How to encourage University students?

Sounds a fine idea to me George.

I agree that many important skills like those you mention are undervalued. It's a UK thing though as you say. Snobbery perhaps?


Cheers
Steve

Education, Education, Education !! It should be paid for out of general taxation.

I went to University as both an undergraduate and as a postgraduate for free. It is appalling that this generation is now seeking to pull up the ladder.

It is in the country's best interest to invest in higher education for all students that aspire to it and are capable. The benefit at the personal level is enormous and the benefit to the wider economy is shared by us all. Those who choose trades should be afforded apprenticeships through some form of funded partnership between industry and the government.

If we really as a society are so poor we cannot educate our young without saddling them with enormous debts then we have got our priorities wrong. Placing obstacles in the way of education just demonstrates poor foresight.

But if we really think it necessary (and I for one do not) to make our students pay more, beyond the higher taxes they will pay if they get well paying jobs, then some form of graduate tax would seem to be the least complicated as it can be administered through the PAYE system.

The young are our future and we should invest in them.

I certainly think that once the lesser Univeristies were converted back to Poly's and Technical Colleges, then their courses should indeed be paid for from the taxation of the general public and the corporate sector.

But it is an ill-founded ideal to imagine that half the population mainly doing degrees that are of no significant value in employment terms or, it follows, value to the economy is a sensible aim or indeed useful to the individuals who work at these courses.

The number of Media Studies graduates [for example] should be related to the number of jobs that become availabe annually, for which the degree course is a pre-requiste [etc] ...

I suspect that perhaps one or two Universities only could train the necessary numbers of students to meet the demand for Media Studies degree graduates ...

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by George Johnson:
I certainly think that once the lesser Univeristies were converted back to Poly's and Technical Colleges, then their courses should indeed be paid for from the taxation of the general public and the corporate sector.

It would probably be the "less well off" that would attend the "lesser institutions"

I always felt that they should study (preferably something useful), and not just read all the time.

quote:

Originally posted by BigH47:
I always felt that they should study (preferably something useful), and not just read all the time.

Howard most students do - beer and some other life pleasures

I have to disagree. I don't think it is as linear and simple as this.

We can all sit and (theoretically) calculate the 'value' of a vocational degree, such as medicine; or can we? Even that apparently simple calculation is complicated by the fact that we cannot currently accurately plan our future medical workforce, plus some med students drop out and join a pure science career route. Would they lose funding if they did this?

Move slightly sideways now, take Law. A high percentage of Law graduates do not enter the legal professions directly but use their skills in other ways. Some will take second degrees in business for example.

As for the Arts, it is much harder for any committee to calculate a direct relationship between graduates and future employment. The UK excels in many creative arts, and these are significant wage earners for the economy (take computer game design for example) yet I suspect the university backgrounds of entrants into these successful indiustries is diverse to a great degree.

Do I think that too many people are taking too many courses-yes I do. However approaching access to free University education as purely a conveyor belt filling specified jobs seems far too narrow to me. People thrive and develop into all sorts of careers from diverse routes in further education (and without). Funelling applicants into vocational degrees for free funding would creat a significantly less qualified or interesting graduate workforce.

I think general taxation should support Universities. I believe the country as a whole benefits from further education that is high quality and varied-not just those individuals. If graduates tend to earn more in later life they will pay more income tax, and so in time contribute more to the pot.

As a side issue Student Loans already risk creating a very skewed group of future doctors for example. The threat of such significant debts (over a 5 year course where the terms are far longer than usual so the chance to earn money in the holidays is almost zero) is a significant disincentive to some sections of society where debt of that scale is terrifying. Knowing you'll probably pay it off because you will probably get a job at the end is too distant a prospect for many. I don't want a medical workforce which does not try to recruit all from all sorts of social backgrounds.

Bruce

It would be an interesting exercise to establish the relationship between the degrees studied and the eventual job a graduate ended up with.

I would expect that most graduates in medicine, science, engineering and law end up working in these fields but I doubt most arts and humanities graduates end up working in their chosen fields. How many jobs in ancient history or some other arcane field are there ?

But this misses the point of a university education. The fact is that many diverse graduates work in fields or administration where the most important attribute is a trained, receptive and agile mind which is what their education is meant to develop. Interest in their chosen subject is what motivates students to study but most will realise that in the real world they will have to adapt and learn rapidly in whatever job they are fortunate enough to get in the field where the opportunities lie.

My two penneth,
There are TOO MANY young people going to university to study so called qualifications. In IMHO there should only be the sciences,history,english,maths studied at university`s and none of the silly media and arts that they go for now, and as for business studies i have never met a decent manager who has not started at the bottom rung of the ladder and learnt his/her craft from the shop floor upwards and by that i mean started at a firm and by merit promoted through the stages.

Dear All,

In my day you had to choose a course that had a marketable quality.

You had to have suitable o and a levels and sometimes sit an entrance exam.

I had to do an additional o level at night school as i was over 25 , just to prove my brain was not dead.

I got a full grant and all my fees paid.

Result 24 years continous employmet with in the health care field.

