new gov policy of restricting student numbers in some degree courses

[justanotherdaduser]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66216005

Wondering how people feel about it?

I am unsure - in one hand, it feels needlessly prescriptive. People should be free to study what interests them without government's guiding hand

But also, not everyone signing up to such courses fully understand the degree outcomes.

Or, why should tax payers fund courses that are not good value for money? But by that logic, over time, we can lose many other valuable courses (IMO!)

Confused!

The pp who said it could be my dc, tbh I’d be wary of some degrees anyway. I’d want it to lead to certain job markets

I know university is fun but the outcomes are important

Well can you tell employers to start offering enough apprenticeships to meet demand then, cos it ain't happening at the moment, even charging them the levy!

Agreed. I would want my child to think very carefully about employability before picking a degree anyway. Better to work than do a degree that leaves you with substantial debt and no further forward (and I say that as someone who was very academic and did two degrees -but I use both of them)

And I'd like to see a further expansion of apprenticeships as an alternative route.

The polytechnics do still exist you know - they've just got different names

Are they quite the same though @titchy I thought not?

But in principle degrees with poor outcomes (judged by how many people obtain graduate level jobs in that field

You mean:
'But in principle degrees with poor outcomes (judged by how many people obtain graduate level jobs in that field AND COMPLETE THE SURVEY AND AS MEASURED BY ONE FIXED POINT IN TIME'

There - fixed

Brighton Poly is now Brighton Uni, Bristol Poly is Uni of West of England, Manchester Poly is now Manchester Met, Sheffield Poly is Sheffield Hallam etc etc etc.

'But in principle degrees with poor outcomes (judged by how many people obtain graduate level jobs in that field AND COMPLETE THE SURVEY AND AS MEASURED BY ONE FIXED POINT IN TIME'

Exactly. And what is considered a poor outcome in this context does not align with what students think.

Not to mention the multiple flaws in the SOC codes - which is how jobs are categorised.

Define Mickey Mouse degree..... with examples

Brighton Poly is now Brighton Uni, Bristol Poly is Uni of West of England, Manchester Poly is now Manchester Met, Sheffield Poly is Sheffield Hallam etc etc etc.

I don't mean the names!

Well it reduces the university income who may just think those “mickey mouse” courses are no longer viable and shut them down. Which is a shame for students who want to study them.

Sheffield university I believe recently stopped their archeology course, I’d imagine that perhaps archeology isn’t the highest paid graduate profession/doesn’t have a lot of graduate jobs (I am guessing btw). And I don’t know why Sheffield closed the course but I can see courses like that been affected. Which is a shame.

@titchy Are you being deliberately obtuse? I actually went to a poly. It was nothing like it is now. It now has degrees in all sorts of academic subjects. Back then it was far more work focussed. At least some of us can see the difference and feel some unis should return to work based courses. Employers in the private sector might have changed but the state is a whole lot bigger! Private employers have needs too. Even modern ones.

Also why should the least well off in society go to the local poor uni? We need far better advice for DC and local opportunities for non degree young people. Apprenticeships do pick up lots later in life though. We just need more variety at 18.

Oh yes, I mentioned archaeology too @HaveYouHeardOfARoadAtlas

People used to laugh (nice I know) at degrees like media studies and environmental studies when I was a student.

Even jobs like architecture are notoriously underpaid for first job out of uni with an undergraduate degree. Dd is looking at jobs around 20k for her first graduate job in the industry. Will that meet the threshold or will they scrap architectural degrees?

Hopefully they won’t decide nursing isn’t paid enough but I did see something last year saying it might not make the financial threshold…but then they said they’d make an exception for nursing. Which makes a mockery of the whole thing.

Then what do you mean? I assume you actually mean 'bring back more vocational courses with links to local employers'?

Do you not think that the landscape has changed somewhat in the last 30 years? The UK is no longer a country with a strong manufacturing base. Where unis (and yes it is largely the post 92s) have links with their local employers they grasp them with both hands and don't let go! But those links just don't exist in the quantity they did. (I'm resisting the temptation to cite the often sneered at degree in theme park management run with Alton Towers )

Yes we should have far more degree apprenticeship opportunities for school leavers - and the university sector is largely super-keen - but employers won't take them on. What can we do? How does reducing foundation year fees, or intakes on a random statistic (and it random) help?

It doesn't. It just means I spend yet more time dealing with OfS bureaucracy justifying our provision instead of on things that will actually support our students.

It sounds like the death of culture in this country if they target humanities, arts and archaeology. No more great British films, books, art, music. No more history programmes, no more museums. No more humanities academics. (I know a few and they are rather interesting people.) However flawed Britain may be, we have made a large contribution to world culture. These things may struggle on for a bit, but surely collapse without people entering the industries. Are we sacrificing this for the sake of prioritising areas like Business, Finance, Data Analysis? It seems the government know the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Good luck with getting companies to take on apprentices! All the red tape and hoops that have to be jumped through to take them on is absurd. Big companies do it to get tax breaks - have you looked at how many apprenticeships are actually available right now? My sons company (large, major employer) had 40 apprenticeships across the UK, 7800 applicants for those places. Before they start insisting that young people find other routes other than Uni they need to make sure there are actually other routes there to be taken.

Who is judging the value of a degree?
or the ability to convert it at a later date

it worries me.

Quite scary. Where does this end? You can only spend time doing activities which are deemed financially productive enough? Soooo, working then. You can work. Any other choice, any other use of your time is a ‘waste’. Grim.

@HappySonHappyMum absolutely agree!

No- an apprenticeship isn’t the only way into policing.

Yes, that's more or less what I meant @titchy I agree with you on the whole.

Keep those worker bees working.

I’ve always been concerned about our utter obsession with English and maths to the detriment of other subjects. Whilst I totally agree we need a decent level and decent teaching. It’s demoralising for those who are not naturally capable and wastes time which could be spent teaching skills and subjects that would be useful that they do have natural skills in.

This initiative seems to be conflating Mickey Mouse degrees with degree courses which may be high quality but aren't lucrative - so languages and philosophy are close to the danger zone. Far better to publicize the findings on drop out rates and graduate earnings, then let prospective students decide.

Oh, and there needs to be a regulator with teeth who can shut down the genuinely low content courses, irrespective of outcomes. You don't hear of Ofsted inspectors surveying the annual earnings of old pupils before delivering their verdict on a school. (Not that Ofsted are models of good practice, but you get my drift.)

@VegetablesFightingToReclaimTheAubergieneEmoji totally agree.

It must be quite confusing to be young these days… you can’t leave school at 15 and work, even if that’s what you’re good at, and it doesn’t require qualifications. But also, you’ve got to go and get qualifications, even if you don’t want any, and now it seems you’ve got to get qualified in something that you’re no good at, and don’t want to have a career in 🤷🏼‍♀️

Two of DD's friends who did BTECs in sixth form were given unconditional offers to study sport science. Neither is working in a graduate job (or in sport) and both have full student debt.

I do feel they have been exploited.