To think that universities giving out unconditionals/nominal offers to everyone just devalues even going or having a degree

[Saygoodday]

DS is applying this year. He’s applied to and got offers from a mixture: 2 RG’s, 2 that require BBC and one post 1992 university that has given him an unconditional offer. Obviously not everyone can be ultra academic and there is a place for vocational qualifications and courses with lower entry requirements within the university system, this is not a case of snobbery or advocating that all universities should require four As. However, Lincoln this year has seemingly given out unconditional offers to literally anyone who has applied, I recently saw another university that would make offers for LLB (hons) Law for 64 UCAS points, etc. Lincoln in particular, it’s about an hour from me, has become a favourite for kids who’ve done no work for their a levels who know they will still get into uni. It’s not just Lincoln there are a big number who will take students basically with any results. To me it doesn’t feel at all fair that those who’ve done no work should get the same qualifications as someone who gets A’s. It feels like it just devalues the whole idea of going to university and getting a degree if you can just get one despite being on for terrible grades in your a-levels. Aibu?

It’s interesting that you think that I’m ‘lecturing’ - all I’m doing is sharing my opinion. Is it the level of detail you think, that makes it a ‘lecture’ instead of an ‘opinion’? Or because I have experience in the field? The devaluation of ‘expert knowledge’ is a thing.

Also r.e social mobility… statistics are great, but you come back to me when you have worked with many young people with degrees and no graduate jobs… because nobody told them that just a degree is not enough. I remember one young lady calling me up in tears. I review lots of CV’s, and have helped many into jobs when they have found nothing 5+ years after graduation.

The solution - what should be happening, but isn’t at the rate or should be. Is that people like your DS can get a job. He doesn’t have to be 100% ‘passionate’, it doesn’t have to be a career for life. Just something as a stepping stone (much like uni, actually!).
From there he can move on to something he actually likes. Maybe quit and go to uni THEN, with some experience under his belt.
This is quite difficult to do these days because anything that is non-retail/caring etc and not clearly ‘vocational’ specifies a degree and gets lots of applications. People without can’t get a look in. Even though they have been working since they were teens and would do a brilliant jobs. I’m always impressed by the quality of work produced by our apprentices.

just because a lot of people with degrees get there eventually. Doesn’t mean we should accept it. As I mentioned the students I work with will have counted in the ‘social mobility’ stats but the degree didn’t help at all. Presumably if you did a degree with a defined career path this isn’t a problem, but you’re talking about people who have ‘no idea’ what to do.

*not students, graduates

My DS wanted to go to university! Can we not make it about him maybe?

People who says 'just get a job' often have no understanding of the employment market in certain poorly connected parts of the UK. Thsi is quite a well trodden argument on MN. I have no doubt at all that three years working at Clarks would not have set him up better.

I definitely do not devalue expert knowledge. You seem to be devaluing my knowledge of 18 year olds, though? Maybe you aren't and I am just being defensive.

I think university is one of a few paths. For some, university isn't a good choce but for laods , it is the making of them.

And of course, quite a lot of these students who go to uni with very low A Level grades have had many disadvantages prior to this in life. These are the ones being sneered at by a PP .

I do agree that lots of jobs that didn't used to require degrees now do and that this may be a porblem. However, this does often raise pay for the workers in these sectors and leads to more career paths. Working in a bank would be an example, although possibly not a good one because some banks do offer school leaver apprenticeships.

To be fair, depending on the subject area, I think lots of us could probably get through a qualification of the online learning then an exam type in 5 days.

But that would be more of a reflection of people not having to learn much more than we already have to complete it. It doesn’t necessarily even mean that it’s not a decent qualification - or that it wouldn’t be challenging for other people coming from a different academic/professional background.

It’s hard to say really.

And you actually believe the external examination process is fit for purpose?

I didn’t say that. However, the present system does go some way towards ensuring equitable assessment.

There isn’t an assessment free for all, as some seem to believe.

You don't get a degree just by going. If you aren't capable, then you will fail or get a poor degree down the line. In some Europaean countries, all applicants to universities are accepted, but many fail their first-year exams and do not complete their courses or get degrees. I think it's better, and a more efficient use of student and staff time, and student and taxpayer money, to be more selective at the start; but doing it the other way is not devaluing the degree.

The strong feeling I get on MN is that there is a swathe of posters who just don't want better access to HE.

A potentially interesting anecdotal observation I have based on the academics in my social circle (as a former academic, this is a larger than expected proportion of people I know!) is that very many of us simply do not view a university education as the high point against which everything else should be measured.

