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.

@CatsArePeople exactly!
Also might have been better if you could have gotten a job first , then gone on to do a degre once you discovered what you liked.
Instead entry level jobs all now require people to already have a degree, which makes people think they have to get one, etc and the cycle continues.

Most people don’t really care what they do - they just have to be decent at it, and it pays the bills...

My DH did history and is now a senior leaders at a university. His course mates are working in media, civil service, as accountants, in recruitment...... not one of his friends is a teacher, tour guide or historian!!

I am aware of that. But I already have a degree with "transferable skills". Studying history would have been just an expensive hobby, with actual zero added oppurtunities to my current employment opportunities.

I am aware of that. But I already have a degree with "transferable skills". Studying history would have been just an expensive hobby, with actual zero added oppurtunities to my current employment opportunities.

That different to your original post which states there are virtually no employment prospects with a history degree. Which isn't true .....

My autocorrect’s on fire this morning - I meant *employers (not explorers) in my post above 😂

@TheKeatingFive the question is nuanced.
The original purpose of university was to educate. Promote intellectualism and academic debate. For me the latter part is especially important. As you could otherwise just buy the textbook and pay someone to mark it.

Nowadays going to university and getting a degree are two different things. You can get a degree online without ever talking to any of your course mates. Universities have courses that do not require much ‘academic debate’.

So it’s very hard to give a blanket definition of the purpose of university that covers all of these cases.

I personally went to uni because I loved learning. I was saddened to see that some of my coursemates has zero interest in the learning material and just wanted to pass exams and get a good job in the City. They may have a good degree but their minds are still as small as ever

That different to your original post which states there are virtually no employment prospects with a history degree. Which isn't true .....

I meant opportunities in the field. Not random administrative role somewhere, for which any other degree is enough.

It’s almost like you need a wide range of skills and specialisms for the modern world to function. What a novel thought

Who has argued against this idea? Nobody. The question was whether, where funding for tertiary education is scarce, less should be spent on arts and humanities degrees in favour of STEM.

You have argued that PR, development of communication policies and lobbying are as important to the economy, and to the human race, as vaccine development, sustainable energy research and innovation in computing. You haven’t backed up that position other than claiming that those disciplines are ‘crucial functions of modern companies’. Having worked in many modern companies I might dispute the ‘crucial’, but the existence of those functions in the corporate world isn’t proof that they are in themselves as valuable as technical innovation.

Before they introduced degrees for everyone you could walk into a research job straight from degree. Now you need masters at least but preferably a phd to progress. This means you have to spend an average of 8yrs at Uni to attain job qualifications.
The sad thing is that all 18yr olds are under the impression that their ability to qualify for a university place automatically makes them employable at post degree level. Sadly most will have wasted 3yrs for a useless qualification when they could have been entered an apprenticeship that would give them a lifelong qualification to make money.
My DS16 is super bright but has been disillusioned by the Covid GCSE process and knows that his grades mean F all. He wants to do A levels in order to prove that under normal exam and social situations he is capable of achieving his potential. I’m starting to wonder if I should encourage him into one of the building trades. He would have no problem with training to be an electrician for example and with his organisational and people skills would have a massive advantage going forward in setting up a large business. However, all our family have done the university route, mainly in the professions, so he does see this as the norm.

The original purpose of university was to educate. Promote intellectualism and academic debate. For me the latter part is especially important.

unfortunately, the opposite is now trending in academia. The "safe space" culture etc. Think the "gender spectrum" debacle.

Before they introduced degrees for everyone you could walk into a research job straight from degree

50%Of school leavers and less than 50% of the overall population ( its around 46%) is hardly everyone.

@CatsArePeople - most people with History degrees don’t go into directly related fields but it is very employable. My DC is a History graduate. She works in tech for a large international organisation having started on their graduate scheme. Friends from her course work for the BBC, the Civil Service, in Marketing or PR. One went on to do a law conversion. None of her friends went into teaching and only one works in a field directly related to her degree - all are in graduate level positions.

The last lotus, my inital post was a question to a poster, you have budged in, mis understood my post, and even felt it was so incredibly urgent that I see your response you have @ at me

It's totally irrelevant to the question I posed to that poster.

The fact that many stem graduates end up in non stem fields does not mean that there is not a shortage of stem graduates (especially in v specific areas).

