How many years is it going to take before 18 year olds realise that going to Uni is only worth it for about 20% of people

[Hammy02]

I went to an old poly and wish I hadn't as it didn't make much difference to my career prospects. DP went to a 'proper' Uni and earns about 60K so it was worth it for him. All I did was waste my time. Many students will now be racking up such huge debts that it will hugely impact their future. AIBU?

Surely a better system would be:

• Degrees of 18 months to two years
• More intense, greater lecuture contact time
• Degrees offered more closely matched to demand for them in the economy
• Greater incentives for vocational degrees in specialised areas

The days of spending 3 years on the piss while attending the odd lecture simply cannot continue.

Wolef, an English degree proves that you can research, that you can assess material, that you have a nuanced grasp of the written word, etc etc...It used to be that a degree like English was seen as one of 'the best' because of its broad application.

But I agree, the way things are right now, you'd be better off taking something very specific. It's what students want. While I personally think it's a red herring and you may as well do the degree you want, they seem much happier taking a BA in [career of their choice]. It's terribly depressing.

no, but it is one of the best ways to learn. Do you know how many people go to college as mature students, right up into their seventies? A lot, because people often regret never having done a degree, never having done real academic learning. Its one of the most common regrets people have.
It should be more accessible, not less, cheaper not more expensive, pure science and maths and philosophy etc should be celebrated and strived for. We should be aiming for whole communities of geniuses. In my little utopia anyway.

I'll admit I'm eighteen years old, but my wish to go to university isn't solely to get a career out of it. I want the experience, and most of all, I want to learn about the subject I enjoy - to gain more knowledge in that area I'm interested in. Furthermore the idea of having access to a university library is exciting to me.

It's true there's a lot of degrees out there that don't give fruit to much if anything later on, but that's why I think a lot of thought needs to be put into a subject one enjoys, but will also bear fruit to a career.

I think my views are coloured by the fact that I do a lot of recruitment where I work and a degree in a relevant field is essential for most posts now.

If I have two candidates of the same age and the same level of experience, I am more likely to take the one who has the higher education qualification as its an extra sign that they are able to apply themselves. With competition for some posts at an extraordinary level at the moment, you need everything going for you if you're going to make the first cut.

There are a lot of people who go to University now who perhaps wouldn't have considered it before, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the quality has gone down. It can mean that more people who perhaps wouldn't have considered higher education due to background or their socio-economic group are now considering it as a viable option. This is surely a good thing?

I'm not saying that everyone should go to university as if you're not academically minded then it would make no sense. I just don't think that devaluing higher education because it doesn't help everyone or isn't suitable for everyone is a good idea.

TheBride Which university course has 3 Ds as its entry requirements? The lowest I've ever seen equates to 3 Cs.

Of course, I speak as someone who ploughed her A-levels because she was a grotty teenager who couldn't be bothered with anything, and then went on to have the spark ignited in university. Since then, I've done reasonably well for myself.

"HE should be free to all, always, life long learning should be the goal of a civilised society."
How do we pay for it?

YANBU
My son is going to be starting a degree course this sept.. He applied for four universities and 2 gave a straight no due to his grades. One made a conditional offer and was a good uni and the other one would have taken him on with 3 D's
We were nervously waiting on his grades and luckily he has the chance to go to the better university as his is not a course that is oversubscribed. If it had been a case of just going to the other university i would have tried to talk him out of it unless he was fully commited to getting a high degree pass..
There was something on tv a couple of weeks ago saying that the amount of graduates applying for jobs has doubled and employers aren't even looking at applicants who have under a 2:1 pass.
I recently worked in a call centre and the amount of people there with degrees in business, economics etc who were doing the same job as me were substantial. Many talked of this being temporary until they find the right job etc,, but they were still working there 3 years on.
Too many people go to universities. The fee increase will reduce this and hopefully the poorer students will get some sort of funding assistance.
We will probably need to go the route of americans and start a college fund when babies are born

Regarding what didyouseewhatshesaid has written, it's true it's foolish to mess around at university, even more so now most students will be paying 8-9k a year for their courses.

However, a more intense system would mean the fees for the course or accomodation in the surrounding area would have to go down. A lot of students go to work to either pay their fees and/or their accomodation, which the stress and exhaustion doing both on a more intense course would more than likely cause students to either drop out, or it would be detrimental to their health. Whether it be physical or mental.

I don't know. But ideals don't have to be practical. Still a good ideal though.

Yukana The sad fact of the matter is that even fulltime students aren't really fulltime, when you add in the 20-odd average hours they're all working to add to their cash. In my field, students are expected to contribute 4-5 hours of individual study per hour of contact time. Obviously not all of them do that, but when you add up all the hours, work and uni already takes up a lot of their time.

Yukana - the idea would be that two years' fees is obviously better than three. I went to uni in early 90s, studied economics. Even then, when I suspect degrees were a bit more robust than now, I felt sure the course could have been crammed into two years.

i wish wish wish wish someone had told me the truth before i went to uni. would never go now.

it was interesting and fun but mostly pointless, a degree these days is just another thing you tick off the list of "must haves/dos"

well my cousin just got into X (wont name and shame) with CDD, and he got that at a top public school, so, really, shd the taxpayer be funding him? I'd say probably not.

