Sadness of Open Days

[Gemauve]

So on the stand this morning at 0905, I was approached by a charming woman and her keen, enthusiastic daughter. It's the first university they're visiting, in fact the first university that either of them has ever been to, but they're really looking forward to ... and they reel off a list of good places. Daughter really wants to do our subject, and has clearly checked out the top places.

And what A Levels are you doing?

Ah.

Well, you can't come here, and for what it's worth, we're slightly more relaxed than the other places you've named and I know that you won't be able to go to any of them to do our subject or anything even vaguely related. I didn't say "and on past experience from when we were even more relaxed to the point that we might have admitted you, you would almost certainly fail, and the last cohort where we did that less than 5% of them made it to finals". Sorry.

"My school said these subjects would be ideal".

They're catastrophically wrong. Did you look at any prospectuses before choosing your subjects? No. And off they went, their hopes destroyed by 0915.

What the fuck are schools playing at? Why do they let children who don't have middle class parents get into this situation?

I'm guessing here, but STEM plus German (especially if with a year in industry in Germany) would be an excellent basis for a career in anything automotive.

MoreBeta is cynical, but not necessarily wrong.

I have taught in a low-ranking post-1992 university and I can confirm that universities absolutely do cobble together combination courses, combining modules that already exist as part of more mainstream degree courses. They then admit to these not-terribly-coherent combination courses candidates whose A-level grades strongly suggest that they do not have the capacity for abstract thinking which would enable them to succeed at degree level study (I have personal experience of students being admitted to a course like this with a C and a D in non-facilitating subjects).

Lots of these students then fail the first year and retake, or somehow scrape into the second or even third year trailing re-takes for core first year modules. These students are never realistically going to get degrees, even with really high-quality support (which they don't always get, but even if they do). It is absolutely about bums on seats and income for the university.

Not all combination courses are like this, of course, but some are. And the fact that the course content is spread across different disciplines makes it diffficult to ensure coherent support across all the students subjects, which again makes it less likely that they will come out with any kind of a degree, let alone a professionally valuable one, at the end of it.

It is sad that degree courses should come with a 'Buyer Beware' warning, but that is the reality.

I don't know about STEM + MFL but there is a bit of truth in the suggestion that some courses are cobbled together to get bums on seats.

I'm regularly asked to consider teaching small parts of courses, and frankly some of them are dreadful. Ill thought out. Waste of money.

And yes, populated by students who can least afford to waste their time and money.

Makes me very .

Crossed with you 404.

I did maths with study in Europe and went to a German university. They were desperate for English STEM students to study there as part of the Erasmus exchange so that they could send students here.

I'm currently trying to persuade my son that he should do his year abroad in Germany as he did German higher as I think this will be much more useful long term with the German industrial base. He's worried his German has become rusty and is more inclined to go to US/Canada to indulge his sporting hobby and see friends, or Japan (because he like anime, teenagers, sigh)

I would agree 'though that some degrees are cobbled together at all levels of institutions and there are students who would be better suited to purely vocational or practical subjects who are allowed onto courses to which they are not suited in order to get bums on seats.

Changes in HE funding and the desire of successive govts to create a market in HE have created the problem. Increasingly universities have to look at the individual cost of teaching a given students and so smaller, niche degree courses are dropped even 'though staff might enough teaching them and students might enjoy and succeed taking them. Minimum numbers for modules are introduced and everyone's (staff and students) satisfaction goes down; teaching no longer is research led because lecturers don't get the chance to teach their particular specialism because only n-3 students want to take it rather than the n required.

I suspect that the mixed degrees are also in response to a perceived demand by either parents or employers.

There is some prejudice against pure degrees (particularly from less well regarded Institutes), being seen as irrelevant and a waste if time. Anything that sounds a bit more vocational or "useful" sounds a better option to us HE people. As an employer my natural inclination would be to feel an applicant with Geography/MFL graduate is more rounded and have a greater set of skills and knowledge to offer.

