Emma Is Currently Working As A Care Assistant

[Patfig]

The educational pyramid scheme.

Tragic. Up to their eyeballs in debt. Disappointed. Frustrated. Shafted.

The con of cons. 50% going to university - a total delusion.

But it isn't it your right to go to university and get a degree even if you are thick as shitt? Effing madness.

I have a spirit level

[Bloo Loo]

the aim was for half of the school leaving population to get a degree.

Bearing in mind that half of people do not even have an average IQ, it was always a silly idea.

The real reason was to get half of 4 years of workers out of the jobs market and pay their own dole.

[MrPin]

The educational pyramid scheme.

Tragic. Up to their eyeballs in debt. Disappointed. Frustrated. Shafted.

The con of cons. 50% going to university - a total delusion.

So it is! Shafted is the word! Very sorry for these people! I think it will be harder that the 80s then when I got my

"Richard the Third" degree in an unemployable subject, Physics, and Maths!

[Patfig]

So it is! Shafted is the word! Very sorry for these people! I think it will be harder that the 80s then when I got my

"Richard the Third" degree in an unemployable subject, Physics, and Maths!

Surely you could have gone into banking

[devils advocate]

The good University of Teeside says that an offer is made for this course between 180 - 220 UCAS points. Looking at the points tables, she could get in with Stage 3 riding and horse knowledge and care (70 points), a pass in a certificate of personal effectiveness (70 points) ( and f*^£ knows what that is!), and a D grade A level (60 points).

And for any undergraduates at the University of Teeside who are reading this, that totals 200 points.

[Johnny Cash]

have you seen her photo? minging

Care to post a photo of yourself on here, then we can all comment on your looks?

[Umiapik]

I know one way out of this trap and it's a way that increasing numbers of people (both 18yr olds and mature students) are taking. Study with the Open University. Ok, a part-time degree takes twice as long to achieve but the costs are tiny compared to a full-time degree course and you can gain work experience in your chosen area while you study. The OU was traditionally used by older people but since the introduction of tuition fees, more and more bright 18yr olds are choosing to get a job after A-levels and study for their degree part time. Frankly, I think it's a good idea, too. I wish somebody had suggested it to me when I was a teenager!

[bottletop]

Care to post a photo of yourself on here, then we can all comment on your looks?

No probs....w@nk away mate

http://img134.imageshack.us/my.php?image=p1000523dp8.jpg

[StainlessSteelCat]

Sir, are you including here the Oxbridge "gentleman's third" such as that awarded to the 14th Earl of Home?

A little more respect for tradition, if you please.

Didn't Cambridge used to have special degrees (awarded to those who failed the normal type) and a Masters could be obtained simply applying for the award after a couple of years?

Edit: Seems I was right

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-CA2-PM...result#PPA39,M1

scroll down this page to see the rules applying to Cambridge for Masters.

Edited January 11, 2009 by greencat

[CrashedOutAndBurned]

I used to be a lecturer at the University of Teesside. One of the things that made me decide that it was time to go was meeting a personnel person from one of the few milk round calibre employers in the region at some function or other. She told me anecdotes about people they'd taken on who'd got a 2:1 or even a first, but still couldn't read, write or add up to the level of competence required for they regarded as a good graduate trainee. The result, she said, was that, with all due respect, if she saw 'University of Teesside' on an application form, that would be enough to consign it to the small round filing cabinet on the floor.

This is an utterly predictable tragedy, and one I predicted (discreetly, to start with) from when I joined the place in September 2000 to leaving in November 2005 (a typical story in my case: any first permanent HE post after completing PhD is better than none). We were systematically blocked by the senior management from honestly assessing the sorts of skills that graduate employers are looking for. This was because they knew full well that if you took in students with two Es at 'A' level, no force on the planet could provide the necessary 'value added' tuition needed to make them competitive with red brick graduates three years later. So they dumbed down the assessments, appointed tame externals and aggressively ticked the relevant political correctness boxes, and that was that. They even made us do a 'Teaching and Learning' certificate course, during which the 'all must have prizes' mantra was drummed into us as relentlessly as if it had emanated from one of Orwell's telescreens.

