Uni is just over-sold and disappointing

[Greedybilly]

My lovely 19 year old has just finished Yr 1 of uni ( when did the courses end at Easter? What happened to term 3?)
She was unlucky with her flatmates who were awful to her and her course mates mostly commute.
Part time jobs are none existent and she's done umpteen trial cafe shifts only to be ghosted.
She had such high hopes and seems like a shadow of her former self. It does all feel like a massively over marketed business.
Anyone got any words of wisdom/happy endings??
Gutted for her and angry at all the hype and nonsense.

I'm not surprised by all the academics coming here having a go at you OP. Academics are at risk of losing their cushy final salary pension jobs because more and more people are talking about how poor value-for-money university is, and a lot of university staff have this holier-than-thou view of themselves and the "help" they provide to society. Meanwhile the unpaid student loan balance for England alone is £267 billion...

FYI Lunnie, as you may not be aware, USS hasn’t been a final salary scheme since 2016 i.e. for 10 years.

It’s still a good scheme, and a meaningful benefit, but it isn’t final salary.

I’m an academic and don’t have a ‘cushy final salary pension’. My pension scheme isn’t bad but it’s certainly not as you describe.
As an academic I’m never going to be a super high earner (unless I become a VC or PVC) so the decent pension is supposed to be the payoff!! But that has been eroded over time and I’ve still got 25 years until retirement 🤷‍♀️

I can sympathise OP, DD has really struggled with her flat mates in halls all being room hermits and then meeting a group of seemingly nice friends that turned into mean girls unleashed. It has come as a big let down to her, she is so despondent and not finishing first year in a good place. She has tried society’s and trying to make an effort with people on her course but the friendships that came easy all her life just haven’t happened. I agree with the idea that there should be more in person time for lots of courses the actual time spent at uni is pretty shocking. Would it make more sense to condense the courses to 2 years with more hours rather than 3, reducing the cost and student debt.

Would it make more sense to condense the courses to 2 years with more hours rather than 3, reducing the cost and student debt.

Well, it would reduce accommodation fees by a third but it wouldn't reduce tuition fees, as you would be trying to get the same number of teaching/lab hours into 2 years rather than 3; also, those teaching the courses are primarily doing research/doctoral supervision as well, so don't necessarily have more hours available each week to teach with.

@SheilaFentiman Buckingham does this and lurks around the foot of most league tables. It used to be the same price for 2 years as others charge for 3 years and is pretty lightweight in most subjects. Universities could call themselves polys again and do 2 year HNDs. These weren’t that different to a modern day degree! Now that might save some money! My part time HNC had 6 hours teaching on just one day a week.

@SheilaFentimanI think the whole system needs looking at. How is it economically feasible for young people and their parents to continue to pay these fees for a few hours a week contact over 3 years. The debt they are accumulating is just insane and the graduate job market is in crisis.

I'm not against the whole system being reviewed. (though to note, not all degrees have a 'few hours' contact time - DS1 has about 20h a week)

But for most degree programmes, the home undergraduate tuition fee payment doesn't cover the cost of delivery and infrastructure (buildings, utilities, careers service, libraries. support staff such as course officers and admissions coordinators etc). Masters courses, overseas student fees and research grants are needed to balance the books - and many institutions are loss making and making redundancies.

Fees might have to increase to pay for extra staff needed to deliver the more condensed degree courses.

Staff don’t currently sit around twiddling their thumbs between lectures, seminars, tutorials and labs etc.

@SheilaFentiman Undergrads are supposed to read, study, write essays and do research as well as contact time. It’s not school teaching is it? Contact time isn’t necessarily a mark of a good degree and certainly a spoon fed graduate often has shortcomings. University should be where you expend your learning skills, not just absorb from teachers and regurgitate.

indeed- if a review of the whole system led to the suggestion of 2 year degrees then fees for each year probably would rise.

of course, no individual institution can offer a 2 year course and put its fees up because those are set by government. MeetMe mentioned the university of Buckingham upthread; IIRC that is private and so may have a different fee structure.