I guess, it is a natural development of more younger people becoming graduates, that they are feeling the need to do something different to stand out from the crowd. It is also the way Non-RG can offer something a bit different, some of the better regarded post 92 Uni's are often top of their field for certain more vocational/combination courses. That was always the benefit of Polys.

*us NON HE people

I suspect that the mixed degrees are also in response to a perceived demand by either parents or employers.

It would be very interesting to look at the background of students studying, say, "Game Design", "Computer Science" and "Maths". My guess is that by whatever measure you chose, parental highest qualification would increase as you went through that series.

See also "Journalism", "Media Studies", "English" or "Accountancy", "Business Studies"", "Economics", or "Law", "something I can't think of right now", "History".

In each case, the first sounds more "job" but (all other things being equal, massive handwaving, simplifying assumptions, some postgraduate study may be required, etc, etc) the last is at least as well respected when getting a job in the first-named field. Both knowing this, and having the confidence to do it, is cultural capital.

Sorry, but a business studies degree is not more respected than an accountancy degree when going for a job in accountancy. There are much better respected and worthwhile degrees than accountancy, for getting into accountancy, but business studies isn't one of them.

...and neither is economics.

I'm really glad I went for a more vocational degree at a Uni-you-never-heard-of rather than stay at a top10-in-world-Uni where i would have got a degree with great theoretical grounding but few practical skills. That decision opened so many doors for me.

DS will aim for Game Design at best if he gets to Uni at all (bright enough to do maths, if he could be asked). Nothing to do with level of parent aspiration.

I know a bit about weird-mixed-course development... to me, the mixed degrees seem to be designed for people who didn't get on their first choice course at UniZ but would still like to go there, so it's a way for the University to say... "Hey, you didn't get the grades you wanted for Medicine-Law-X, but this course is rather similar!" Colleague in DeptA described it as DeptB standing outside our door with a bucket catching the random apples that fell off the tree (of accepted students). As far as DeptsA, B or Uni is concerned, it's a way to get extra income in what has become a very competitive market for students, a way to pay for more lecturers who might do good research, too. Like Uni efforts to recruit from overseas.

A million years ago when I started chartered accountancy training most of us were graduates and most of us had done degrees that had very little to do with Accountancy. Most of us were mystified that with the whole field of human knowledge to explore for three or four years anyone would choose to do a degree in Accountancy.

Those who did have Accountancy degrees got exemption from the Graduate Conversion Course (or whatever it was called) and that was the only advantage. Those who had done Economics, Law, Statistics or one or two other relevant subjects got specific exemptions from one or more papers in the GCC. That was the only advantage they had, in terms of exams.

Having said that, it was a huge shock to the system to me with a Classics degree to find myself studying Economics, Statistics and various other aspects of Maths. Not my natural milieu at all, and probably my greatest non-maternal achievement that I did eventually get through the exams.

The Scottish Institute did at that time require an accountancy degree, I think, but I believe even now the ICAEW doesn't. No idea what the attitude of the big firms is these days.

(I subsequently moved out of Accountancy altogether, but that's a whole different story.)

I wasn't thinking about a degree that may (or not) link to a specific field, but about employment in areas that tend to get lots of applicants from graduates.

We may not know an awful lot about specific institutions or degrees, but faced with a pile of 150 CVs and applications for short-listing, I suspect we would be more inclined to initially put in the interview group, someone with Accountancy rather than Maths or someone with a Computer Science degree rather than a History of Art degree.

After reading this thread, I guess I may be making a mistake thinking this way, but felt it was a useful perspective on that way a lot of employers do sift through CVs.

narvine that's interesting about economics and accountancy. Not what I would have thought.

But then I know very little about it. Other than the fact that my accountant, Raj, is ace!

I suspect we would be more inclined to initially put in the interview group, someone with Accountancy rather than Maths or someone with a Computer Science degree rather than a History of Art degree.

