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?

i'd love to see your definitions of a 'mickey mouse' degree

i think industries could do more to sponser school leavers to do degrees though i know some do do this.

i worked with some very rich people in the 80s who could do degrees in whatever they fancied which had no relevance on the jobs they eventually did

vanity degrees worth nowt in my eyes if they did history of art at cambridge then ended up working for daddy's advertising agency

Definition of a Mickey Mouse degree: Mime. Embroidery. Interior Design. I'm sure there are more. Media Studies. Film Studies. American Studies. Anything with the word "studies" in the title.

I didn't go to uni. I left school with 2 A levels - a C in French and a D in German. I got taken onto a graduate scheme with these A levels and have done pretty well. Unfortunately, it would be very hard for me to change employer as they all use a degree as a sift these days for senior management roles, regardless of experience.

It's not always lowered expectations - it's pressure on the teachers from management, who in turn are pressed by government targets, to "teach to the curriculum." There is simply no room for creative teaching like there used to be.

Which is one of the reasons my two are no longer in the UK system...and why many of the British teachers at their school have left the UK system.

Tony Blair's "education, education, education" priority for new labour was not just about HE was it?

Surely we all want our country to have a well educated population? Mass HE is not necessarily the answer though.

Totally agree that it is not realistic for 50% of 18 year olds to go to university. IMO it is realistis for 50% of 18 year olds to undertake some kind of education to prepare them for employment and to develop their skills and knowledge beyond what school level.

I do think that in a civilised society education should be a right.

Currently a degree does not have as much "market value" (that is not the right expression exactly) as it used to have in terms of getting a job. Employers ask for graduates as there are simply so many graduates out there that they will be able to select a good candidate from the pool of graduates so no need to sift through more applications!

i don't think it's mass higher education - as is that so bad if it is

I think, and I'm being slightly cynical here after parents' evenings, but IME people might think that a university education is not a right for everyone, but it is for their children.

Quality of teaching at my RG (I think - when did we start using that as a benchmark?) university v.v. poor.

Having "studies" in the title does not make a course "Mickey Mouse". The Japanese language courses at Oxford, Cambridge and various other highly regarded universities are called Japanese Studies and I doubt even LeQueen would be able to sneer at that!

"Definition of a Mickey Mouse degree: Mime. Embroidery. Interior Design. I'm sure there are more. Media Studies. Film Studies. American Studies. Anything with the word "studies" in the title."

Gosh you are bitter about your lack of degree aren't you? Why not go and do one then you won't feel so bad about what other people are doing.

I looked on hotcourses for degrees in mime and embroidery. Nothing for mime apparently (performing arts yes, and I suppose there are specialisms...), embroidery is encompassed in textile design at one insititution. I actually think something like textile design is probably a pretty good course really. It was certainly around when I was an undergrad (and I am old enough to have done O levels).

If some universities (ie non RG)and some degrees (so called mickey mouse degrees)]are so undervalued by society why should graduates attending these universities have to acrue the same debt as those attending RG universities? There's something wrong here.

I agree, and for that reason I will not be encouraging my children to go to university unless they have a burning desire, and are bright enough, to want to do a job which requires a degree (eg medicine, law etc)

having said that, I would find it hard to refuse to fund them if I could afford it and if they really really wanted to do a degree that they would enjoy and work hard at, even if it didn't guarantee them a job. I really enjoyed my university experience (and still managed to graduate, amazingly!) and it would be nice to enable my children to have that experience if it was useful to them.

Definitely not a right, though. And I agree about the "dumbing down" aspect- it becomes so the actual degree is worth nothing- employers are quick to catch on

The mn zeitgeist has really changed. I agree, the 50pc target is unsustainable and undesirable. The one good thing about the new fees tariff is that it could help university education mean something again and it could encourage school-leaver uptake by companies.

To be fair I do have a degree in Religious Studies, which I once thought was a bit useless. But once you've worked in a company that does business with the Middle East, it turns out having an employee who majored in Islamic Studies can be quite an asset.

Although I did a degree in French and Economics (at the 3rd oldest University in the country) I was really pissed off when in my final year they began doing a degree in Management Studies which concentrated on all the topics in Economics that I really enjoyed (and added in Law which would have been interesting) - and in fact would have been even more useful for the Milkround job I got with ICI - so you can't use "anything with Studies in the title" as a blanket categorisation of Mickey Mouse degrees.