To Think That Students Studying Science Degrees Shouldn't Be Charged Higher Fees?

[LadyLance]

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/feb/18/cutting-tuition-fees-would-backfire-justine-greening-warns-theresa-may

Teresa May wants to make arts/humanities courses cheaper for undergraduates, and not every university course should cost £9250. Her rather interesting position is that the market has not done what she has expected (sorry, the free market has not emerged), so she is going to try and force it into a shape that's more pleasing, and perhaps more appealing to young people.

I don't work for a university, so I don't know how much your average humanities course costs to run. I do know that many (most?) STEM courses with regular labs, expensive equipment and heavy contact hours cost more than £9250 to run. Although these departments can bring in the big money grants, I do think there is a perception that (some?) universities overfill humanities courses in order to subsidise their science departments.

However, I'm worried about the proposals putting people from low income backgrounds or who are the first in their family to go to uni off STEM courses. I'm also wary that the proposals really amount to a real terms cut for universities in terms of funding.

Obviously the current loans system is unsustainable for the government when many graduates in all fields will never pay their loans back in full. Even high earning doctors might go to work abroad, or take career breaks, and so not repay their huge debts. However, I don't think this is the answer.

Education to age 16 is a right, it's free & widely encouraged.
Education further to 18 and older is heavily encouraged, but it is qualifications-tested.

Getting the qualifications is much harder than getting the funding.

The school leaving age is now 18. Young people have to stay in education or training until at least then. They also have to achieve a certain level in English and maths

I don't think there's any teeth in that rule, Blaabla. The can do feck all from age 17 & nothing happens except contact from the council.

*they

Fair enough . I can see that being the case. The Raising of Participation Age has created a number of issues/problems. As is always the case with government policies made by people who don't work in the sector

There isn't enough graduate level jobs, so what is the benefit in spending lots of tax payers money on an education that wont be used.

Yep, that's right. There's no evidence that people with better education pass that education and its values on to their children. It's easy to plan for fifty years of requirements and when in the 1960s with university takeup at 3% there was open derision at the idea it might be increased, that was right: our economy today looks exactly like it did fifty years ago, so clearly we can predict what our economy needs fifty years out. And, of course, the very idea that we might educate people above their station and give them ideas! Terrible!

Just pay for it all through general taxation. Then those who earn more will pay more tax duh.

There's no evidence that people with better education pass that education and its values on to their children

So 14 years isn't enough of a 'good' education? You wasn't another 3 at a cost of approx £100,000 for two parents just so they pass on better values?

You dont think that £100,000 would be better spent on the children in their 14 years of school? Or maybe on parenting classes, or plumbing classes?

You wasn't another 3 at a cost of approx £100,000 for two parents just so they pass on better values?

No. Because I can't believe anyone is seriously advancing the argument that an significant number of dual graduate households from the already vanishing small proportion of the population who receive full maintenance loans will see no economic benefit from their university education.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned and I’ve missed it but are there any figures available yet on what the rate of graduate repayment is from different degrees? Direct replayment from wages I’m thinking of, not sure if it’s possible to collect that data.

I don’t think we should restrict the numbers of people at University unless there is a proper means of giving people a worthwhile education in an alternative setting and companies can’t be arsed to train people now so there isn’t. If we perceive education as a good thing that is beneficial then why restrict the numbers of people achieving that level. Other countries have higher levels of people with degrees than the UK.

DG Rossitti: 'Which was great if your parent(s) actually gave you any money at all ... there was no obligation on them to do so, so well off parents could - and did - stop their kids going to university. And it was more often than not girls (again) that suffered. Especially if they came from a background where female education was actively discouraged.'

Yes, happened to me.

Happened to me too. I would have loved loans

Scabbersley, If only I could have had a loan. It wasn't possible in my day

Fascinating the old adage about hammers and nails plays out so widely.

I wonder why there is a fascination with University education ages 18-22, implying that you only get one shot, and it has to last a (very long) lifetime.

Especially in world where skills can be made obsolete in less than a generation, surely a fit-for-purpose education system would be more set up to provide teaching, training and learning throughout a persons life. Even reading a few posts on MN it's clear some people get to [my age ] and would be idelly placed to renew some learning, maybe even change career direction, and still have 20, 30 years to put back into society.

I believe it would have been something that nice Damien Green wanted to talk about yesterday on the radio. Unfortunately Mishal Hussein had another agenda, so I never heard what it was.

The Government is likely to bend because of political pressure. The Labour Party's continual monotonous chant of no fees for students has caused this review and it is totally ridulous that some of the courses may cost more. The higher earners (those who benefit more) already pay more. It does not matter what degree you have done to achieve that. That appears to be fair.

Labour clearly do not understand the system and it played to the student vote, who do not understand the system either. No fees seriously helps the well off and those with the best jobs.

It is a total scandal that no-one understands how the loans work. All schools should have mandatory explanation sessions for all possible students so they actually understand they have very little "debt" as we generally understand. Martin Lewis could make a video!! Plus a tutorial for teachers and parents. Students make a contribution according to earnings post graduation. If they do lower paid work, they do not pay much back and the vast majority never will pay it back.

I think we made a mistake in allowing Colleges of Higher Education to become universities offering degrees. Polytechnics always did offer degrees. Employers shoud be levied to pay for training andhigher education. The types of courses employees need at 18 should be provided by the colleges of Higher Education at a reduced fee to the student because the employer makes up the shortfall. I believe they do this in Germany to ensure the workforce is educated to a higher level. Employers must do more.

Some degrees are clearly not a very high standard. Many young people would be better off being employed and learning on the job rather than do a degree. We have gone down the degree route for all who want one, but there is clearly a peckingorder and some of the courses mentioned above are not worth much.

