25 when did it become not an adult?

[Samcro]

so under 25 you don't get the new wage.
surely 25 is and adult. someone who has left education and home, hopefully been working a few years so why?
why is say (for example) a 23 yr old thought to be worth less?

I'm under 25, but the budget only seems to affect me in a positive way (personal tax allowance) so I don't see how it's an outright bad budget for young people.

We all knew the cuts were coming, the cuts would have come from Labour too.

want2b I can't think of one practical based subject that requires dedicated study. My father is an engineer who was a visiting professor at Imperial and is still considered a world leading expert in his area. He doesn't have a degree in engineering. He has a degree in economics due to his employer at the time requiring everyone have a degree. He went to night school and worked FT while completing the degree in 2.5 years when he lived in Canada. What he does have is 55 years of experience.

I also know people from my parent's generation who have or had jobs that would requite a degree, and a good one at that now. They're unimpressive and don't seem to know stuff that would seem standard. MIL for instance doesn't know anything about the subjects you would need to get in to study medicine at university, yet reached headteacher level. I dread to think of the number of students who have missed out or wasted years because they have been badly advised on subject choice by her at school.

In the case of your father, I would be wondering whether he could come up with original and complex algorithms relevant to his field, without having studied mathematics for engineering in the precise discipline. It sounds very odd. It wouldn't be possible in my field (law), because the necessary professional discipline to write genuinely innovative academic papers (as opposed to commenting on other people's work) wouldn't be there. Even though in law its considered a plus if you have professional practice before going into academia. In law, it is of course possible to qualify to practice without a university degree, but I have heard it said that such entrants to the profession tend to be "cannon fodder" and lack imagination (I am sure there are great exceptions) and they wouldn't generally be suitable for academia.

In my field, its obvious when people's skills get outdated, and continuing professional education is a must. I find it a bit shocking that people equate working in the professions with simply gaining a degree level qualification and lengthy experience, and not with professional standards such as fiduciary duties.

In the case of your father, it was also the case where he would have had virtually 50% less competition in the job market for his job, as it was much more unusual for the female half of the population to work in his field. In that respect, requiring degrees for jobs removes the jobs for the boys quotient and helps create a more level playing field.

TheChandler, I agree. As a teacher, I think we should be aiming for our teachers to be highly qualified not dumbing it down to a few modules of academic study mixed with lots of teaching practice. TP is important but so is a teacher's level of education. I have sat in staff rooms and felt appalled and embarrassed at the lack of general knowledge displayed by some colleagues.

In teaching at least, we need to raise the bar not lower it due to recruitment issues.

In refreshed to see this from a teacher, I know several who have become teachers and unfortunately they weren't the brightest students, which I found a bit worrying.

I'm*

Who said anything about dumbing down?!? Just because you don't have a degree doesn't equate to that person being dumb.

Of course the education of everyone is extremely important and yes I agree that high standards should be applied to all areas. It is quite possible to dedicate oneself to a subject while not attending university. My father continues to read extensively.

I find the attitude of a degree that costs £27k in tuition alone being the only vehicle of access to professions where you are in a position of respect to be very limiting and a real barrier to transcending socioeconomic groups.

Oh and I don't expect a head teacher to know the subject requirements to study medicine or law but I do expect them to know how to find out. The fact your MIL didn't bother to find out is extremely unprofessional and unacceptable.

chandler I forgot to add that yes he is able to use and put together complex algorithms. He is an expert in energy absorption and it's been his life's work.

I might be an accountant by trade but right now I have two books on loan from the library on the American civil war. I'm very excited to learn more about this period and educate myself. I don't even have history GCSE. I just have a thirst for knowledge and being educated in a variety of subjects. I don't need a degree, although I have one, to be educated.

Legislation is irrelevant. It is a talking point. Something to keep people talking and divide the classes, and it work very well, you only need to read the threads to see how confused, angry and apathetic people are. And everyone will be posting the same rhetoric next year and the year after that.

It is irrelevant because no employer will ever pay someone more money than they are worth. Successful businesses do not survive based on overpaying for poor labour. A 21 yo that is worth £50 an hour will always get paid that provided he can deliver that utility. A 28 yo who cannot provide £5 worth of utility will never be in employment until he learns to improve the value he gives to others, no mater what the law says.

Attributing age and a value to work only sets a bar below which it is illegal for someone to employ you if you do not measure up to the legal standard set for the value of your work. It effectively says quite clearly, these people who are incapable of bestowing £7.20 of value at age 25 have definitely under all measures within our society, not even been able to achieve the lowest possible standard for an British adult we can set and define in law.