The real tragedy is that the brightest and most conscientious of the students I taught there really did have what it takes to compete with a redbrick or a Russell graduate in the graduate workplace; and that many will end up being unjustly tarred with the brush of their lower attaining peers.

I think there was definitely something in that a generation or two ago (in terms of a general rule). I was the only member of my programme cohort to land a first when I graduated in 1995 (in a cohort of about 40), and there hadn't been any for the previous two years. Where I teach now (history department in a Russell Group university in the north of England), it's about 10% per cohort as a general rule, and can go significantly higher. When I graduated, a 2:2 (a 'Desmond') was considered the norm. Below that, and there were either tragic personal circumstances or you were a bit of a pranny. A 2:1 indicated that you were either bright or conscientious. A first indicated that you were either both, or had no life (hence the reason I'm writing on this website in the middle of the night).

Good points. In fact, students from a newer or less prestigious Uni SHOULD have equal clout in the jobs market. There was no reason to over-expand and water-down higher education. Many working and lower middle-class kids are short-changed by being in comprehensive schools where quality is low and learning is equated with being bored and as GCSEs are so easy, good-enough results can be achieved without effort.

On attending University many kids 'perk up' and with a new maturity start to realise learning can be enjoyable but now they are stuck in a Uni that employers, as you say, view as suspect. I went to a middle-of-the road Uni about halfway down the league table and despite having three As at level (I wasn't predicted that) the course only required a B and two Cs. So as you say, you had kids who in reality were no different in attainment and intelligence as some of those taking up places at the top Unis and you had thickos who didn't give a toss. The later should never have gone to university but it was already the era of Unis-as-money-spinners, bums on seats.

Speaking to a higher education language teacher once she said that they had to revise first-year courses as years ago a B in say, A Level French, meant it could be taken as read that you had a certain level. She also said that an A Level in a language used to mean a very strong level of fluency - now it's just a sort of intermediate level. The government suggests that everyone's doing better and denies dumbing-down but anyone involved with the system who talks candidly openly admits that's exactly what's happened.

[1929crash]

You wouldn't though. Would you?

Suddenly, the thought of Tony Blair doing that while looking at his own image came to mind . . .

[dinker]

The good University of Teeside says that an offer is made for this course between 180 - 220 UCAS points. Looking at the points tables, she could get in with Stage 3 riding and horse knowledge and care (70 points), a pass in a certificate of personal effectiveness (70 points) ( and f*^£ knows what that is!), and a D grade A level (60 points).

And for any undergraduates at the University of Teeside who are reading this, that totals 200 points.

Certificate of Personal Effectiveness (CoPE) Levels 1 & 2

The Certificate of Personal Effectiveness qualifications at Levels 1, 2 and 3 have had their approval period renewed and extended to August 2010, with certificates awarded until August 2012.

Aim

To provide a framework for the development, assessment and accreditation of generic and wider key skills and wider activities, through a nationally recognised qualification at levels

1, 2 and 3.

Progression routes to and from CoPE

Client / Age Group:

* Students in Years 10 & 11, either within the whole school PSHE programme or within the option system.

* "High effort" students or those described as gifted and talented in KS3

* Students in Post-16 education, embarking on programmes at levels 1 and 2

QA Method

Following internal moderation centres are required to register candidates for external moderation, 4 weeks in advance of a regional meeting.

Certificates issued by ASDAN

Structure

* Students need to complete credits by completing challenges from chosen modules, providing portfolio evidence of completion of all the activities undertaken.

* Students need to demonstrate competence in the wider key skills of Working with Others, Improving Own Learning and Performance and Problem Solving at levels 1 and 2.

* Students need to demonstrate competence in the units Planning and carrying out research, Communicating through Discussion and Planning and giving an oral presentation at levels 1 and 2.

[Bloo Loo]

I imagine Tony Blair's mirrors are covered in smears from being kissed so often.

They certainly wont be covered in dust from the Gaza war.... I dont think he's ever been, certainly not in his capacity of Peace Envoy.

