% should go on to HE. How,why,what? Was this just a way of massaging unemployment figures? Coming back to bite us in the bum now isn't it? I feel desperately sorry for youngsters aged 15,16,17 and the pressure they and their families are under trying to find their way through the maze.

university isnt a right for everyone, but I am studying politics and had to work my ass off with no help from anyone to do it! im up to my eyeballs in debt, but absolutely love my degree and have learnt such valuable life=-skills as well as university skills.
I am sick of people saying politics is a useless degree though - it may not be vocational but I can use it to go anywhere, and at least I have a decent idea of how our country is run and also eu etc.

Are you trying to break the record for the biggest number of AIBU topics started in a short period of time?

My other (linked) bugbear is seeing jobs that are advertised as "degree necessary" when a degree is absolutely not relevant to the job - eg certain sales roles.

And I say that as a graduate.

I agree with the last part of what you say, curly, that more value should be placed on the things which are fundamental but don't require a degree. I also think that making some occupations degree entry isn't raising standards but cutting off less-academic people who could be brilliant at it - thinking of nursing in particular here - or dumbing down.

However I do think that the vast majority of people have the potential to succeed within higher education.

YANBU. I don't even see why so many people want to go TBH. It doesn't seem to be as much fun these days - everyone has to work to get by! And no jobs when you leave.

kungfupannda, yes I am :)

I agree that university is not for everyone, but it annoys me that so many people judge whether or not it was 'worth' doing a degree based on how much you earn.

I didn't walk into a particularly high paid job when I left uni (to be honest unless I'd been able to spend a year doing unpaid internships it was always unlikely)but I don't regret it at all. I've never thought that having a degree would prevent me from starting at the bottom of the ladder, just that I'd be able to start at the bottom of a better ladder IYKWIM.

I think too little emphasis is placed on the experience and knowledge gained from a univeristy education, as it's own merit, not merely as a means of obtaining a big salary.

YANBU, I think that only those who have worked hard should be awarded a place in university.

However I'm a mature student and got in based on my experience with in my industry (hospitality), and am shocked at some of my younger peers and there total lack of drive and commitment to the course we are on.

I think that it would be better to make university financially accessible to all but the entry requirements more stringent so that a place at university is not automatic of expected but something that has to be worked for.

Oh god yes - I've been sneered at because I have a degree and am atm a sahm. Conveniently ignoring the twelve years of work I did that was directly related to my degree.
As if the sole reason for getting a degree is to go hammer and tongs at a high-paying career.

"I think that it would be better to make university financially accessible to all but the entry requirements more stringent so that a place at university is not automatic of expected but something that has to be worked for."

I totally agree. There should be a very hard entry exam of some sort. That way people would have to work very hard to pass the exam and gain a place.

"Whoever decided that 50% should go on to higher education should be shot."

Yep.

It is utterly ridiculous. Of course everyone should be ABLE to go - as in, nobody should be blocked from FE because of poverty. But that is different from saying everyone (or half of everyone) SHOULD go.

Not everyone is academic, and even those who are clever in 'traditional' ways aren't necessarily capable of getting a degree. My DSS is in the latter category - very clever but cruised through school. He's got a place at some random uni but I really don't see him lasting the 3 years because he does not work! And yet in his PT job he's really successful, I think he'd be more suited to a vocational career but he's caught up in the idea of getting a degree without any hard work whatsoever and stumbling into a super career in CSI.

So, now we're absolutely hip-deep in graduates who only ever, at best, had a mediocre academic ability, all now clutching their mediocre degrees from mediocre universities...with the end result that from now on students who genuinely excel at their subject are going to have to pay through the nose to go to university

I totally agree I have a few friends who went to university who in all honesty do not have great degrees and are now unable to get jobs with either the wage they would like or in the field the want to work in, and this is because they didn't work hard enough and viewed university and a "graduate" job as their "right". There is such a culture of entitlement today with no realisation that good jobs and wages and the education needed to get these jobs has to come from hard graft and work.

Who's bright idea was this then to open up uni to all?

50% going on to HE is obviously a daft idea, although of course HE is not what it was. A lot of business training has been devolved to the HE sector, and people are now expected to turn up "shop-ready" with degrees and diplomas in management, catering, hairdressing, etc. when before the company would have done the bulk of the training - back in the days (not that long ago) when HE was mainly academic.

Of course, if we now decided to go back to the way things were before, and scrap all the "Noddy" and "David Beckham" style studies, we all know how this would be presented in the media in the current climate. Cuts. Cuts. And more cuts. Entire university departments being swept away... The loss of the attendant library facilities... Knock-on effects in numbers of admin staff and IT... It just can't happen.

Labour's

It sounds pedantic to differentiate - but I've had less of an issue if the target had been to esnrue that 50% went to further education.

By specifying Higher Education, all that has happened is that Colleges of Further Education have been re-labelled Universities, vocational courses (many of them very worthwhile) have been re-labelled degrees - and in the midst of all of this, kids have been conned into studying for noody inappropriate degrees at noddy new universities and getting themselves heavily into debt at the same time as encouraging them to have this "entitlement" culture of some sort of shiny, super duper job at the end of all of this :(

"I think that it would be better to make university financially accessible to all but the entry requirements more stringent so that a place at university is not automatic of expected but something that has to be worked for."

I totally agree. There should be a very hard entry exam of some sort. That way people would have to work very hard to pass the exam and gain a place.

Yes. Back in my day, A levels were hard enough to do a pretty good filtering job (aren't they now?) and there were tuition and maintainance grants with affordable parental contribution.

The proportion of schoolkids going on to university was much smaller; polys and FE colleges provided sensible alternatives.

Oh, and tax rates were 33% basic, 60%higher rate.

50% kids at university and much lower tax rates does not add up.