Higher education: Guardian article makes me want to vote Conservative

[Flaymproof]

This opinion piece today is idiotic: amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/20/boris-johnson-arts-degrees-conservative-funds
Nobody is trying to ban arts degrees, and everyone can agree they have high value, but there are just too bloody many of them. While they have been up on their pedestal there has been a chronic shortage of STEM graduates and skilled tradespeople which is damaging to the economy. There has also been a shortage of teachers in these fields, which leads to a vicious circle. It's not about encouraging young people into higher paid jobs - that's just a carrot - it's about addressing a real need for certain skills and facing down the twentieth century myth, passed on by parents with their heads in the sand, that it doesn't matter what degree you have, so long as you have one.

I think any job which benefits from creativity, problem solving, quick analysis of the situation, clear communication, self motivation benefits from skills developed in an arts degree.

@myfuckingfreezer

80% of the fastest growing sectors employ more arts grads than stem grads

Of all grads, 89% of stem are employed BA 88% of arts.

Only three of the top ten highest growing wages are for stem subjects.

Arts grads are more resilient in recessions, keeping their jobs and their income levels.

Want to to explain again why kids should do stem?

And STEM grads don't usually work in STEM. So no, lack of kids doing science degrees isn't the issue.

Again though, do you get a great designer (of the non-technical sort) by having them write 15,000 words about it or would their time be better spent learning as an apprentice

Understanding of history, trends and developments in design (for example) would be invaluable. Not always in ways that are immediately tangible, but you’d appreciate the difference.

The creative industries are one of the UKs biggest assets, worth billions. Even on a strict economic calculus, we need graduates in art, design, music and drama. Look around you. Who designed the objects in your home? The scissors, the plates, the door handles, the magazines on the rack, the chairs, etc etc etc etc etc. Oh yes, that would be art and design graduates. Watch TV, listen to the radio, go to the theatre, a concert? Oh yes, more arts graduates - drama, music, film - all the subjects the government is proposing to take a wrecking ball to. What they are doing here is both culturally illiterate and economically indefensible.

The vast majority of people I know who did STEM ended up in the same business/finance jobs as everyone else. Most notably the guy with a PhD in physics now earning a fuck tonne of money managing logistics for lidl.

In most cases though, do those jobs requiring a generic degree actually need one or could they be done just as well by someone who spent 18-21 in the workplace?

Graduate recruiters are looking for graduates for a reason. They like the skills they have developed while studying at degree level.
For example, the top accountancy firms will target history students specifically because of the skills developed.

Lots of young people don't have a specific career idea in mind at 18. If you are academic enough then going to university and studying something you are good at and enjoy can give you the breathing space to investigate what your career path might be - not only do you develop skills that are degree specific but there are lots of opportunities to develop employability skills which are valued by employers.

The work/vocational route is great if you have a clear career idea but can be limiting if you don't.

We put a lot of pressure on young people to make career decisions at quite a young age when there is nothing wrong with taking time to explore your options, build on your skills and gain qualifications.

Again though, do you get a great designer (of the non-technical sort) by having them write 15,000 words about it or would their time be better spent learning as an apprentice?

I don't think you understand how creative degrees work! They're often very practical as well as academic.

This is a flawed argument.
'Arts' covers a HUGE range of subjects. From history at a redbrick uni to a degree in event management.
The question is not art vs science. At its highest level true science is artistic and true art is a science.
HOWEVER

1. A fair number of academically able people can do either... an extreme example is Flossie Wong-Staal. The scientist who helped clone HIV. She initially wanted to do English Literature but her teacher encouraged her into biology.
   In my field I see a lot of career switchers who , while they liked their humanities subject didn't like it enough to put up with the graft that came with getting a related job. These people switched to a technology job and while they are doing well now have spent a lot of extra time and expense in getting there. When they could have done a STEM degree from the start.

2. A lot of unrelated jobs as PP have mentioned are being made into degrees. This is ridiculous and causes degree inflation. 'Critical thinking and analysis' do NOT need 3 years of university. Maybe for a policymaking or lawyer's job yes, but not your average job. Why for the love of God are we so snobby about degrees? I have seen apprentices put degree-eeducated people to shame.

