dumbing down universities

[TheFury]

Does anyone consider how this new policy forcing universities to discriminate both against privately educated kids, or state-educated kids from top selective schools, could result in a hugely damaging brain drain as their parents simply choose foreign institutions instead.

Elite universities in America are awash with huge endowments for scholarships and they value the superb education provided by the best British schools. They will snap up all the bright students, as will other elite institutions in Australia, Israel and India (one of the most selective engineering institutions in India is already harder to get into than Oxford or Cambridge).

Britain cannot afford to lose this reservoir of often expensively educated talent. Our universities will deteriorate markedly if they are forced to take in students who are relatively ignorant and ill-educated, and if they introduce bridging courses to educate them properly first, their fees will simply soar ever higher and higher.

The British universities will be left with the dregs, and their standards will plummet just as surely as general school standards in this country have done in the past 30 years. And for the same reason. Because of meddlesome, well-intentioned politicians, whose own children always have the contacts to succeed come what may.

OP, are you worried your investment has been unwise?

I am far more worried by the dumbing down caused by the withdrawal of all funding for teaching the Arts and Humanities, the massive cuts in research funding, the inane requirement for all research to be able to be assessed in terms of 'impact', and the 'loss of talent' caused by poorer kids being put off by massive fees. To be honest I'm not that bothered about a few public school kids realising that they don't have an automatic entitlement to a place at a socially desirable institution.

Its fine by me as my kids are obviously the dregs as they go to a non selective state school

How classy - anyone not privately educated being described as 'the dregs'. There have been talks of private school kids being discriminated against for as long as I can remember, and frankly, that's mostly a myth. I should know, I was admissions tutor at Oxford for several years.
How about the nonsensical discrimination induced by the fee increase? Not getting sleepless nights over that one, then?
I think your mistake is in mistaking money for brains, or private education for talent. Fortunately, things are a lot more complex than that.

I don't think that this new policy will dumb down degrees, but I am concerned about how grade inflation is not confined to GCSE's and A Levels. 14% of students get a 1st now, compared to 8% twenty years ago, and 48% now get a 2i.

A tutor at Oxford used to say if he had a State school pupil with 3 A's at A'level they were bright, if they came from Private school he wasn't sure. US unis are also looking for bright pupils, and if Mummy and Daddy have paid for private school I would expect they only get a minimum of fee help (its is also normally not a needs blind admission for UK students).

BTW the dregs at my kids State school (non-selective), usually manage to send 10+ to Oxbridge every year. They also have the great A'level grades etc. of their private school counterparts.

I think what you're trying to say is that the UK seems not to realise the value of the knowledge economy. I think this has been true for the last thirteen years. I also think it should be up to the universities who they admit. They shouldn't be forced to do anything, especially now the government's barely paying in.

Your language is not choice however: and I think the poster who said it's harder to achieve good grades in state education is also right. I've also heard a probably ridiculous statistic that BCD etc state schoolers who get into elite institutions are more likely to "add value" and get firsts. I read that here!

In fact it's pretty ironic that more control over admissions is being demanded just as they're being virtually privatised.

I'm worried about the exact opposite.
That the advantage for kids whose parents have money will continue to grow :(

Sarky: lots of evidence that companies are starting school-leaver take-up again. I really hope this is true. They can barely discriminate between the masses of two-oners emerging every summer so they might as well grab them early and train em up.

I mean at 18 not 16. This is so sensible and would be so great for us.

And I am worried that the course that I teach on will be 'dumbed down' as our pool of applicants becomes restricted to those who don't fear huge debt.

When I say "lots of evidence" I mean everybody's talking about it and I've heard a few company names mentioned. Not, like, peer reviewed studies or anything.

Yes but the "advantage" of a uni education has already been downgraded by the fact that everyone's got one.

Agree that some (many?) degrees have been downgraded.
But there are still professions that are (rightly) closed to those without the relevant degree. I would be very sad to see my course becoming restricted in terms of finance.

wtf? £9,000 pa tuition fees; possible closure of some universities; student riots; nearly 1 million unemployed 16-24 year olds and you're worried about this? I think you're being unbelievably elitist, myopic and self serving; but as a tory you'll probably feel those are positive traits!

