Some universities will go bust

[GinForBreakfast]

Reported in the Times today. It must be so worrying for students joining or returning in September/October.

My question is around the regulator, who knows where the issues are. What should they be telling students and when? It seems cruel, especially to young people, to withhold information. It has financial implications as well - people moving, paying deposits etc.

It is not the broader subjects that are the issue, but both the way they are often now taught from very ideological perspectives with other perspectives shut down (and Labour saying they will stop the implementation of the free speech act in universities so they can continue to cancel wrong think). Plus the sheer numbers studying many of those subjects - far beyond the number of worth to society.

But they’re problems that won’t be solved by social scientists.
I'm not entirely sure you know what a social science is!
My husband's history degree from a RG university does not make him more qualified to address issues relating to education and inequality than me and my team of social scientists.

Huh? You want a history or Modern Languages graduate to conduct research on these questions? Under the auspices of what kind of institution and with what job? Researchers in social science/sociology departments of universities are who does this at the moment but if those departments get abolished the work still needs doing, so you'd have to re-establish the same thing in some other form.

If someone did their doctoral research in topics related to these questions in order to become an expert in this kind of research, how would that doctoral research be assessed and found to be rigorous?

I honestly don't think you understand the nature of academic study.

Quite frankly, ex polys aren’t the problem. They existed to do an alternative role to the largely academic unis and were built in the 60s. The bigger issue was the proliferation of colleges of HE and former teacher training colleges becoming universities. Many are not that great. Had they all been colleges of HE relating to the needs of local employers they would have cost less and delivered more. Unis have been used as a levelling up tool but employers don’t necessarily need the grads. If grads stayed and made a real difference levelling up would not be progressing at a snail’s pace. Where are the jobs that need all these grads? Not there so grads feel short changed.

There’s no doubt we need educational psychologists. Years ago these were experienced teachers who retrained. Now they are psychology grads but hardly any of them ever get to be Ed psychs. 80% of psychology grads don’t get near a professional psychology role. So whilst it’s worthy, it’s bums on seats too. Ditto with law. We don’t need 18,000 students studying law with half having little chance of qualifying in law. Many other bright grads in many subjects can convert to law, and do.

There’s definitely a trend away from subjects where a career isn’t immediately obvious and hard subjects like MFL. Students want Duolingo but won’t do the hard yards and read literature. Of course the brightest will and they get decent jobs. We do need a wide variety of thinking skills and not just people trained for jobs but I’d question how well some unis deliver this. Some courses are clearly degrees the sake of it and not all research is useful or needed. The uni sector grew and so did subject areas without any evaluation of quality and need for topics. It’s now bloated and expensive.

Many dc do actually need well paying jobs. Just doing basic level jobs undermines the uni sector and houses are expensive . It’s not delivering what parents expected and they’ve largely coughed up.

Thousands get creative degrees and never get near a decent job. Some do but tv needs far more than arts grads! Again we have over supply. Some of our greatest film producers and directors don’t have film related degrees either.

For goodness sake, it's not either/or. I am a Classics graduate and my life has been enormously enriched by my degree studies. Along the way, I also learned useful transferable skills which I took into my working (and personal) life. All Arts and Humanities graduates should be in this position. Human civilisation will be immensely poorer if we don't go on studying language, literature, philosophy and all the other non-vocational subjects. However, we do also need the social sciences, as well as STEM and the purely vocational subjects. There's room for all of it. We just need to work out the funding model better.

Not pointless in and of themselves. Not particularly relevant for lots of challenges we're facing right now though.

How can the UK defend itself from cyber attacks and foreign subversion?
How can we persuade people to reduce their energy consumption?
Should we allow AI to assess UC applications?

These are incredibly complex questions. You need more than just clever people who studied classics at Oxbridge and think they can wing their way through anything. You need people who have conducted sustained research in these specific topics.

People with the intellectual capacity to do well in the traditional subjects can turn themselves perfectly well to social issues.

If the issues are technical - like cyberattacks - I very much doubt that the policy makers will be calling for psychologists or sociologists to advise them.

Completely agree @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g we need all these subjects!
People who want to eliminate huge swathes of study always have an agenda.

For goodness sake, it's not either/or.

Exactly.

I never understand why people feel the need to dismiss a subject just because they don't understand/see its value.

Yes, cutting waste.

People with the intellectual capacity to do well in the traditional subjects can turn themselves perfectly well to social issues.

And if they don't want to? And who is teaching them the discipline of social science research?

I didn't want to study English or any other 'traditional' subject , I wanted to study sociology. I want my students to be interested in the subject they are studying too.

Too much emphasis is put on student satisfaction scores. It would be interesting to gather scores from graduates 2/5/10 years after graduating and see how satisfied they were then. (Ten years would be a better indicator of sustained success but two years would be more relevant to the current cohort). I loved my university experience but in hindsight would not do the same again - I would prioritise employability much higher.

Yes, cutting waste.

Charming 🙄

Cyberattacks are not just a technical issue. Our government relies on experts from a field you want to get rid of (International studies) to understand Russian offensive cyber strategies and their role in Russian strategic thinking. To fully protect the UK you need to understand why Russian wants to harm the UK and what they might do next, that is not a technical question. You also need to understand the broader Russian subversion of British politics and media, that is not technical.