Most professional bodies require their members to do cpd (certainly accountants!) there is no such requirement for graduates.

I think it shows a distinct lack of imagination to believe that it is only possible to get a degree level qualification by going away to university for exactly 3 years, with holidays at Christmas and Easter and a long break in the summer.

Oh and I don't expect a head teacher to know the subject requirements to study medicine or law but I do expect them to know how to find out.

Agree - apart from anything the requirements change.

Ellie, I don't disagree with you about employers not paying more than the value of an hour's work. However at the other end of the scale, an employer who holds all the power (mill owner in industrial revolution, slave owner, sweatshop owner) can pay less than the value of an hour's work and pocket the difference if there are no alternative employment opportunities.

Balancing the rights of employees while encouraging businesses to take on more employees is not always straightforward, particularly when one rule has to apply to everyone.

Of course education is a lifelong pursuit. However, the would be maths teacher who holds a good maths degree is at least able to prove without too much fuss that they have a solid subject knowledge (on the whole) Another applicant may well state that maths is a great love and that they have been studying it for leisure for years. But in order to guarantee that your brightest Alevel students are being taught methodically by a well qualified teacher whose subject knowledge lies above and beyond the syllabus, you need something to hang your hat on. In this case, a degree in the subject fits that bill.

merrymouse That would not apply in a free market economy. If we operated a free market system, superior staff would migrate to employers offering greater benefit. The fault in the whole system is that it is seen as somehow exploitative to ask those incapable of bestowing any form of value to an employer to do anything for their free entitlements. Effectively we say, if you are completely incapable of being worth £7.20 an hour, we will pay you and house you and feed you anyway.

How about set job seekers allowance at £7.20 an hour if you are willing to work, and zero if you are not willing to work, and the use those who wish to avail themselves of paid work to clean and maintain state properties, and do all the medial tasks that the state currently subcontracts out at a ridiculous loss.

It effectively eliminates the need for the more mundane monopoly businesses that leach off the state apparatus, at the same time paying all those who wish to work at least minimum wage for as many hours as they are capable of waking up for, and also identifies those who truly have no intention of working, removing them from the system and no longer burdening the taxpayer with their upkeep.

A simpler solution would be to continually strip 15% from all welfare budgets year on year. Those sufficiently solution orientated will choose to step up to the challenge and change their lives, and those already addicted to the welfare drug will go under. That seems to be the solution taken, and we can watch Greece to see where it goes. At least the Met spent £2.3M on water cannons last year. We know the tools are in place to douse those who feel aggrieved.

ItsNotAsPerfectAsItSeems Not under a state education system. Teachers tend to gravitate towards the sate apparatus through apathy, laziness, or incompetence. The idiom, 'those who can, do; those who can't, teach' is testament to things never having changed in education. It is as true today as it was when it was coined.

And by dumbing down I meant the suggestion that the practical knowledge was far more important than than the academic subject knowledge. IMO, the academic subject study underpins the practical application.

And no, I don't think a degree is the only way to go. I do, however, think it's a mistake to say that teachers can just learn to teach on the job without spending time on the rigorous academic study of their subject. IMO, this applies from EYFS through to Alevel.

Want2b I might be an accountant by trade but right now I have two books on loan from the library on the American civil war. I'm very excited to learn more about this period and educate myself. I don't even have history GCSE. I just have a thirst for knowledge and being educated in a variety of subjects. I don't need a degree, although I have one, to be educated.

I disagree slightly; I think there is a certain discipline to be gained from studying a subject at university. It might be stifle creative thought or whatever, but there is a gain to studying within generally recognised parameters. And nothing to stop you expanding those if you are talented enough once qualified. I tend to steer clear of taking on those qualified in other fields just because I've read a bit about it. Unless you have the breadth of study at degree level; its too easy to fall into the trap of thinking you know it all because some conclusions seems obvious, but you haven't taken into account something else because you've never read about it in your leisure time.

It happens all the time when people think they know all about the law because they have read a few newspaper articles or googled something very specific. e.g. people think if they sign an exclusion clause, they are cannot sue for personal damage or injury resulting from negligence, when of course UCTA 77 makes such clauses voidable. Then again, in a business setting, they may apply if there is insurance cover available, due to UCTA 77's requirement of reasonableness. Or a limitation of liability clause might be acceptable when a full exclusion clause is not. The possibilities are endless, and cannot be fully understood without several years learning about the development of law, Roman law of contract and how legislation and the courts interact. At the very least.

