Are some degrees more equal than others?

[sheepdogdelight]

Musing upon this really.

If student A gets a 2:1 from Oxford.
Student B gets a 2:1 from Aston
Student C gets a 2:1 from Wolverhampton

Are these degrees all of equal value?

I know some people will say the one from Oxford is worth more, because, well Oxford. And the one from Wolverhampton is worth less, because, ex polytechnic.
But have the students achieved equal academic excellence in reality?

So is it ‘worse’ to do an Art degree and end up as an Art teacher (because of not making it as an artist) than it is to do a Maths degree and end up as a Maths teacher?

"I have 4 lawyer children

Why did they decide to follow in your footsteps "

We would have to ask each of the 4 of them. My sibling is a doctor (NHS consultant in exactly the same speciality as my father was although different cities). My great grandfather was a coal miner as were both his sons. I suppose a lot of people have always taken the job of their parent - the baker's son becoming a baker etc.
Eg why are those 4 lawyers not a doctor like my sibling for example, never mind my other child who read ancient history and was a postman for 3 years and now 4 years as a food grocery delivery man (and very happily so). I would say other than the one of mine who did science A levels it was because they felt they were not good enough at science to do those A levels which is why medicine was ruled out.

Their father is an organist and teacher. He is brilliant at it but was always a bit cross his father was fed up with founding a company in the 1970s with all the strikes and other problems that he persuaded all his sons not to go into business careers. I kept music as a hobby and am happy with that choice. We have seen so many good musicians the best in their school and very good on their music degrees etc who then come begging at the door to teach at the school at whatever it is an hour, their hopes of work even in a leading orchestra dashed never mind a professional career.

That does not mean all lawyers, doctors, bankers etc do well. Some fail or are in lower paid work and happily are so. It would be a very boring world if we were all the same.

So is it ‘worse’ to do an Art degree and end up as an Art teacher (because of not making it as an artist) than it is to do a Maths degree and end up as a Maths teacher?

I guess we could ask what skills are more useful to our economy and society? Which would add more value - maths skills or artistic skills?

I'm guessing Maths.

These people are a huge cost? What does that mean? Are you implying that they don't end up working at all because they can't make a career in the area they studied in? That hardly seems likely. They'll be looking for graduate level work in whatever area they can get it.

You may want to live in a world where there are no Art teachers and no creative people. I don't. What a utilitarian view of the world to think that you should only study something you can easily make money out of.

So not only do you do not want Art / Music / Drama / Dance to be followed at undergraduate level, you also believe they should not be taught in schools, because you want those subjects to be denied qualified teachers?

I presume you think the same about school children and undergraduates studying Theology/ History/ Classics -/ English - or are those ok because a tiny proportion if students who study those go on to be successful politicians / lawyers?

@cantkeepawayforever - I think It’s important to have incentives for people to do jobs that our society and economy needs. So if we are lacking nurses or engineers or whatever, fund more places at university for these degrees (make them cheaper, give scholarships if people work in the industry for 10 years or whatever). That’s not to say that we shouldn’t have creative arts, sport or humanities - but simply that we should not fund a large excess of higher educational places for which there are only a small number of jobs.

fine to have recreational ballet/football/pottery/music and having 2 or 3 specialist tertiary institutions in the country. But we shouldn’t be encouraging unis to start 3 year ballet courses just because lots of people want to study it.

Could we acknowledge that people enjoy ballet and do a module of a physio/personal training/health coach/child health course with it? Or perhaps do a ballet diploma so people can teach others but not necessarily to a full 3 year degree in it - I think those things are more pragmatic and would take into account the cost of providing tertiary education (which may not be paid off by the student).

I appreciate that there is a need for art and art teachers in our society. I gave my opinion on the question whether an art degree or a maths degree was 'better' - I replied that this depends on what skills our society values more, which skills add more value to our economy and society. And I'm guessing that we need more maths skills than art skills. I never implied that we don't need any arts or music skills!