•I wonder why there is a fascination with University education ages 18-22, implying that you only get one shot, and it has to last a (very long) lifetime.•

in practice you do only get one shot. If you struggle at uni and give up, you have used a substantial proportion of your entitlement to a loan, so your chance of having another go in 10 years time or so are very small.

It's easy to say "well if you didn't manage, you obviously weren't capable" but you can fail for many reasons - unexpected ill-health, bad advice on choice of course, lack of maturity - including a desire to stand on your own feet, and therefore not accept any of the sources of support that are available.

Of course we're surrounded by rhetoric about "bad choices" and a belief that if you make a "bad choice" when you're young and finding your way in the world, the effects of that bad choice should blight whole of the rest of your life.

One of the issues is that a large chunk of universities' funding (particularly in the non-research unis) comes from tuition fees. So if universities were forced to charge less for humanities degrees, they might stop running them altogether, or they might continue to run them but put fewer resources into them. The point is that, unless an alternative source of funding is made available, universities will have less money to provide a good quality education.

in practice you do only get one shot.

It's amazing how humans have to arrange their lives around systems, rather than systems being arranged around humans ....

Of course once you start asking fundamental questions about higher education, you may as well burrow down, and look at all education. The way we expect children to move in intellectual lockstep with their ages (which allows us to have winners and losers ?????) for a start. There is no way our DS was ready for college at 16, let alone Uni at 18. But now aged 21 he could rip the heart out of a doctorate if he wanted. Meanwhile some people get degrees at 14 and doctorates at 17.

So maybe non research universities should not offer degrees but offer higher education qualifications as they used to but based far more closely to employers' needs? This is the obvious possibility we should review. Is there a need for huge numbers of humanities degrees at the lowest 20% of universities in the respective leagues tables? Possibly not.

The sector has grown to meet need but it's partly because the young people cannot get training based jobs. This needs to be reversed. I was trained at work. It took years of study but this route has been closed down to many.

So maybe non research universities should not offer degrees but offer higher education qualifications as they used to but based far more closely to employers' needs?

If employers were the customers ....

Is there a need for huge numbers of humanities degrees at the lowest 20% of universities in the respective leagues tables?

No. Which is handy, because there aren't many people doing them, and certainly not at 18. I vaguely know the demographics of an English course at a post-92, and about 60% of their students are mature students, and a lot of the rest are access, part-time, and so on. it's not quite like the OU (what's the figure? That 70% of the humanities degrees the OU grants are to people who already have a degree?) but not far off it.

The same applies to most of the traditional humanities: there are departments in some of the post-92s, although not many. You can argue the toss about their quality (but be careful: for example, the theology department at Gloucester is world-class), but the idea that large numbers of 18 year olds are going to local post-92s to do humanities degrees is disingenuous.

Yes, this is about "good choices" because anyone doing, say, Creative Writing at a local post-92 is not spending their time or money wisely. Sadly the few 18 year olds doing that are not the middle-class Hermiones of popular myth but first in family, usually girls, who have been catastrophically badly advised by schools and parents that don't know any better. There is a legitimate debate to be had about those degrees, and you are right to say it should be had. It is not, however, a problem at a scale anything like you imply.

A better question is about the STEM degrees at those 20% of universities. The current vogue for computer security has seen a spate of low-tariff "Digital Forensics" or "Ethical Hacker" or "Cyber Security" degrees, the vast majority of which are very, very weak and would be trumped in the eyes of most employers by a computer science degree or a maths degree, plus some on-the-job training. You can be absolutely confident that the people doing those degrees, when compared to more traditional degrees are (a) more likely to be first in family (b) more likely to have non-standard admission qualifications and (c) less likely to jobs, and for those jobs to be less well paid. On average, across the cohort, etc, etc.

@CuboidalSlipshoddy

The last bit, about 'low-tariff' Computer Security degrees and how their viewed by employers is well wide of the mark. They often include other PQs such as CISCO or FTK certs. and depend on the quality of the uni and the modules studied within the degree as with anything else.

I interviewed someone from Coventry with a degree along the lines of your description before Christmas. He didn't get the job but certainly wasn't looked upon unfavourably compared to a more traditional CS degree. Infact, the overlap in the degrees was massive. Modules in basic hardware and software, maths (discrete), a language or two to a fairly high standard, networking, software engineering etc.

I interviewed someone from Coventry

I know their degree in detail. It is, as you say, a traditional CS degree with tweaks. And it isn't low-tariff, either. Coventry is the very top of the post-92 pile. The sort of degrees I am describing will have very little of the CS content you list.

I rarely interview anyone and this was an applicant for a £75K pa role.

In the 15 minutes reading I've just done, there are a few middling universities with middling requirements and tewaked CS modules. None seem much, if at all, worse than a non-tweaked CS-type degree from the same institutions and I haven't seen any degrees with nonsense modules at the expense of a good CS grounding.

A CS degree and experience may well trump these low-tariff degrees but because of the uni and the rigor of the course, not the subject as such.

You can't blame universities for anticipating the job market and tweaking their degrees.

Some people study the arts and humanities to degree level and beyond for the love of it. they are already subsidising the stem degrees because the academic staff time is negligible in comparison. is it fair that someone studying for an english literature degree, who has to attend lectures, seminars and tutorials for a total of 8-10 hours a week should have to borrow the same amount as a stem student who probably spends 25-30 hours a week contact time with academics and using specialist equipment?
Do you really think that English, history, economics, philosophy, modern and ancient languages aren’t worthy of university study?

I think it’s disgraceful that arts and humaniies are graduating with such enormous debt, especially as they are more often than not destined for lower paid jobs. I really don’t like the way universties are being reduced to being job training grounds. What is the world coming to