Jobs ask for a degree because everyone has one and they need a way of filtering. A receptionist or PA does not need a degree. And 'graduate job' is a misnomer. Practically everything is a 'graduate job' these days so the term has become meaningless!

By all means professional courses (being a company secretary for example has a professional qualification) , lifelong learning should be encouraged. But a full-time degree should not be something that everyone is expected to have by default, like GCSE's.

But a full-time degree should not be something that everyone is expected to have by default, like GCSE's.

Well, we've only just reached 50% of school leavers choosing to go to university so we're a long way from everyone having a degree.

Also forgot to add - am highly against cutting out arts, drama and music degrees.
Sadly though the barrier to entry to these are formed in childhood. If your parents couldn't pay for music lessons you're not going to become Yo-Yo Ma.

People should have choice!

University should not just be for the rich and privileged

@Morgoth

There isn’t a shortage of STEM graduates. What there is is a shortage of these STEM graduates continuing with pure STEM-related careers or going into science teaching. As previous posters have said, most physics and maths graduates end up as actuaries, data analysts or in high-level finance jobs. Actual pure science work as a scientist pays peanuts.

Agree - I was just about to post this. A large proportion of STEM graduates don’t go into science-related fields at all, but finance and management. Is it that you think we need more quants for banks, OP? Where is the skills shortage? And if there is one, why aren’t those fields tempting existing STEM grads to work in them?

I think good Arts and good STEM degrees are both useful. I have one of each.

I think the 50% goal of university education is unhelpful. You end up with a lot of people studying at a tertiary level who never really mastered secondary education. There was a boy at my school who went to study history at a fairly mediocre university having obtained an E in that subject at A Level. I know it's technically a pass but is it appropriate to have people who barely scrape a pass in a subject going on to try and develop expertise in it?

@irresistibleoverwhelm exactly this. DBro did aerospace engineering at Imperial, and couldn’t find a job in engineering when he graduated (didn’t want to work for an arms dealer, which unfortunately is where most of the jobs are).

So he works in advertising. Like DH, who has a BA in Philosophy (rigorous, structured thinking, very highly thought of). Apparently 80% of engineering grads work in non-engineering sectors. There just aren’t enough engineering jobs in the UK to employ them all.

Either the OP is conflating "arts" degrees with low quality degrees or they just don't understand the current jobs market in this country. As myfuckingfreezer says, many of the highest growth industries in the UK are as likely to employ good arts grads as STEM grads. Even tech companies employ as many non-engineers as engineers and many in roles which are as well compensated.

The OP (and the government) seem to have an idea that success means replicating the engineering and manufacturing model that they have in Germany. Or, worse, replicating our own industrial revolution heyday, with a well paying factory job for any man who wants one. But this view is ridiculous, first Germany is already filling that role and has a 60 year head start. Secondly these industries no longer offer many of those kinds of jobs anyway due to automation. So the dream of secure, skilled manufacturing work for the many isn't going to be there even in the unlikely event we do suddenly become world experts in creating machine tools, etc.

@DelBocaVista that's a very high number of school leavers going to do something very academic - given the grade distributions I doubt that every single one of them are 'academic'. As @YourSexNotGenderIsOnFire has demonstrated.
There's a nuance here however - degrees done via distance learning as an adult have value. Presumably by people who already have experience in the field. Top up degrees by people who have done them as they worked with more practical and less 'academic' content are as valuable. Calling this a degree may also be a matter of semantics - professional certificates or whatever.
Someone with C's and D's doing the same degree straight out of school isn't the same thing.

The target was never 50% of the cohort at university anyway - it was 50% having had experience of tertiary level education, which included diplomas, FE, vocational education including higher level NVQs and vocational apprenticeships which had some level of formal training, even if that was a two week course at a local college. (I worked for the then DfES in HE policy at the time.) It was widely misreported by the media as 50% because that was the narrative it suited them to promote.

In particular, it was easy to represent it as anti-New Labour (there’s at least one comment on this thread about Tony Blair): sadly, if you believe that one you were had, as the whole policy was brought I’ve lock stock and barrel from the previous Major government which introduced it.

New Labour were keen on it too because most business organisations were at the time; but it was originally a set of Conservative education reforms designed to increase “international competitiveness” in the 90s, especially in competition with Far East Asian economies which tend to send very high proportions of their workforce to tertiary education - much higher than 50%.