Just going back to the funding point, you are being a little disingenuous here @Lilacsunflowers. The reason many students do not pay back their loans is on account of the high – some would say scandalous – interest rates.

If it was actually a loan and had a 0% interest rate, the vast majority of students would re-pay their loans in full. So it is actually the student finance companies who are benefiting from the current system rather than the students themselves or wider society.

Could we acknowledge that people enjoy ballet and do a module of a physio/personal training/health coach/child health course with it? Or perhaps do a ballet diploma so people can teach others but not necessarily to a full 3 year degree in it - I think those things are more pragmatic and would take into account the cost of providing tertiary education (which may not be paid off by the student).

I have a family member studying for a ballet teaching degree. Better to get a proper degree to enable them to teach in schools. There’s a lot of placements as well as theory. Currently getting £50 an hour to teach classes at the weekend as an undergraduate in their early 20’s.

I think we need to accept that high pay doesn’t correlate to anything half the time. Take TV presenters. People queuing up to do it but still the pay is ridiculously high for a job that requires no specialist skills or training ( look how many enter from Big Brother or other reality shows).
Other people earn many times more than say, MP’s for arguably less important jobs. Let people do degrees in whatever they want. They might find a niche high paying job or end up in the public sector but hopefully they can write and think better for the Uni experience.

There are very few high paying tv jobs. If there were loads we would not have thousands of outbofveitk actors. I don’t believe we don’t need these people, but by any measure, we don’t need as many.Very few end up as teachers.

High pay usually does mean something. Usually global salaries and competition. Or you have to be very very talented to get the high paying job. I think salaries do reflect talent and the fact that most people don’t have the requisite skills.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
You may not be aware that loads of courses don’t have grads that get grad level work or go into masters level education. There are around 50% of grads who are not working in jobs designated as degree level. Even many that are, didn’t used to be. These jobs might ask for degrees but they have no further training or qualifications attached to them. It should be perfectly possible to recruit to these jobs without the expense to the country of the young people getting a degree. We now have degrees for everything. It’s not necessary. It’s expensive.

@thing47
Student finance is bankrolled by the government. Not “companies”. They are a government owned non profit organisation. The reason repayments are high is that universities cost a lot to run and ALL the fees are discounted. What course actually costs £9000 a year? Few.

@Namenic
We cannot drum up more engineers to do the courses we have! We don’t have enough students with the necessary skills. Maths A level being required. We cannot just expand nursing because they are supervised whilst training on the wards. There are too few supervisory staff. Retention of engineers and nurses is a big issue. Why be an engineer when the city pays you double almost immediately? And multiples a few years later. My DDs friend works in finance for an American multinational. He earns around 3 times what he would as a civil engineer at the same age. .

@TizerorFizz - maybe teach maths a level to the people who want to do the degree? But yes, I think probably kids need to spend more time doing maths as kids - like they do with reading.

@thing47 - isn’t the reason interest rates so high because some people will never earn enough to start paying them off? I think the govt wanted to have a system where, if you earn under a threshold, you don’t have to pay any money back and it is cancelled when you reach a certain age (which makes it different from a bank loan). But this incentivises people to pick courses which may not pay back the cost of their degree (so govt is subsidising these courses but doesn’t have much control). I would rather the govt spend this money in incentivising people to do jobs that we have a lack of (eg raising nurses pay or giving grants to schools to employ music or ballet teachers - at least the govt can target the funding to where it is needed).

@lightisnotwhite - I think a better way to spend money would be to target it at areas which the govt can see a societal need for. If the govt saw a need for ballet teachers - because they increased the long term exercise of people and had public health benefit - then they can target the funding to this course or give grants to institutions to employ people with this skill. my point is not with ballet or arts or sports - it is whether we can incentivise people into jobs which can benefit the population as a whole.

isn’t the reason interest rates so high because some people will never earn enough to start paying them off? I think the govt wanted to have a system where, if you earn under a threshold, you don’t have to pay any money back and it is cancelled when you reach a certain age (which makes it different from a bank loan).