[symo]

In engineering I find that the degree is not an indicator of anything it's the ability to keep learning when you enter the employment pool and throughout your career. I was a waster at a former poly with a desmond. However what I had was the ability to admit I did not know anything and recognise any experience I could get as an opportunity to learn. During my time I have worked with lots of people from Red-Brick institutions and former Polys who have been as thick as porcine excrement generally these people are easy to spot as one of the first things they will say (especially red brick grad's) is :" I went to xx and got a first". Also without doubt the best engineers who I have worked with started on the shop floor or as a general office dogsbody and went to uni part time.

Anyhow back to our interior design graduate. WTF thats painting and decorating isn't it?

[Ron Forthehills]

As with pretty much any scheme which this government attempts to influence, higher education has become appallingly expensive, and in its present form is probably the wrong option for a majority of students. They are paying top-dollar for so-called degrees which have no particular merit because most other people have them as well.

Socialism abhors intellectual elites, and so it attempts to dilute grammar schools and universities by abolition or opening them to the masses. They have turned education into a market-based arena, and it is market forces which will unravel this bloated and misguided enterprise, as 'students' see that for many of them there is no longer any compelling reason to embrace £20,000 of debt.

Another hopeless labour initiative.

Never mind, lets give ID cards a go ..........................

Edited January 11, 2009 by Ron Forthehills

[Guest AuntJess]

The educational pyramid scheme.

Tragic. Up to their eyeballs in debt. Disappointed. Frustrated. Shafted.

The con of cons. 50% going to university - a total delusion.

I agree. So many young folk are 'seduced' into going to Uni. as it is held up as "the only way to fly".What we need are more artisans, but the govt. appeal to the snobbery of the masses, where unless you have a degree you are worthless. They do this so as to:

- keep the unemployment figures down - in the short term.

- make the student pay for his/her own learning, when an apprenticeship in something useful would serve them better - financially...and probably emotionally. Square peg unto round holes - NOT a satisfactory outcome.

The daft thing is, the plumber I used to use for my domestic jobs could buy and sell me - in terms of earnings - and I have a string of letters after my name. If I am so smart, why ain't I rich?

The lass who cuts my hair manages a salon for a big name. She cuts like a dream and to me is worth her weight in gold. I would wager that her salary is a good one.

There are many ways of being clever: clever fingers is just one of the alternatives to being a 'boffin'.

[LiveinHope]

What makes me so angry about my experience there is that if we'd been allowed to teach and assess them honestly (including failing and kicking out the ones that weren't intellectually up to it at the end of the first year), some of them would have come out at the end of year 3 on a level playing field with those who had been educated through the private school-redbrick route.

Couldn't agree more. if the Poly Unis want to be true Unis then many need to get 'tough'. I gave myself no end of departmental trouble and hassle by failing students. I just ended up marking resits until they passed. There is a point to 'failure', it is what makes success worthwhile. I argued all the time that it would be fairer to kick them out, both to them and their peers. But as Bloo Loo says later, 50 % at 'Uni' is just a clever way of making the unemployable youth pay their own Income Support. IMHO it is simply 3 years wasted, with a debt accumulated and they are often none the wiser.

For some years I have advised offspring of friends, who feel peer pressure to go to Uni but are not truly academically inclined, to just go straight into the job market at 16 or 18, and preferably self employed or as an apprentice to a trade. Over the years I should have taken my own advice as many now earn more than I do as a mid-career Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer.

Edit for spelling

Edited January 11, 2009 by LiveinHope

[bottletop]

You wouldn't though. Would you?

lol. nah probably not

[1929crash]

Couldn't agree more. if the Poly Unis want to be true Unis then many need to get 'tough'. I gave myself no end of departmental trouble and hassle by failing students. I just ended up marking resits until they passed. There is a point to 'failure', it is what makes success worthwhile. I argued all the time that it would be fairer to kick them out, both to them and their peers. But as Bloo Loo says later, 50 % at 'Uni' is just a clever way of making the unemployable youth pay their own Income Support. IMHO it is simply 3 years wasted, with a debt accumulated and they are often none the wiser.

For some years I have advised offspring of friends, who feel peer pressure to go to Uni but are not truly academically inclined, to just go straight into the job market at 16 or 18, and preferably self employed or as an apprentice to a trade. Over the years I should have taken my own advice as many now earn more than I do as a mid-career Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer.

Edit for spelling

I like that phrase "none the wiser."