It might be that there is a natural attrition - finance is lucrative, so will take a section of stem grads each year (as specific job field is not always everyone’s priority). So maybe more physics/engineering grads are required to make up this shortfall. Of course these stem companies which have difficulty recruiting could take people without degrees or with non stem degrees and give them training (I was lucky to find a post where the employer ‘took a chance’ on people without the traditional qualifications). But they could also increase their operations abroad rather than U.K. - which I suspect is what the govt are worried about (as these companies tend to be quite high value - so U.K. could miss out).

@battenburgwithtea

Anyway who would want a doctor whose real talent is in say drama

If we had more Computer Science graduates working in corporate IT departments, and fewer arts graduates, they would undoubtedly do a better job whether their real talent was drama or not. And, guess what, they could still do drama too - there are plenty of amateur dramatics societies, which are the most common subject-related destination of ex-drama students anyway (if they're not demonstrating toys in Hamleys, being extras in epics, pretending to be zombies at the London Dungeon, running Escape Rooms or teaching drama). #justoneexample

I would put a cap on places for school leavers for university, weighted top grades only, and then create time banks to facilitate lifelong learning and pump money into that (and early years and class sizes). No reason university couldn’t develop day release from work courses for adult learners etc.

If we had more Computer Science graduates working in corporate IT departments, and fewer arts graduates, they would undoubtedly do a better job

What’s this based on?

Any employer I’ve come across values a diversity of backgrounds. No matter how ‘relevant’ a uni degree, a huge amount of training is done on the job.

I am very suspicious of these so-called Stem employee shortages - whenever people claim employee shortages, they usually mean they can’t find people with 6 degrees and umpteen skills willing to work for minimum wage round-the-clock. The same goes for constant complaints about low productivity. In IT there are people with degrees who can’t get jobs any more because of the high skills requirement, lack of training and low pay, the same as for arts jobs. It’s more and more difficult to find entry points anywhere.

The elephant in the room there is that employers now have forgotten Henry Ford’s initial dictum of paying the highest wages possible and now want to pay only the lowest, to benefit the unproductive share holders. Meanwhile the cost of living here goes through the roof, they charge us a lifetime’s debt for training and expect us to provide the equipment needed to do jobs now. New near-slaves can be imported in a globalised system, with the native language spoken the world over, whenever the locals start getting uppity.

Arts subjects are highly socially useful - it’s history knowledge combined with numeracy skills that give us both the capability to run economic systems that work for people, and see the changes in the economic systems that show clearly working people here are being screwed over. Which is why our leaders don’t like them. Unfortunately they tend to lead to jobs that are socially useful but politically vulnerable, and those same leaders have been making the political choices to destroy funding and social credibility for them through my entire life. I wouldn’t encourage anyone from a poor background to study anything but health at this moment in time, and even there the hours and conditions are ridiculous.

It might be that there is a natural attrition - finance is lucrative

This is a totally different issue though. If STEM careers aren’t lucrative enough to attract STEM grads then we should be looking at funding models, not training more people arguably more suitable for something else. STEM degrees are expensive to run.

@KeflavikAirport

I would put a cap on places for school leavers for university, weighted top grades only, and then create time banks to facilitate lifelong learning and pump money into that (and early years and class sizes). No reason university couldn’t develop day release from work courses for adult learners etc.

They already exist. They're called degree apprenticeships. They're incredibly costly and bureaucratic to run which is why they haven't been widely embraced.

A cap on student numbers which is linked to has implications for widening participation and social mobility.

**which is linked to grades

If we had more Computer Science graduates working in corporate IT departments, and fewer arts graduates, they would undoubtedly do a better job

Not true.

Meanwhile the message coming out of Brexit trade negotiations with Australia seems to be that our leaders are prepared to pay farmers to retire, decrease local food self-sufficiency, and import more to feed what slaves they’re prepared to keep. Economies is a whole system, with everything connected to everything else, which is why I mention it here. A pattern is emerging, and the worst kind of imperialism seems to be back.

Which is why I said waited top grades. To take that into account. I live in a country with time banks for lifelong learning and it works very well. Doesn’t have to be a bureaucratic nightmare.

*weighted

@KeflavikAirport

I would put a cap on places for school leavers for university, weighted top grades only, and then create time banks to facilitate lifelong learning and pump money into that (and early years and class sizes). No reason university couldn’t develop day release from work courses for adult learners etc.

When the first two New Labour governments did that in the early 2000s, employers wouldn’t engage with it; and there was widespread fraud across the system set up to manage it. Sadly!