The government doesn’t charge interest on student loans to make a profit. It does so to offset the costs of loaning money, including inflation. It means in real terms you're paying back a similar amount to that borrowed. If it didn't charge any interest, the real value of the loan would decline each year, costing the Government more money.

Any outstanding loans are written off after 30 years and only a quarter of students who started full-time degrees last year are expected to repay their loans in full.
Department for Education figures estimate just 47 per cent of the money lent to university students in 2020-21 to cover their annual £9,250 tuition fees and living costs will be repaid – leaving a shortfall of about £10 billion. This has to be paid by us, the taxpayers!
This huge taxpayer subsidy has raised questions about the number of youngsters heading to university, the value of courses where graduates end up in low-paid jobs and the shortage of skilled workers in key areas of the economy, such as IT and engineering.

If it was actually a loan and had a 0% interest rate, the vast majority of students would re-pay their loans in full. So it is actually the student finance companies who are benefiting from the current system rather than the students themselves or wider society.

@thing47 The government doesn’t charge interest on student loans to make a profit. It does so to offset the costs of loaning money, including inflation. It means in real terms you're paying back a similar amount to that borrowed.

Unfortunately many of the indisputably valuable degrees (Medical/nursing, science, engineering) are a lot more expensive to run, need more facilities, staff etc than many of the others. So from the POV of a uni the latter subsidise the former, even if on a societal level and looking over the longer term that's not really the case.

But there aren’t, certainly not in healthcare. My hospital is short 400 qualified nurses

@QuebecBagnet
They need to look at retention then. Getting nurses back. Looking at how they work. Lots of hospitals have dire retention.

It’s also possible to have golden hello packages. But there needs to be a change in culture to make it attractive.

Perhaps wages for nurses do need to be raised in order to attract more?
Another reason that the nhs pay is relatively low is because its not a profit making company but a service provided by the Government (free of charge),

Clever wording there! Note the "not to clear their loans" which basically means fully pay off their loan including the hefty interest! What it doesn't make clear is that the majority of students DO pay off at least the capital they borrowed, but don't get to pay off all the hefty interest too! Most students make loan repayments for a fair part of their working lives, just not enough to pay off the capital AND interest. And of course, the interest is accruing from the outset meaning the loan balance rises for most in their first few years of work whilst they're earning under the threshold for making repayments, so by the time they start repayments, the loan balance is already a lot higher than the amount they first borrowed. Lots actually end up after 30 years owing more than they borrowed, despite making loan repayments, simply because they weren't earning enough to cover the interest being charged!

@Lilacsunflowers - unfortunately it’s a vicious circle. Low wages don’t help, but lots of vacancies make the lives of people still working there harder.

@ErrolTheDragon - yes agree with that. But the govt is then subsidising people to do degrees which won’t pay for themselves but which in turn subsidize the degrees that are expensive but socially/economically needed.

i suppose a market system works better when people can plainly see the consequences of different choices. The current system is quite complicated and it’s difficult to make decisions (which have long term impact).

@Badbadbunny But a loan without interest would mean a decline In purchasing power for the lender. Lenders require interest payments to compensate for the inflation - inflation tends to reduce the real value, or purchasing power, of the loan. Interest payments allows the balance due to grow as inflation erodes the real value of the balance due. Basically, the 'real' value or purchasing power of the original loan stays the same. It is not increasing in real terms.

Most students make loan repayments for a fair part of their working lives, just not enough to pay off the capital AND interest.

Well, then they haven't actually paid back the real value or purchasing power of the original loan.

But jobs are only half the issue. To grow an economy people need to start businesses and careers.

I only know two actual art students. One teaches and sells her work for £1,000’s (through galleries that employ staff, events people, and all the ancillary jobs that go with it). The other started his own company producing comics that get turned into films. Both interesting and lucrative jobs.
Going to Uni meant they met people in their industry, networked with those with similar interests and focused their careers. They also had a degree as back up.