@SheilaFentiman The UK like many Western economies has too many young people going to university to do academic degrees that neither develop them sufficiently nor meet the needs of the labour market. The mass expansion of HE was predicated on the exceptionally dubious hypothesis that more graduates would drive economic growth because graduates earned more than non-graduates. That hypothesis is now demonstrably disproven. Investments in education by the public purse need to be far better calibrated to the real needs of the economy and rather than importing immigrants to service large parts of the UK economy we need UK citizens to do so.

Part of the problem is that they don't do the work they are supposed to be doing. An undergraduate degree requires them to do roughly as many hours as a full time job. Some of that is lectures and seminars but a much larger amount is reading and research.

The reality is that the system won't change whilst the students keep paying to go and whilst the failing universities are put under pressure by the unions to keep staff in jobs that are not needed. The uproar about the closure of the music faculty at Nottingham is ridiculous. The courses are closing because nobody is signing up to do the courses. It's simple supply and demand. But no, the unions are going ballistic and staff are striking and putting student's degrees at risk. It's outrageous that it can be allowed to happen.

Universities can't decide what they are. They are on the one hand being run like businesses not like schools. They have an interest in selling lovely sounding courses and laying on fancy facilities. They're completely ignoring the fact that the courses are often not fit for purpose and are not ultimately benefitting the young people who have been told all their lives that if they go to university they will get a good job at the end of it. On the other hand they act like they are proving a natural extension to school and rely on bail outs from the tax payer.

It's all a big mess. IMO the failing universities need to be allowed to fail (obviously some safety net mechanism is needed for the students in situ). We urgently need consolidation in the market. We also need the messaging to change so that it becomes far more normal to stay at home whilst studying. Rents are not affordable for students to continue living away from home for the full three years.

But isn't part of that problem that "unsuitable" students are now going to university, i.e. going because they've been conditioned by society into believing it's the the "norm" (Thanks to the idiot Blair!), and will land them a good job. Many aren't going to satisfy their curiosity or love of learning. They're going to what has become a "degree factory" to get that magic piece of paper. And now that they're paying a fortune for it, both in terms of course fees and accommodation, they don't want to have to do it all themselves and do expect plenty of "contact" time for their money. Unis are lowering entry requirements to get "bums on seats" and those with their own campus accommodation need to sign up as many students as possible as they need their accommodation filling as they simply can't afford empty flats, so if they have to, they WILL (and do) reduce entry requirements, especially through clearing.

Go back a few decades and most Uni students were there because they wanted to study, and were the "top" quality students, and they didn't expect "too much" from the Uni because they didn't have to pay tuition fees, nor did the Uni's fall over themselves to "sell" their product via expensive marketing, fancy facilities, atriums etc., such students just needed the facility to learn, i.e. laboratories, libraries, access to tutors, guidance lectures, etc.

Basically, universities have become "commoditised" and have positioned themselves to be more like businesses than a national education establishment, and when you pretend to be a business, your "customers" expect a good experience.

@Badbadbunny Yes. I agree. Thousands should be be going. What I dislike is teaching hours being seen as hugely important in the development of grads. We do only have 37% of school leavers going to uni by the way. Blair didn’t remove the cap on uni places either. Cameron did. Just facts to help the conversation.

I feel strongly that half of our unis should be vocational and should offer 2 year HND courses. Then if a degree is needed, carry on with another 2 years. The CCC type student would be better suited to this. We have too many degrees and insufficient alternatives. I do agree with you.

Yes, I know it wasn't "all" Blair but I think he's largely responsible via his "50%" mantra which set the scene for academic education over vocational/trade education options.

I also think the conversion of all the Polys into Unis was also a very poor move, and, again, it started before Blair too, so I do appreciate it wasn't "all" Blair.

But, saying that, adult education and local colleges offering adult courses did seem to all disappear under Blair's years. We previously had a World leading adult education sector which disappeared when local colleges moved away from adult education (for all including 16+) and converted into 16-18 only colleges, thus them scrapping lots of professional courses such as accounting etc which previously had a mix of youngsters and adults attending. I did teaching the Accounting technician course in the late 90s and early 00s at our local college of FE in it's "business school" which also did A levels in accounting, economics, business studies, and various other professional courses, but the entire department was scrapped early 00s when the college converted itself to 16-18 only!

