BlaaBlaaBlaa, you don't address the snobbery by turning polys into universities - when you attempt to give polys the cachet of universities by calling them universities, what you are doing is admitting that polys are not 'as good as' universities, Nd that a technical education or training are not as desirable as an academic education. In terms of public perception, the approach denigrated technical education and the technical route to mastery, and to employment.
In Ireland, the opposite was done - the Regional Techs were unabashedly technical colleges distinct from universities and they remain so. There was never a suggestion that they were 'as good as' universities (which would have implied that the universities were some sort of benchmark against which alternatives were to be measured).
The three ITs that are set to merge into a technical university will have more of a research role than the Institutes of Technology that they are now, in tech fields.
Along with the development of Irish technical education there has been a huge push to keep students in secondary education until 18, with steady increases in numbers doing the Leaving Cert, which has a broad curriculum with core subjects (maths, English, and Irish) that can't be dropped except in special circumstances. Subjects can be taken at two levels, three in the case of Irish and maths.
www.examinations.ie/index.php?l=en&mc=ca&sc=sb
www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2018-03-26/debate-builds-over-mounting-student-loan-debt-in-the-uk
It's arguable that too many English students go to college, and some would be better off in vocational-education or apprenticeship programs. But, Barr says, further education, as opposed to higher education, gets little government attention and is poorly funded, which is a mistake. "Ours is a system that says without higher education you are a failure – that's a hangover from our class-based culture."
yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/23/one-three-recent-graduates-dont-feel-cost-universi/
One third of recent UK graduates regret taking out loans. Many are now in jobs where a degree is not actually needed, making it more difficult for those without a university education to get those jobs, and many have no hope of ever paying off their loans. The government will eventually write off 45% of money loaned to students. That is to say, the taxpayers will see no return at all for their money. Because of the backhanded way the money is allocated, the unpaid debt will eventually be added to government debt. (See the US News article for this point).
When it comes to the costs of a degree, YouGov's research also finds that there is significant pessimism among both recent graduates and current students with loans about whether they will ever be free of the burden of repayments during their working life. When asked how long they expected it would take to pay off their student loan, 41% of both recent graduates and current students say they don’t think they ever will.
Few think repayments will be relatively quick, with only 10% of recent graduates and just 5% of current students expecting to have their loans paid off within a decade of leaving university. Far more are preparing for the long-haul, with 17% of recent graduates and 13% of current students believing it will take 11-20 years to pay off their student loan, while 13% of recent graduates and 10% of current students thinking it will take 21-30 years to complete their repayments...
...However, among recent graduates, these estimates may be based upon false expectations about how much they will end up having to pay back. More than four in ten (41%) say that they don’t understand how the interest rate on student loans works, compared to 25% who do.
If they are not put off, then they should be.
Maybe I should have clarified that those with any degree of financial literacy are put off by the ramifications of the loan system.