2o years continous in NHS.
Last 4 years in private practice in Aus.

So did the tax payer get value for money out of me????

I like to think so.

David

I thought it asymmetrical that when I was studying engineering we had to do quite a few humanities courses to provide us with a "balanced" education, whilst those studying arts (and who, incidentally had about 1/3 the face-to-face hours) weren't required to take any science, maths or engineering courses in order for them to have a similarly balanced education. Just sayin's all.

I obtained a traineeship to enable me to get through university without placing financial demands on my parents. Admittedly, universities of the time were largely funded by taxation and the only fees were to the student union for a lot of facilities and services that I never used (far to busy studying). I guess those arts students need something to occupy their time!

Having said that, I have no problems with people choosing to study any field at all, really. The important factor is that the universities apply academic rigour and ensure that only honest effort is rewarded. Learning for its own sake is fine; but no coasting and it should not divert resources from study of more "useful (vocational) studies. Work hard.

Education should be free. Full stop.

But it is difficult to compare systems. In the UK, for some reason unclear to me, people study something, anything really, just so they proved they can study and then work in a completely different field.

No offense, but it makes no sense to me and seems unproductive.

Still, education should be free of charge other than maybe the pure adminsitration costs. It used to be like that in Germany and the 100€ for the administration was acceptable, imho.
And then of course you had to pay if you reached a certain amount of semesters above the normal. Say a normal Diplom took 8-10 semesters and you would need more, you would have to pay 500€/term.

If education is free, then I would be very much concerned about quality.

I think it would be fine if you study something and then work in a different field because university education is only able to prepare you for the real world, it can only mold your thinking, prepare you for the inquisitiveness and intellectuality. Even you have a PhD degree from a good university, you still have a lot to learn.

Education is only your luggage for a life journey.

It is free for the student, not the government. Staff is paid.
And there has been no change in salaries since fees were introduced.

And I am pretty sure that neither the UK with moderate fees nor the US with horrendous fees have any advantages in quality

And although it might be true for the arts or humanities, sciences require you to study them.
I'm sorry, but someone who studies history is useless as a chemist.
Someone who studies music has no idea about programming.
A chemist is not a professional programmer.

There is a reason why it takes years to study a certain subject. Especially the sciences. You can't just study something else and then expect that person to be able to work as whatever they want. Not unless you as an employer are willing to waste lots of money retraining them or are willing to accept lesser quality work.

So this becoming another thread of people thinking that degrees are just a long training for a specific job, and for a number of people to spout their prejudices, and ignorance, regarding the arts, and their assumption that engineering is the only job that makes anything of use, or engineering is the only thing that makes money in this country.

Let me take an example that I can assume that everyone on this Naim forum can understand. I am sure that graduates of sciences were involved in the design and manufacture of Naim equipment, and I am also sure that graduates of the arts are involved in what you will use that equipment to reproduce. One is useless without the other.

Taking the examples of tutorial time for science students and arts students above, one reason for the imbalance is that arts courses involve a great deal of practical project time, so students do often work from home or in studio spaces. There are hard working and lazy students in all disciplines.

From a personal point of view, I am often surprised by what passes for work in many fields. When people talk of a 35 hour week I am shocked, and it is not uncommon in the arts to have to work that in one sitting to hit deadlines. Also taking time off sick is not an option when you are booked to do a specific job, you do it, and then take time to recover.

Having worked on some successful UK TV shows I can also say that they export and generate revenue as well as any engineering based industry, and I seem to remember posting in one such previous thread that ten years ago, and very probably now, the US film industry was the USA's most successful export, generating huge revenues.

Personally I do not object to people studying sciences at university, nor arts, or humanities, although I do recognise that there are 'Mickey Mouse' courses in all disciplines. As an employer I have mostly found that graduates have mostly been taught how to think in a disciplined way that is applicable to many jobs, and also that no course is a specific training for a job, that is what you have to learn when you start your work.

If through making it harder financially for students to attend higher educational, and those from all backgrounds, then we will devalue the available workforce of the whole economy, and it will have detrimental effects in the long run.

To quote a slogan from the university lecturers union during the 1980's 'If you think education is expensive, then try ignorance.'

quote:

Originally posted by backfromoz:
I got a full grant and all my fees paid.

Result 24 years continous employmet with in the health care field.

2o years continous in NHS.
Last 4 years in private practice in Aus.

So did the tax payer get value for money out of me????

I like to think so.

David

..and I did exactly the same, apart from the bit at the end about bunking off to the sun . The NHS still gets me full-time.

I can't see any disavantages to that old system, where a small proportion of school leavers (10% ?)went to university, study what you like, and if your parents didn't have the money, it was paid for by the state.

I'll admit the universities seemed full of public school kids then, and I felt like someone from a Philip Larkin novel, but the challenge of getting in meant we stuck the course.

I didn't mean to bash the arts. Why would I?
But, I still think that if you want a product to be engineered properly, you would hire an engineer and not a musician, right?

So why hire someone to program software that studied history. Why hire someone to make a new drug that studied law.