It is that simple.

Let students pay for that is they want it - don't need academics to teach, just people who can teach the syllabus.

Note, international students are not needed - again, only if you are trying to pay for research.

Universities need to change or die - i am proposing that students don't subsidise research - no problem doing research, but students shouldn't pay for it

To answer the question, they should cancel research, significantly reduce staff and concentrate on teaching, no research, no sports facilities, on-line libraries only and ensure that research is concentrated to a few institutions.

I didn’t mean to be rude. And I can see that that comment was discourteous. So, my apologies.

But if academics don’t accept that their salaries are paid by the public, and ignore the fact that the public has a voice in how its taxes and fees are spent, I do think academe is misleading itself.

I have no doubt that if university funding becomes a crisis the ‘soft’ and non-traditional subjects will be the first to go.

It’s a bit like arts funding. No government, whatever its complexion, will put up with ludicrous, self-indulgent art funded from the public purse. It doesn’t matter if the government of the day represents the horny handed people of toil or the curtain twitchers of the Home Counties.

To answer the question, they should cancel research, significantly reduce staff and concentrate on teaching, no research, no sports facilities, on-line libraries only and ensure that research is concentrated to a few institutions.

Sounds awful.
😞

You're assuming armchair and TV psychology is psychology. It isn't. Psychology is a science and has a long history of scientific method (and has recently gone through a huge overhaul in terms of rigour).

The reason why you check your phone so often is because computer scientists have built in behaviourism (a psychological concept) into their platforms. The reason we know about how to manage teams in high intensity situations (think military or space missions) is a long history of social psychology. The current trans debate is underpinned by how different people perceive stereotypes and identity, both psychological constructs. Parenting is all about psychology, how we can reinforce behaviours, understand self-esteem, develop self-efficacy (confidence) and help children get on with others. We used psychology to govern and understand leadership, we use it to make sure teams don't fall into 'groupthink' and make good decisions. We also use it for health campaigns to help people stop smoking, eat better, go to the gym. The highways agency use the theory of planned behaviour to get you to drive more carefully (even if you don't realise it).

And thats just a tiny tiny list of what psychologists do.

You sound very ill-informed. I don't have a Psychology degree but I used to work with a lot of people who did. In the first place, a lot of psychology nowadays is neuroscience, so it's hard science, very biological, lots of emphasis on what's going on in the brain. In the second place, psychiatrists are medical doctors who also have to study psychology (and neuroscience) to be able to do their job,so there's a big overlap there. Thirdly, people doing psychological research have to work to ethical standards and need an excellent grasp of statistics and research methodology - very similar to those doing medical research.

There are many directions you can go in with a Psychology degree. Educational, clinical, occupational, counselling, sports, health and forensic psychology all have a postgraduate training route. CBT therapists are often Psychology graduates. Lots of the routine testing done in mental health settings and prisons (e.g. cognitive abilities, risk assessments) is carried out by psychologists, and they have a big role in providing therapy alongside mental health nurses and occupational therapists. Psychiatrists are largely there to prescribe drugs.

My area of psychology (and sociology) is related to career decision making, career development and organisation culture.
Specifically addressing inequality in career decisions and career development.
This involves understanding how people make decisions and the influences on these decisions. The role of stereotypes and societal expectations are really important as is understanding how people learn and supporting people to understand their motivations, values and aptitudes.

There’s no doubt we need educational psychologists. Years ago these were experienced teachers who retrained. Now they are psychology grads but hardly any of them ever get to be Ed psychs. 80% of psychology grads don’t get near a professional psychology role. So whilst it’s worthy, it’s bums on seats too. Ditto with law. We don’t need 18,000 students studying law with half having little chance of qualifying in law. Many other bright grads in many subjects can convert to law, and do.

It's peculiar isn't it - no one moans about History grads who don't become historians, or Chemistry grads who don't become chemists. Law and Psychology grads though - immediately deemed a failure and waste of loan if they have the audacity to not become solicitors or psychologists.

You clearly don’t understand how HE funding works at all. Without research funding and the fees from overseas students there is no income since home students are loss making.

I have no doubt that if university funding becomes a crisis the ‘soft’ and non-traditional subjects will be the first to go.

Funding IS a crisis now. The traditional subjects are massively at risk. English, MFL depts closing left right and centre.

Don't kid yourself that History and English are fine and only Media Studies and Sociology are at risk.

This shows the range of subjects going:
https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking//*

It’ll be a shame if some proper subjects go down with the social sciences. I’d certainly regret that. But there has to be a realignment: academics can’t expect to be bailed out.

I confess I’d never heard of many of the universities mentioned on that web page.

I’d like to see some universities bite the bullet and say, ‘we’re not playing the game anymore. We’re going to stop pretending to dabble in research and we’re going to focus on delivering absolutely top quality apprenticeships and professional courses. We are going to train our staff to be excellent teachers and we’re going to focus on L4, L5, L6 and L7 qualifications. We are going to be applied, research informed, teaching focused institutions that deliver training and development of meet the skills needs of the UK’.