Reminds me of a tale told of FE Smith, later Lord Birkenhead, when he was a barrister at the turn of the 20th century.

The judge said: "Mr Smith, I have read your pleadings and am none the wiser."

Smith replied: "Possibly not, m'Lord, but much better informed."

[guitarman001]

In engineering I find that the degree is not an indicator of anything it's the ability to keep learning when you enter the employment pool and throughout your career. I was a waster at a former poly with a desmond. However what I had was the ability to admit I did not know anything and recognise any experience I could get as an opportunity to learn. During my time I have worked with lots of people from Red-Brick institutions and former Polys who have been as thick as porcine excrement generally these people are easy to spot as one of the first things they will say (especially red brick grad's) is :" I went to xx and got a first". Also without doubt the best engineers who I have worked with started on the shop floor or as a general office dogsbody and went to uni part time.

Anyhow back to our interior design graduate. WTF thats painting and decorating isn't it?

I've got an engineering degree from Edinburgh and the teaching was shit-hot; you couldn't do my job without it, IMO. As usual, there are still plenty of engineering jobs going round. The woman in this BBC story decided to study a 'non-subject,' if you get my drift, hence her finding job problems.

And of course there are many alternative options to uni, such as going into a trade. Two of my friends did this and are on good money and low hours. Another friend wants to keep up with the family tradition and graduate from uni; initially took electronics as I did but failed, wasting 2 years of his life, and now almost has a degree in civil engineering. He has daydreams about working shifts on the rigs and earning megabucks, but he's really not that type, or the academic type. Why not play to your strengths!

Edited January 11, 2009 by thomasross20

[repetitive bleats]

Waste three years and thousands of pounds learning what a truly keen aspiring interior designer would have learned from books, magazines, and their own experience by the time they were 16?

excellent post that. i have a 'digital design' degree. i did it as a mature student and paid my way through uni myself by doing freelance work as well as my coursework. my tutor agreed that i could include 'self initiated projects' that i was doing for clients as part of my course but would obviously be marked down because, although it was real world experience, it wasn't exactly embracing the unbridled creativity that a design degree ought to encompass. that was fair enough - and so i ended up with a 2.1

as a mature student i'd expected to feel a bit out of my depth but was really appalled at the level of ability exhibited by most of my peers. most were incapable of working out anything for themselves (and the tuition was non-existent with digital design being such a modern subject people who were any good were far too busy doing it to get involved in teaching it). my tutors kindly let me mainly work from my home as they accepted that they couldn't teach me anything and i was constantly being hassled by my 'peers' to help them with the simplest of things. nb. this was a digital design degree - my two tutors could not use computers. one was a 2D animator who used pen, paper and stop frame camera set up and the other had an MA in fine art from St. Martins.

i did so much freelance work that by the time i left Uni i had set up a company with the few decent students in my year working for me.

the point of this self-indulgent anecdote is this. from that point on i viewed a university based design degree as worthless. on occasions where i have advertised a design role and had decent portfolios from a graduate and non-graduate i will always go for the one who managed to achieve their level without the luxury of having 3 years with nothing else to do but learn their craft. if somebody had the motivation and gumption to learn what they needed whilst holding down a day job then given the chance, they are going to blow away someone who achieved the same with the time, assistance and facilities available to them at university.

[1929crash]

I imagine Tony Blair's mirrors are covered in smears from being kissed so often.

[Guest tbatst2000]

I finished university just as the last recession was starting to get going and, glad to say, didn't have too much trouble finding a job. However, there were a lot of people who finished at around the same time who were completely stuffed and ended up doing shop work and the like (I don't think I recall any of them being unemployed though). These were people with good quality (2.1s & firsts) real degrees (no basket weaving or even close) from a top 5 institution. I can't see why this time would be any different and, if you add in the huge expansion of the number of graduates since then, there's every reason to expect it to be a lot worse.

[debtlessmanc]

I agree. So many young folk are 'seduced' into going to Uni. as it is held up as "the only way to fly".What we need are more artisans, but the govt. appeal to the snobbery of the masses, where unless you have a degree you are worthless. They do this so as to:

- keep the unemployment figures down - in the short term.

- make the student pay for his/her own learning, when an apprenticeship in something useful would serve them better - financially...and probably emotionally. Square peg unto round holes - NOT a satisfactory outcome.