I think some of the Unis either need to start opening up to offer a broader range of courses, not just degrees, or need to convert back into being Polys to do the same. Not just "trades" and manual courses, but professional courses too, like accountancy. After all, despite what people think, an accountancy or law degree doesn't make you an accountant or lawyer - you still have to do the professional exams afterwards, so a Poly/Uni actually offering the professional course instead of a degree would reduce the "study time".

There's another aspect of the finances too, in that the current "businesses" offering training materials and study support for, say, accountancy or actuaries, charge a small fortune, and I've often wondered why Unis don't do it themselves as a new/additional income stream. Likewise, the professional bodies typically use hotel conference facilities as exam rooms, so why aren't the Unis "renting out" their halls for external exams - again, as additional income sources.

I do feel that Unis have become too blinkered towards their own degree courses and are missing out on lots of opportunities for offering their facilities and teaching resources in different ways.

Sorry - thousands should not be going! I think Blair saw degrees as enhancing the wealth creation and productivity in the Uk. I agreed with this. I think the issue has been the courses and lack of promotion for alternatives. There are too many courses that didn’t need to be degrees and we have allowed just about any university to offer English and History and even law. We needed far more control over what was offered and to whom. The old polys did the HND route previously and it worked. My FE colleges are mostly 16-19 too. I agree, it’s ridiculous. Part time degrees have fallen off a cliff too.

Likewise, the professional bodies typically use hotel conference facilities as exam rooms, so why aren't the Unis "renting out" their halls for external exams - again, as additional income sources.

Believe me, unis do try and get external income sources! But the large common spaces that you mention are in use by the uni for a lot of the time - DS1 recently did first year exams in the uni sports hall, obviously most weeks of the year that's used for basketball practice or whatever.

I also think the conversion of all the Polys into Unis was also a very poor move, and, again, it started before Blair too, so I do appreciate it wasn't "all" Blair.

Well before Blair - most polys had convert by 1992 and 1993 was the first year of UCAS (rather than UCCA and PCAS), so during the Major government (and presumably planned during the Thatcher government)

I wonder how much of the Uni expansion was a plan to boost the economy via foreign student bringing in foreign money, and also to boost the economy via all the student housing/flats that have been built, thus regenerating some run down areas by demolishing/converting derelict buildings, etc., not to mention sleight of hand to reduce unemployment figures by getting students "off" the unemployment figures for 3+ years! It does seem to fall into the expansion of the "service" economy and helps to reduce the balance of trade deficit as "invisibles" bringing in foreign money in terms of student fees, student spending and foreign backed investors building all the student flats blocks.

I'm not entirely convinced it was all about getting a better educated population at all!

@Badbadbunny More about boosting employment where options weren’t great in some circumstances. Look at Lincoln, Sunderland, Falmouth and other areas that didn’t have local prospects. The staff at the unis earn well and they spend. The students spend too. Areas are uplifted but it’s all in borrowed money. Overseas students are not knocking on these doors in great numbers. LSE and Imperial they are not. However as overseas students pay full fees and subsidise others, they were seen as a cash cow.

Yes, I agree. Just one of many ways to use foreign/borrowed money to prop up our ailing economy, akin to PFI for new hospital and school buildings, privatisations to get foreign/borrowed money for new trains, utilities infrastructure, etc.

All ways to prop up our economy following the hollowing out of our manufacturing industry where we actually made things to use and sell to drive our economic growth rather than as we currently rely on foreign investment and borrowings.

Not good and the Uni sector is just another casualty.

It isn't 37%. Thats the figure for those who go straight from school and so it discounts anyone who has a gap year or does something else for a year or two etc. 49% of state school leavers go into higher education by age 25. The figure is even higher for independent school leavers,

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7857/

@User88765 I said “school leavers” very deliberately. HE is NOT just a degree. It’s also young people working towards it on apprenticeships. We have around 49% in the workforce with a degree but they are not all under the age of 25.

These are stats from hesa. 18-20 year olds is 36% .