Violent Protests As Mps Vote To Raise Tuition Fees

[bellyup]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11987395

 

The interviewer must have felt a bit awkward when he said he can't move the wheelchair himself, ouch.

 

This is Police brutality.

[bellyup]

Simple solution, if you can't afford to go to uni do like we had to, do an apprenticeship, study hard in your own time and get your degree via open learning, it is much more worthwile and is usualy held in higher regard by employers rather than they knowing you went to uni for 3 years and spent most of the time getting pissed and staying in bed.

 

Its 2010 not 1950 there arent that many apprenticeships around.

[jimbms]

Simple solution, if you can't afford to go to uni do like we had to, do an apprenticeship, study hard in your own time and get your degree via open learning, it is much more worthwile and is usualy held in higher regard by employers rather than they knowing you went to uni for 3 years and spent most of the time getting pissed and staying in bed.

 

Its 2010 not 1950 there arent that many apprenticeships around.

 

Thats strange saying 63% of possitions last year went unfilled, we will always need electricians and plumbers etc instead we are churning out a generation of overqualified office administrators, travel managers, media graduates and experts in ancient albanian architecture whillst we have no tradesmen, teachers, doctors and engineers and have to import them much the the general moaning of the population. Mind you from your viewpoint we could have done with some decent investment advisors to help you out.

[VinnieK]

Thats strange saying 63% of possitions last year went unfilled, we will always need electricians and plumbers etc instead we are churning out a generation of overqualified office administrators, travel managers, media graduates and experts in ancient albanian architecture whillst we have no tradesmen, teachers, doctors and engineers and have to import them much the the general moaning of the population.

 

A bit irrelevant, since neither of those have anything to do with apprenticeships.

 

The situation is more complicated than you're letting on, at least in those two examples. Entry to most medical schools in the UK is incredibly competitive with more applications than places available. If you want more doctors, you need more medical schools (of which the UK only has a few). Also, is there a shortage of Doctors across the board, or is it a case of a shortage within certain specialist areas due to them being less well paid/held in less esteem and the pull of the private sector?

 

As for teachers, the problem isn't so much with a lack of graduates as the sheer lack of appeal the profession holds for a lot of them. For a lot of graduates they see the prospect of better wages and improved career opportunities elsewhere, and more than a few are put off from going into teaching by the obligation of having to spend an addition two years pissing about on a PGCE.

[bellyup]

Thats strange saying 63% of possitions last year went unfilled, we will always need electricians and plumbers etc instead we are churning out a generation of overqualified office administrators, travel managers, media graduates and experts in ancient albanian architecture whillst we have no tradesmen, teachers, doctors and engineers and have to import them much the the general moaning of the population. Mind you from your viewpoint we could have done with some decent investment advisors to help you out.

 

Three as i see it have nothing to do with aprenticeships

 

Teachers ,Doctors and Engineers are all highly qualified they are not 'tradesmen'.

Yes you do need some investment advisors - direct them to your regulator.

[Amadeus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11987395

 

The interviewer must have felt a bit awkward when he said he can't move the wheelchair himself, ouch.

 

This is Police brutality.

Yep, well spotted.

[bellyup]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11987395

 

The interviewer must have felt a bit awkward when he said he can't move the wheelchair himself, ouch.

 

This is Police brutality.

Yep, well spotted.

Yep in the UK we are not yet accustomed to state brutality in the streets.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

Whic ever way you see it. one thing the rioting is not going to help them is it.

its pure yobish and not really welcome.

I tend to think it has helped them. It has become very big news of recent, so it has inspired more debate and made the issue more accessible to members of the public via the media and its effects on day-to-day life in London.

 

Although you disagree with the rioters and the matter of degrees you consider irrelevant or pointless, what would you have a member of the public do if they want change? Wait until the next elections when voting comes around on the slim chance that a vote can make a difference? Or just make do?

 

Yours is a particularly selfish attitude, not just to fees but seemingly any matter that might affect you in a slightly negative way but which benefits other to a far greater degree.

 

Something about your attitude smacks of some sort of jealousy/envy or a peculiarly selfish way of thinking. Might be wrong, but it is the feeling that I get from reading your posts.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

Do we think university should be entirely work related? In other words, should university only offer courses that are relevant to the job market?

[ballaughbiker]

Let us know what you think about that first LDV

[censorship]

Do we think university should be entirely work related? In other words, should university only offer courses that are relevant to the job market?

Of course not, if we did that we would have no one with Sociology in Art degrees to join online forums and spout right-on shite

[La_Dolce_Vita]

Sociology in Art? Sounds quite interesting actually.

[censorship]

It does doesn't it? Even as I hit submit I was thinking: "I know I'm trying to make a jokey sarcastic comment, but I wonder what that course would contain."

[VinnieK]

Do we think university should be entirely work related? In other words, should university only offer courses that are relevant to the job market?

 

It's an interesting question, and certainly higher education is moving (or being pushed) further and further in the direction of work related studies, sometimes willingly since many business relevant degrees are effectively seen as cash cows with can be run relatively cheaply but which command decent, and sometimes outright ludicrous fees (particularly at the postgraduate level).

 

Originally, universities were in fact quasi-vocational in nature. Although the material taught was academic in flavour, motivation was provided by the belief that this material was the best preparation for a serious study of theology (which in a sense was practical given the religiosity of the medieval mind) and law. So there's nothing new in viewing them as being bound to the needs of employers.

 

Nevertheless, there are two related reasons why I think it would be wrong for higher education to focus so heavily on the job market. Firstly, it's a very inefficient way of going about training up a skilled work force to place the obligation on universities, which are primarily research institutions and very expensive to run - especially since universities are always going to be tempted to ramp up fees for vocational courses to help pay for their academic courses and research.

 

It would make more sense to set up a large number of training institutions across the UK, similar to the old technical colleges, with can dedicate their efforts and resources wholly to providing qualifications which are directly applicable to the job market. It would also be nice to see the bulk of the cost of these things funded directly through corporation tax, since a lot of the impulse behind the expansion of business related degrees seems to come from the likes of the CBI which endlessly nags the government to shoulder more and more of the burden of training their potential workforce.

 

Secondly, for centuries now universities and degrees have been viewed as being concerned with academic matters and providing training for the professions (medicine, law, teaching and, more recently, engineering), and I think it's a valid distinction to make as ultimately there's probably more of a similarity between studying disparate subjects like literature and mathematics than there is between either of those and marketing or accounting. This distinction is worthy of preserving because right now the degree is becoming a very generic tertiary qualification which can stand for a vast array of skills, abilities and knowledge of varying levels of application, when I believe that everyone would benefit with a variety of more specialized tertiary qualifications.

 

Unfortunately, a lot of the problem is sheer snobbery. Such an array of higher education institutions which are not universities, and their students are likely to be looked down upon by some much as university colleges and the Post-92 universities still are today (and unfairly so, since a number of them have departments that give their older competitors a run for their money, i.e. Hertfordshire for Physics, Chester, UCLAN and Anglia Ruskin for History, Oxford Brookes for History and Law, or Plymouth for applied maths).

[pongo]

You featherhead Martindale! You pompous, bogus, gossiping old featherhead.

Roy Bland is not 'red brick'. He was at St. Antony's College, Oxford