I actually agree that there are too many unnecessary, poor quality university degrees out there.

But surely its always been a good idea to advise a would-be doctor to study maths, English, biology, chemistry and physics at Standard Grade, as preparation for A levels?

superior staff would migrate to employers offering greater benefit.

Yes, but only if that choice is available. There is no particular reason that it would be.

If you live in a small village, the village shop owner may not give you a newsround if he is prevented from paying you a wage that makes it financially viable to deliver newspapers - they will just do it themselves or not offer the service.

On the other hand, if there are no other local employers and loads of people want newsrounds, there is no need to pay you well either.

Ellie, are you actually saying that state school teachers are poorly educated and lazy? Really?
I am a state school teacher. I have very good Alevels, an excellent degree from one of the most sought after universities in the country, a pgce and a Masters. Sure, some teachers are not at the standard they should be but the vast majority are well educated and highly motivated, certainly in the primary sector with me.
My children are privately educated but I certainly don't think their junior teachers are of a higher quality than those I work with in the state sector. Like the state sector, some are excellent, most are at least good and a few really shouldn't be there.

I could have opted for law like my husband or accountancy or management consultancy like friends but I wanted to teach. I certainly didn't choose it because I couldn't go anything else. We are very far from the 1970s thankfully. Although any suggestion that we could all just train on the job rather than follow an academic discipline beforehand could well just send us back there.

But if they made it 21 people would still be saying that it should be younger. They have to set it somewhere. It's a bit high at 25 but fair enough I think.

My children are privately educated but ...
You believe in the quality of education in state schools but your children are privately educated? I seem to remember Tony Blair trying to use that same routine on the British people. Do as I say, not as I do.

Yes, but only if that choice is available. There is no particular reason that it would be. That presupposes that a monopoly exists, and than no other avenue for providing utility in the marketplace can exists because all individuals want is the product of a single absolute monopoly. That is an impossibility in a free market. Yes, it can exist in a fascist state or a communist state, were all provision is provided by a single monopoly, and all competition is made illegal. But in reality, it is an impossibility. Capable people always thrive, and incapable ones are sidelined. Employment, like all other societal structures, is a filter that separates people into different strata. Unfortunately there will always be those completely incapable of offering value, and no amount of legislation of any sort can bestow skill or aptitude upon those poeple.

Yep! I pay because by paying, my children's school then has enough money to cap class sizes at 22 and to offer amazing experiences and sporting opportunities that the state sector simply cannot afford. Plus they offer me wraparound from 7.30-6pm if I need it.

I don't pay thinking in giving them better access to better teachers. Only that I'm giving them access to a school who can afford to offer the kind of enrichment the state sector can only dream about. It's basic economics. The state sector could do just as much, just as well with similar resources.

Anyway, non of that detracts from the fact that your point about state teachers being poorly educated and lazy is nonsense.

Using the private sector for my children and believing the state sector is not a heap of shit populated by lazy uneducated losers are not mutually exclusive.

And I believe TB's children were state educated.

That is certainly no my experience of 'teachers' in the state education system. They seem primarily preoccupied with their own pay packets, left wing politics, and some sense that if everyone were educated by them then we'd all be socially equal. Add the that the crippling curriculum and the fascist believe teachers have that they know more than parents and that parents should be punished for teaching their own children, and that no child should be permitted to attend a funeral or visit a foreign capital because if destroys the child's education and makes them develop slower than the rest of their contemporaries, and you have one big centralised group of teachers who want control, money, and throw their rattle out their prams whenever the hint that they may have less of either is discussed.

Now, I agree that in a private sector school where teachers are employed based on merit and ability, paid well, non-unionised and not indoctrinated by the state apparatus, we have a much better education system. A system that produced brighter more intelligent children. But that is a teaching system that is polls apart on both motivation and ability than what is left to tend to the masses in the sate system.

I'm not saying you can't find healthy nutritional food in QuickieMart, I'm saying that the bulk of it is cheaply produced highly processed crap, and that the staff predominantly don't know what a balanced diet is, don't understand the ingredients on tha packets, and in some cases cannot even go basic mental arithmetic. Yet they'll talk to you forever and a day about their poor pay, their lack of breaks and how wrong it is that the company gets to choose what their working conditions are.

If a person needs to join a union in order to find the support to prop up their career, that goes a long way to explain their underlying skill and aptitude, and the confidence they have in their own utility.