I think that it will take parents longer to realise it-they give birth and are set on 'my DC must go to university'.

I don't think there is much point unless they need it for a career like vet or they are highly academic.
Many of them are coming out and getting the sort of job that you used to get after O'levels at grammar school.
The unfortunate thing is that now-although you could do the job at 16yrs-all the applicants will have been to university and so you won't even be looked out without.
In the same way a 2:2 was a very respectable degree-now a lot of employers won't look at the application with less than 2:1.

Perhaps when 18yr olds look at the debt and find alternatives employers will see that learning on the job can be a preferrable way in.

I know many people my age who have really high flying careers without university-it will be nice if they can get back to that.

That's genuinely really sad, knittedbreast. To read that something was interesting and fun but was pointless. Surely the fact that it was interesting and fun made it have a point? I know I'm particularly hippy-ish when it comes to all this but I think society needs to a bit more accepting of 'interesting and fun' and a lot less accepting of 'it's going to make me money so that makes it ok' (not aiming that at you, but it does seem to be the tone of the thread...)

didyouseewhatshedid and VictorGollanez
I see your point a little clearer now. I think in a subject that I was interested in, if I didn't have to work and my accomodation was set, I'd probably actually prefer a course that was four or five days a week for three to four hours a day. The course would last two years or so.

If I had a job however, perhaps there could be a part-time university option whereby I only had to attend two or three days a week, or five days a week with less hours. That course would last three or four years.

I actually think that system would be better than the current one, especially if they can make the part-time courses as flexible as reasonably possible for students who are working.

Interesting and fun isn't pointless, unless your priorities are totally screwed up.

Hmmm, anything I say about that would be speculation, TheBride, but personally I think your cousin's school might have something to do with his offer.

And I think all education should come from general taxation. We all benefit from a highly-educated population.

VictorGollancz "We all benefit from a highly-educated population"
Indeed. But we dont all benefit from way too many people being subsidised to swan around on the lash for three years before coming out with a degree in some pointless subject that is of no interest to any employer.

I would like my boys to go to university very much. In fact my 3 year old has learnt to say 'peadiatric oncologist' when asked 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'

Four boys, four sets of fees etc = debts that would add up to more than our only asset (our house) is worth.

I didnt go and worked from 16 so am more than a little pissed of that I have been heavily subsidising other peoples and their children's education for nearly 30 years and now when its my eldest boy's turn to go - kerching!

Aside from that I dont think that it should be the automatic desire of every parent for their child to go to university. The working classes have suffered years of pity and damnation because we are not 'ambitious enough' for our kids because we are happy for them to skip university and get a job.

But if only 20% should be at university those places should be about ability to achieve and NOT ability to pay. This is what will happen. Like the Royal Family who only seem to need a clutch of average A levels, those with the cash will get into the best places.

I dont want to go back to that sort of elitism. Nothing wrong only the brightest going to university. Everything wrong with only the richest.

Well, I went back to college in 2008 having worked since I left school many, many years ago. I hated my job, I'd been the breadwinner at home for some time, and I needed to do something different. Whether it will benefit me or not career-wise is yet to be discovered (I took a year out to have my DD this January), but I have met new people, learned new skills and challenged myself. Don't forget you don't start paying back 'til you earn over a certain threshold.
I'm all for self-improvement; if you need qualifications go get them!

victor, im pretty hippi ish myself, but the course i particularly took could only lead me to after my ba,postgrad,ma to another 25k of debt before i could reside within that area. it as an area that serviced only the rich and i didnt know that before it was too late. also i went when fees wer around 1250 a year! and some how was duped into believing i needed a loan for that! HA! they had me.

id love for us to live in a society where uni is free and teaches us all to be better people, where we philosophise european (hear that unis? european philosophy, not reasoning crap) while draping ourselves in togas but that world has gone. information is now a weapon, a force of control. i want no part in it.

Uni is a waste of time and money, i have friends at cambridge who laugh at the very idea their education is worth 9k a year. its a fucking piss take.

im going to go and save up to buy an acre of woodland, use my 3 days a month living allowance to stay there away from all this, im so so sad for us.

"- Degrees offered more closely matched to demand for them in the economy"

No, no, no

If you do that everyone in college will be doing degrees 3 years out of date

If you want a flexible, smart, well-educated workforce, the last thing you should be doing is matching your education system to the current needs of the economy.

We need our young people to be innovative and creative. Not qualified in yesterday's skills.

TheBride I think there is an argument that the problem you mention is a feature rather than a bug. It incentivises people to take risks with their course of study, and that is surely a good thing.

Otherwise we will end up with a country full of people qualified to do the exact jobs that were available when they were 18 because it is too risky to make any other choice.

Thank goodness for economic migrants or else soon there will nobody to pick the lettuces or plough the fields.