But if you're employing an accountant to be an accountant, you're not interested in their degree, you're interested in their accountancy practicing qualifications and their experience as an accountant.

Conversely, if you're employing people to train as an accountant, you probably do "know an awful lot about specific institutions or degrees" (or, more cynically, think you know), because companies that employ people on training contracts take a long term view and a take a lot of care over it.

That's why there are plenty of large companies that, effectively, only recruit from a short list of courses at a short list of universities. And in STEM-ish that list is likely to be something like Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Imperial, Bristol, a few more, and therefore by definition the courses they choose will be traditionally-titled, more general courses simply because that's what those universities deliver.

I think most employers would put a Maths graduate into the interview pile, and maybe Accountancy, I'm not sure about Computer Science - it really depends on the job and where the degree was from. History of Art is famous for reducing your earnings capacity compared to A'levels.

Also someone with a degree in PPE from Oxford or Economics from LSE is very different to an Economics graduate from the local standard Uni.

Actually as with everything else, context is all. A 3rd in an accountancy degree from somewhere you've never heard of will not open the doors in the profession that a 1st in economics from LSE will. But then someone with a 1st in economics from LSE will quite probably have better offers than the big 4 or tiers below. But the top accountancy degrees are not only well respected in the profession they are designed in conjunction with the big 4 (some of them anyway) and indeed some of the big 4 fund students to study those degrees (at Exeter and Manchester, for example). Those are very good very well respected degrees. And they are a better bet than an economics degree from anywhere other than say Oxbridge if the profession is what you want (although again, context - people with both types of qualification, if they are good enough, would get in, probably). But actually - while there will always be a place for people with accountancy degrees in the profession, if you look at the people at the top - many of them (not all) will have degrees in other disciplines - and we are actively seeking graduates in other disciplines and also seeking to further influence the course content of accountancy degrees to make them less narrow.

History of Art is famous for reducing your earnings capacity compared to A'levels.

I saw an interesting fisking of that.

It pointed out that (based on a small, but not entirely laughable, study) although History of Art has poor outcomes for personal earnings, it appears people with History of Art live in households with high household incomes.

The obvious hypothesis ("more research needed") is that HoA graduates either come from old money and don't need to work and/or marry well; Kate Middleton isn't earning, but she's living in a household with a lot of money.

Once you strip out that effect (which you might call the "nice gels" or "fine filly" effect) and look at the HoA graduates who are actually working, they don't look hugely different to any other humanities graduates from similar institutions. It's just that their cohort contains a disproportionate number of people who aren't working because they don't need to.

But Narvine, "all my life I have wanted to be a tax accountant" is the standard cliche of implausible personal statements. Again, it's the cultural capital of later choices: how many people aged 17 have their heart set on accountancy? Indeed, how many people aged 17 know what accountants do?

Who's a better bet: someone whose parents (probably) steered them into something, or someone with a slightly different degree who's coming to you out of choice?

Gemauve - that will reassure my friends who aren't old money and have a duaghter who has just graduated.

Speaking as a tax accountant, when I left University with my BSc I vowed never to work in an office.
I drifted into accountancy entirely by mistake.
When I went for an interview with one of the Big 8 yes, I am that old they confirmed that people without accountancy degrees make better accountants because they have a broader outlook on life.

Anybody who wants to be an accountant at 17 needs their head examined IMHO

The Computer Game design Degree is an odd one - I happen to know some of the lecturers and the UCAS point demand is rising year on year as word of the employability and business startup success of their graduates spreads

The most recent discussion on the comparable merits of various degrees, has added yet another dimension to the difficulties a 16 year od with parents "not being in the know" is faced with when making choices.

Selecting which A-levels to take now seems quite simple in comparison with this minefield!

Yes - even if you do know that there are questions to be asked, and where there may be sources of information, if you're not an 'insider' then you can feel swamped by too many statistics! We've got the times 'good university guide' (think that's what it's called), but we only heard of unistats because we went to an open day where it was mentioned.