Received this week:

I am writing to you, as a member of our alumni community, to let you know about the University of Southampton?s position on undergraduate tuition fees. With our positive response to the radical changes in the funding of higher education, I am confident Southampton will continue to maintain our leading position as a place of opportunity for talented students, regardless of background.

It often comes as a surprise when people discover that the University already has an exceptional track record in attracting talented students from all backgrounds. Currently 85% of our UK undergraduate students come from state schools. Over 20% of our students come from households where the annual family income is less than £25,000.

We have set our fees in order to secure the future of the University following government funding cuts, and to be in a position to invest in improvements in the quality of teaching and the overall experience of students at Southampton.

The University has made the decision to charge £9,000 per year for undergraduate tuition fees in 2012. I am encouraged that more than a third of our students will be eligible for some form of fee relief and financial assistance. This decision will be subject to approval by the Office for Fair Access.

From 2012, over 20% of our students will qualify for our full £3,000 fee waiver and pay the minimum of £6,000 for each year of study. Overall, more than 35% of all our students will qualify for some form of fee relief under current plans. In addition many students, especially those from Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, will be also eligible for bursary support under our proposals. We will ensure that Southampton is a place of opportunity for all talented students, regardless of their personal circumstances

Given this environment, you will not be surprised to hear that the University of Southampton is actively identifying ways to diversify our income and manage our costs. For example, we have had great success in building partnerships with business that now yield up to £50m annually in research support. Southampton alumni and friends continue to demonstrate confidence in our institution through critical philanthropic support. We have also worked hard to achieve internal operational efficiencies ? reducing the University?s administrative costs by 10% in the past year. We want to be certain that the highest proportion of our income is devoted to our core work in education and research.

I am convinced that our confident and progressive response to these unprecedented challenges will allow us to continue our world-class education and research.

It is my intention for Southampton to maintain the standards of excellence that we have become known for and to protect the reputation of this University and the value of your degree. Now more than ever before we need your support to act as an ambassador for your University. You can help me promote the positive changes we are making at Southampton that will enable the best and brightest students, regardless of background, to follow in your footsteps in pursuing their studies here. You can help by offering a placement to one our graduates, sharing your expertise with our students, or making a personal gift to the University. More information about all of these opportunities and other ways to support Southampton are available on our website: www.southampton.ac.uk/alumni

We sincerely appreciate the interest and support of our alumni community ? thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Don Nutbeam
Vice-Chancellor

I'll assume he KNOWS what he's on about.

Hussy - those 16-24 years olds can largely blame Labour. Student riots - blame the students. Cuts in funding - blame Labour. Education dumbing down - blame Labour.

Hm, OP hasn't come back to tell us all we're wrong. I'm actually slightly disappointed.

Letter with the same sort of message has gone out to all Oxford students too.

No letter from Cambridge, but a phone call asking us to contribute to bursaries for students...

While I agree that children who are privately educated do have certain advantages, no-one actually passes their exams for them! To suggest they are not as clever as state school students with the same grades seems ridiculous to me.

All students, regardless of their background, or where they went to school should be treated the same, if they have the same A level grades.

I don't think calling anyone "the dregs" helps your cause OP.

well that's a good point too

I think the OP, while shooting herself in the foot in the register of her post ['the dregs'], does have a good underlying point about the general devaluation of the universities, and we all see the gloom there. I think the deletion of the humanities teaching budget and even more the ridiculous nonsense about Impact - nobody even knows what the f* it is - will cast a long and hideous shadow. This govt is basically made of utter philistines.

diabolo, I think you might be misreading - it's often that state kids are better at organising/self-motivating, though this is NOT always the case. Personally, I've never found kids from a particular sector smarter or dumber in any large overall way. But what we all have to note is that 10% of kids now get 3 As, and Oxbridge can't take all of them, so other selections processes come into play.

Oxbridge are bending over backwards to set up a good bursary system and they do have the private donations for it. Well, kinda. I'm not seeing any redundancy notices yet, either.

sieglinde - I definitely read in the Telegraph yesterday, that a child with an A and 2 B's from a state school would be given preference over a privately educated child with 3 A's.

Unfortunately, I cant get the article out and tell you which University or person that was speaking as I've just done all my recycling.