‘Better access to HE’ is not really that useful as a societal goal because it’s not necessarily appropriate for everyone and doesn’t necessarily deliver good outcomes for those accessing it. For a variety of reasons.

There are a lot of ways to access training and experience to facilitate a successful career or to open opportunities for people. Going to university is not and should not be the be all and end all.

The problem since the 90s is that HE has been pushed as what young people
should do and not going as a failure. There’s been a lack of investment in other routes and a somewhat misguided focus on getting as many young people as possible into university.

HE institutions should be inclusive and should educate people from across society. Obviously. But ‘access to HE’ as an end in itself is kind of missing the point.

@Piggywaspushed If you read what I wrote properly I wasn’t talking about a retail job, like Clarks. There are a lot of ‘proper jobs’ requiring a degree for filtering that used to not need one. I’m talking about these.
It’s a chicken and egg situation though, isn’t it?
’Poorly connected parts’ have no jobs. Ergo people have to move elsewhere.
the choices could be - move elsewhere for uni. An apprenticeship. Or a job.

At the moment perhaps uni is the best option because apprenticeships are few, and these jobs all need degrees. In this case, yes! People do need degrees, because otherwise they will be locked out. So it is a good choice for your DS to go to uni, and your initial statement that ‘everyone should have access to uni’ stands.

But taking it to the logical conclusion, if everyone (yes I appreciate currently is 50%) went to uni at 18 - generic degree - it would again lose its ability as a filtering mechanism. And we’d be back to square one. So where does it end?

That’s why uni as the be all and end all, as a philosophy doesn’t work. Getting some form of HE, yes. But not going away to uni for 3 years as the default, coming out with a generic degree.

Btw we are already a lot luckier in the U.K. with access to HE. In Europe a lot of people are admitted, but there are very tough weeder exams. Even undergraduates have a viva. At the same time there are plenty of alternative paths, with qualification that are also higher education even if they aren’t a university degree.

Should we therefore seriously think about the A level system and indeed how pupils are assessed and graded at school?

Good question @mids2019 , if slightly beyond the scope of my expertise, I'm afraid. I have worked in educational research and in schools, but never at a university. I suspect that if universities really felt the A level system wasn't fit for purpose, they would push harder for another metric to be used, but that feeling is not based on any great personal knowledge! I know there are some posters on MN who do, or have, worked in university admissions, so it would be interesting to hear their take on the value of A levels. I'm certainly not saying that A levels aren't important at the time they are taken, but that their importance diminishes quite rapidly once a degree has been acquired, and become virtually irrelevant if you have a post-grad degree.

I would have to say there are unfortunately strong correlations between A level performance and general academic success at university of we accept some universities are more rigorous than others.

It may seem counterintuitive but actually the pedagogic research data does not fully support this view. Apart from a few outliers who gain outstanding results throughout school and university, the vast majority of people experience educational peaks and troughs throughout their lives, or certainly their younger years. Better A level results will give you more options, and might win you a place at a more highly regarded university. However, there does not appear to be any direct correlation between better A level results and better degree performance.

@Piggywaspushed this is point J was trying to make.
University is an academic institution. A lot of ‘academic’ skills such as researching, writing dissertations etc.
It is a strength like any other. And going does make you better than anybody else. It means you have academic skills. Delved deep into a subject matter.
It doesn’t mean that other qualifications and knowledge isn’t valuable, and sometimes is more appropriate for things. As I and PP discussed earlier actually for things like programming which is practical someone with only all the theory isn’t going to be useful. They’d be a great computer science researcher, but a good programmer? Maybe not.

By stamping out everyone else and forcing them all into degrees we are creating a systemic issue pretending they are all equal.

individuals should make the choices suitable for them now. But that doesn’t mean we should try to make the system better.

*doesnt
*everything else
*shouldn’t

I actually think we agree but the porblem is you say there are many routes for young people and then also acknowledge there aren't really?

squidward , you do this too..

There are a lot of ways to access training and experience to facilitate a successful career or to open opportunities for people.

Then...

There’s been a lack of investment in other routes

Thsi doesn't make much sense!

I still think no one has satisfactorily explained what more academic leaning, middle ability students should do (eg a BCC types student with no desire to wok in HR/ admin/ computing/ a bank / trades)

The issue probably starts back at school level with the 'othering' of BTecs. The lack of BTec/T level provision in many ordinary schools, especially outside of cities and, therefore , a lack of progression to anything except university for a particular clutch of students.

the fact that there are other possible routes lots of them is not the same as the investment in (and the societal value) placed on those routes.