Sure, you can hire a medical doctor to work on a drug if he is supported by a chemist.
You can hire an engineer to program software for a hardware application. Mainly because those professions have similar scientific grounds.

And yes, you can hire a mathmatician for book-keeping.
you can hire a musician as a writer or publicist. But if I were to do so, he should have minored in journalism.

It's simple really: If you expect me to hire you and you have a degree and therefor expect me to pay you more money than someone without a degree, I expect you to have completed all the training you need and not need any more training by me.

The point of university is to become knowledegable in your field, not to show you can read books and take exams.

I too would not be willing to pay for the education of someone to become a chemist just so he can then work as a musician.
Plain and simple: Money wasted.

Education is expensive. Education should be free. But education should be aimed at learning a skill you will later use for your profession. If not, pay for it yourself. And don't expect to get paid more just because you managed to pass a few exams.

I switched from electrical engineering to chemistry, not because I couldn't make it as an engineer but because it was too much hobby and not what I wanted to work as on a day to day basis.
And if I want to work as a chemist, not only employers expect me to be a chemist, but I expect myself to be a chemist (let's ignore the fact that you are not legally allowed to handle certain chemicals nor order or transport them without certain degrees).

I don't mean to say that people who work in different fields than what they studied do not know what they are doing. But if you study something, the only thing you are qualified in on a higher level, is the subject you studied.

quote:

Education should be free.

Agreed I shouldn't have to pay for it from my taxes - university lecturers could offer their services on a voluntary basis and earn a living by selling their expertise to industry and commerce.

Wots so grate abowt educatshon anyways ....



Mr. Ellis: [in woodwork class] What is that, Tomkinson?
Tomkinson: [standing before an enormous ship he's assembling] It's a model icebreaker, sir.
Mr. Ellis: It's a bit big for a model, isn't it?
Tomkinson: It's a full-scale model, sir.
Mr. Ellis: [annoyed] It's not a model if it's full-scale, Tomkinson, it's an icebreaker.
Tomkinson: Yes, it's good, isn't it, sir? It's got three engines, an enormous...
Mr. Ellis: No no no, that's not the point. That is not a model. It'll be hell if this comes out at speech day exhibition. You're a very stupid boy building icebreakers like this, Tomkinson.
Tomkinson: [deflated] Yes, sir.
Mr. Ellis: Now I won't say anything to the headmaster if you can get it down to a minimum of four foot.
Tomkinson: But sir! There's fifteen hundred tons of steel in this...

George seems to have the right idea to me

So would you say that Kindergarten and all other kinds of school, basically any education whatsoever should not be paid for by the taxpayer but should be paid solely by the parents of the children?

Or should the children pay for it themselves?

By the way, committees deciding what is needed and what not, well, let's just call them politicians and be done with it.
Dictating what is needed and what not, cutting education. That's all a sign of a dying culture.
A sign of of loss of civilisation.

quote:

Or should the children pay for it themselves?

I'm not sure that is possible as most children do not have sufficient income, but I think we could have more cost effective methods of education than we currently have in schools with a lot more interactive computer learning from home. We should be looking at using technology to improve learning whilst reducing the burden on the tax payer. I don't see much wrong with asking people to pay for their education after the age of 18 given that repayments are only made after they reach a certain incoming point.

If parents can afford to pay school fees then I think this is a good idea, but there still needs to be free schools for the majority at least until the age of 15/16 - perhaps 18, but after that ... there needs to be a cut-off point somewhere.

Who wants to pay even more tax? Especially, as it is not spent wisely at the moment. Education is not free; somebody has to pay for it. I prefer any additional taxes to be spent on the National Health rather than education. If higher education were to be free then perhaps it could be done differently with students living at home to reduce accommodation costs and more focus on distance learning to reduce tuition costs - not sure there is a need for people to go away to university to learn and the Open University is perhaps a model we should look to expand.

Perhaps parents should pay more - of course that will be unpopular with those who are parents. Perhaps those without children should subsidise those with - of course that will again be unpopular with childless taxpayers. I just think most people prefer somebody else to pay or maybe I'm just a happy go luck cynic.

I'm not sure somebody in government spending others money is such a great idea, but perhaps a necessary evil as they say.

I am a student myself. I do not want to have kids, not now, not ever.
So I am not a fan of paying taxes for other people's kids.

I am in the fortunate position of having loving parents who are middle class and could afford and would want to afford sending me and my brother to university, even if that meant they would have to give up everything else.

But I am glad that they are not forced to do so. There is absolutely no way any 18 year old could pay for university himself. Maybe in the UK, but in Germany no bank would grant you a loan without a fixed income. And loans are extremely expensive.

Sure, scholarships and grants are a nice idea to get people to work harder, but they are paid by the taxpayer again, so only little is gained but a lot is lost.

Thing is, in the next few years the main tax-payers will be people with higher education, i.e. people with university-degrees.
So for one, we should make sure there are enough of those and b) those people should be willing to pay for the next generations education just like theirs was paid for by the previous.

By the way, if funding was dependent on the grades, far less people would visit the really good universities that hold you to a higher standard. Or universities would lower their standards to ensure they have enough students.