That was meant to say above “It was widely misreported by the media as 50% going to university because that was the narrative it (the media) suited them to promote.”

And as a STEM graduate, I actually think that apart from people going into research roles, STEM subjects are actually least suited to being taught in a university environment. Any job that applies a STEM subject is typically so segmented and specialised that it needs an immense amount of practical on the job training to achieve proficiency and most university education in the subject beyond the basic grounding ends up wasted. You could argue that a student needs a wide exposure to a topic in order to select the part they'd like to pursue but I don't see how this differs much from the time supposedly "wasted" pursuing arts degrees. I have definitely never used more than a handful of the things I learnt in my STEM degree in my subsequent STEM-adjacent career...

I don't really like their approach of not funding humanities in the same way as tech and science. I think humanities degrees are really important - at least good ones.

On the other hand, the idea that somehow 50% of the population should have a university education was never a good one and it has been really bad for universities. We haven't ended up with many people who are really well educated, but instead many humanities degrees have become shallow and fairly worthless.

STEM degrees have in some cases been watered down too, so they are essentially technical education. As such, however, they are useful.

So I would agree that something needs to be done in education, in universities, in vocational education, and in terms of making sure students graduating before they gone on to any of them are actually educated - the fact is that students who used to come out at 15 to go to work or an apprenticeship often had a better general education than many graduating from secondary school now.

I'm not sure what to make of the Guardian article. I don't trust their reporting at a basic level, and that makes it a bit of a non-starter.

It's also worth remembering that the primary purpose of universities isn't giving people job skills, or even pushing economic development. Those are, at best, secondary, or even just tangential.

Universities shouldn't be managed as job skills courses, and they don't need to be justified on that basis.

I did a stem degree and ended up in finance rather than anything related to my degree. Based on my class there started off 20 of us (2 female) and only 12 graduated so it definitely wasn’t as popular as the humanity or art subjects. However, really in finance (and most other professions where you go on to study for a further qualification) a degree in something related isn’t a prerequisite- I know people with degrees in art, history and English who have all went on to do finance. I think some jobs may require specific degrees but a lot don’t.

@SmokedDuck

It's also worth remembering that the primary purpose of universities isn't giving people job skills, or even pushing economic development. Those are, at best, secondary, or even just tangential.

Universities shouldn't be managed as job skills courses, and they don't need to be justified on that basis.

Employability is now a key strategic priority for many universities.

It is one of the key metrics that feeds into league tables and the teaching excellence framework.

It has a huge impact on university reputation.

There is no statutory duty for universities to provide careers guidance yet there isn't a university in the country that doesn't have a careers and employability team.

At many universities (if not all) there is a responsibility to ensure that student develop a set of attributes which are directly linked to employability and academics need to demonstrate how their modules and courses do this - with help from their careers consultants.

So while universities weren't originally designed to develop employability skills it is now a key focus

DelBocaVista that's a very high number of school leavers going to do something very academic - given the grade distributions I doubt that every single one of them are 'academic'. As @YourSexNotGenderIsOnFire has demonstrated.

But it is a common myth that everyone goes to university and everyone has a degree. It didn't take long for it to be trotted out on this thread. It never does.

As someone else pointed out - that 50% target was wildly mis-reported. I worked in the sector during and remember that clearly.

Society as a whole benefits from a more educated society and if we start reducing the number people going to university or if we were to reintroduce student number caps it would be your non traditional students that suffered - those first generation students, those from low socioeconomic backgrounds and other groups who have traditionally been underrepresented in HE.

From the World Economic Forum “Skills gaps continue to be high as in- demand skills across jobs change inthe next five years. The top skills and skill groups which employers see as rising in prominence in the lead up to 2025 include groups such as critical thinking and analysis
as well as problem-solving, and skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility”

The skills gained from a History degree compare well

critical reasoning and analytical skills, including the capacity for solving problems and thinking creatively;intellectual rigour and independence, including the ability to conduct detailed research ability to construct an argument and communicate findings in a clear and persuasive manner, both orally and in writing; capability to work without direct supervision and manage your time and priorities effectively ability to discuss ideas in groups, and to negotiate, question and summarise capacity to think objectively and approach problems and new situations with an open mind appreciation of the different factors that influence the activities of groups and individuals in society.