In fact, the overwhelming focus on
university as the best route and the prioritisation of funding for it, actually makes it even more important to recognise that there are lots of ways that people can access training and facilitate successful careers.

Let’s stop funnelling everything at HE.

Unconditional offers have been around forever. My Dad got one more than half a century ago. I got one from a RG university back in the 90s. I also got a low-ball offer (not quite unconditional but not far off) from KCL on the condition I turned down Cambridge. I didn't.

@SquidwardBound I couldn't agree more. A lad I taught some years ago (around the time university fees went stratospheric) decided to do an apprenticeship with a local carpenter instead. Then he worked for a builder. By age 25 he had his own business doing attic conversions. He owned his own house, had a baby and was getting married. Most of his old school friends had mountains of debt, were working on dead-end office jobs and living in rented flat-shares.

@LincolnAcademic That is a really informative post. I think that newer universities like Lincoln are often far more committed to the quality of the undergraduate experience than universities whose reputation is secure. This includes the teaching and learning experience. Some universities have a culture of treating undergraduates as an irritating adjunct to academic research.

😄. I certainly see research as a barrier to teaching. Don’t get me wrong if I had more time I’d love to do some but my priority has to be teaching, student support, prep and course admin and that takes over 50 hours a week!

Yip - that is my experience too. Sadly some of the students could have done exceptionally well if tutored in their native tongue, but they wanted the kudos of going to a top UK University.

The feeder "International Colleges" just fuel aspirations for students who lack the ability and/or the English required to you know, get a degree taught in English. But they have the funding to come and study in the UK.

I've also heard very senior academics complain about the standard of their PhD students who are just told to get on with it - they end up having graduate teaching assistants tutor them aka correcting their work.

It is soul destroying and one of the reasons I got out.

OK, so (vaguely hypothetical) student. Three A Levels : Spanish, politics, history at CCC. No skills or talents of any note. No SEN. No interest in or aptitude for trades, business /marketing, banking/media. This student is no atypical and those A levels are not vocational.

Just wandering what they are imagined to be able to find post 18...

Off the top of my head - apprenticeships in healthcare, environmental health and safety, waste management. Civil service. Operations and logistics. Project management. Local authority apprenticeship schemes.

What research have you done - have you searched for graduate schemes, looked at top graduate employee, sectors etc? If you ask the university will give you a list of employers at their career fair, and you can have a look at what sort of jobs they offer. ‘Gradue sectors’ , targetjobs are a good resource.

Unfortunately for humanities graduates the majority of them are probably going to be in the things your son doesn’t like, such as ‘business’ (which encompasses a wide range of roles, so not sure what this actually means).

And I’ll also say this - a lot of people , even graduates just ‘fall into’ something they don’t particularly enjoy. And use it as a stepping stone. Some people never find a job they ‘enjoy’ as much as we’re supposed to. Work is work, you do it to enable a good life doing the stuff you actually want. If people won the lottery most would probably stop work.

It might be helpful perhaps to look at ‘attributes’ of a job. E.g does he like talking to people? Fast paced environment, or steady? Does he like being in the spotlight, or behind the scenes? And a ‘love/tolerate/hate/ scale. As a plan B if he cannot find something that clicks he can go with something that is tolerable and won’t be soul destroying.

There are a couple of good career tests that have been mentioned on these forums - Morrisby I think is one of them.

I didn't say that was my DS!
Similar to him but not him.

My DS is now doing an MA...

Morrisby, by the way, simply cannot cope wit anyone wo is not very able and doesn't do STEM or English, history etc.

But... civil service apprenticeships are vanishingly rare for school leavers, several you name there are STEM and LA apprenticeships are grad things. Most of those things you suggest wouldn't be available in a provincial, poorly connected place.

My DS's friend is doing a degree apprenticeship in Logistcs and is doing very well but his BTecs led them to that. He also had high post 16 grades.

I wouldn't stop work if I won the lottery fwiw.

Just reread your post - you are talking about graduate schemes. I was talking about what some posters think/suggest an 18 year old should do - since going to uni is the wrong answer...

Graduate civil service apprenticeships were paused. I think they have just restarted.

No, I was talking about apprenticeships.
Just google ‘apprenticeships/school leaver programs’ , I’m not going to posts all the links. You say those are ‘grad things’ but there are quite a few on their websites.
‘Graduate schemes’ was only to point out that for someone with those interests there is no magical job that university will uncover, without you doing your own research.