The daft thing is, the plumber I used to use for my domestic jobs could buy and sell me - in terms of earnings - and I have a string of letters after my name. If I am so smart, why ain't I rich?

The lass who cuts my hair manages a salon for a big name. She cuts like a dream and to me is worth her weight in gold. I would wager that her salary is a good one.

There are many ways of being clever: clever fingers is just one of the alternatives to being a 'boffin'.

Surely the point is that those who want to be boffins be boffins and those that want to cut hair, cut hair. The whole story that you earn more as a graduate is a carrot used to trap young people into removing themselves from the work pool at their own expense for 4 years. It is well known in the academic community that the Govts stats concerning graduate earnings over a liftetime are nonsense as they are calculated based on those of us who went the university system in the 60's, 70's and 80's when only 8-9% of people did and graduates were virtually guaranteed good jobs.

The way i look at it British culture has almost a race memory of times when owning a property or attending a university were seen as evidence of membership of the elite. Over the last 20 years or so this widespread perception has been ruthless exploited by those in charge to get us into debt and working for them.

I'm a member of staff at a University and my advice is that unless you have a real passion for the subject you intend to study, don't bother - get a trade. I am happy i did because i am doing research that might solve some of mans problems and I enjoy it, but i do understand that i'll never have any cash.

[Muswell Hillbilly]

I used to be a lecturer at the University of Teesside. One of the things that made me decide that it was time to go was meeting a personnel person from one of the few milk round calibre employers in the region at some function or other. She told me anecdotes about people they'd taken on who'd got a 2:1 or even a first, but still couldn't read, write or add up to the level of competence required for they regarded as a good graduate trainee. The result, she said, was that, with all due respect, if she saw 'University of Teesside' on an application form, that would be enough to consign it to the small round filing cabinet on the floor.

This is an utterly predictable tragedy, and one I predicted (discreetly, to start with) from when I joined the place in September 2000 to leaving in November 2005 (a typical story in my case: any first permanent HE post after completing PhD is better than none). We were systematically blocked by the senior management from honestly assessing the sorts of skills that graduate employers are looking for. This was because they knew full well that if you took in students with two Es at 'A' level, no force on the planet could provide the necessary 'value added' tuition needed to make them competitive with red brick graduates three years later. So they dumbed down the assessments, appointed tame externals and aggressively ticked the relevant political correctness boxes, and that was that. They even made us do a 'Teaching and Learning' certificate course, during which the 'all must have prizes' mantra was drummed into us as relentlessly as if it had emanated from one of Orwell's telescreens.

The real tragedy is that the brightest and most conscientious of the students I taught there really did have what it takes to compete with a redbrick or a Russell graduate in the graduate workplace; and that many will end up being unjustly tarred with the brush of their lower attaining peers.

Thank you for a very interesting post. It chimes exactly with my own experiences of teaching at a former poly on the outskirts of London in the late 1990s. Probably most of the students there had no aptitude or qualifications for higher education and were there purely as bums on seats, to bring in the money from their local authorities. A minority of them were bright and hardworking nonetheless and would have graduated with respectable degrees, albeit from an institution which was regarded as crap. A yet smaller minority consisted of local, mature students, who pretty much taught themselves – with a staff-student ratio of 50 or so they had little choice, as it was the more ‘needy’ students who tended to receive more staff attention. Nobody was allowed to fail anything, modules were retaken ad inifinitum, and playing the dyslexia card pretty much guaranteed you could do what you like and eventually get a degree. Such are the realities of a mass higher education system and sending 50% of the population to a thing called a ‘university’.

I must admit I only stuck it for a couple of years and left HE altogether to get a proper job! Now I am occasionally involved in selection of new staff. I think people involved in recruitment generally know the relative values of, say, as 2:1 from a Russell Group university compared with one from a ‘1992 university’. It is unfortunate that very able graduates from the worst universities may be overlooked when their CVs are thrown out on sight, but that’s the employer’s loss. Where I work, some of the most competent staff actually have degrees from their local universities, and the company I work for is sufficiently openminded to treat such applications on merit and not reject them on sight simply because they say University of Neasden or whatever.