University Bubble Making Hissing Sounds

[Confusion of VIs]

On 30/03/2022 at 07:10, spyguy said:

Id take that as spin/BS.

Two-thirds said they plan to leave higher education in the next five years, with three-quarters of those in research roles saying they are ‘likely or very likely’ to leave academia.

....

Among younger staff, eight in ten said low pay and conditions were simply ‘forcing’ them to consider leaving the sector, while survey respondents aged over 60 were the most likely to leave their positions over recent pension cuts.

Most HE are off by 60.

Anyone over 60 and with a decent index linked pension should retire as soon as they can, ideally they should have retired around a year ago. 

[reddog]

From Yorkshire Post article:

among the subjects affected is linguistics, with department representatives tweeting: "Thirty-seven redundancies announced. In linguistics two permanent colleagues personally targeted for redundancy; all others at risk. We would appreciate your support in fighting this."

 

 

 

But fighting what?  If no one wants to do the subject where is the fight?

Edited June 15, 2022 by reddog

[Si1]

2 minutes ago, reddog said:

From Yorkshire Post article:

among the subjects affected is linguistics, with department representatives tweeting: "Thirty-seven redundancies announced. In linguistics two permanent colleagues personally targeted for redundancy; all others at risk. We would appreciate your support in fighting this."

 

 

 

But fighting what?  If no one wants to do the subject where is the fight?

The fight is to protect some £40k+ academic salaries who frankly won't get paid the same anywhere else.

[NoHPCinTheUK]

You should probably go to Uni only to study Engineering, Medicine and Law and Hard Sciences. 
All the rest is a scam or, it should be really really niche. 

[debtlessmanc]

1 hour ago, spyguy said:

"It really does look like disciplines like history and English will cease to exist outside of Oxbridge and a handful of Russell Group universities in less than five years. Fees and lifting of the cap has absolutely gutted unis and unis like ours.

That is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

 

 

Huddersfield has been hiring for years like its going out of fashion. Their VC was quoted as saying it was going to be    “The oxbridge of the north”. Madness.

[onlooker]

2 minutes ago, debtlessmanc said:

Huddersfield has been hiring for years like its going out of fashion. Their VC was quoted as saying it was going to be    “The oxbridge of the north”. Madness.

I guess the Hudderfield VC is not foregoing any salary to help ease the plight of the university?

[iamnumerate]

1 hour ago, spyguy said:

"It really does look like disciplines like history and English will cease to exist outside of Oxbridge and a handful of Russell Group universities in less than five years. Fees and lifting of the cap has absolutely gutted unis and unis like ours.

That is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

 

 

It will not happen if graduates of those subjects are making money.

I strongly suspect that they are not. I do wonder though if this could make it harder to recruit teachers.

 

[debtlessmanc]

1 hour ago, onlooker said:

I guess the Hudderfield VC is not foregoing any salary to help ease the plight of the university?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

if you look at the average professorial pay by university you will find an odd effect. The smaller the university the higher the average pay. Why? Well every university has a vc, so when you average a VCs pay with 10 other profs- different from averaging them from 100 profs…

[shlomo]

2 hours ago, spyguy said:

"It really does look like disciplines like history and English will cease to exist outside of Oxbridge and a handful of Russell Group universities in less than five years. Fees and lifting of the cap has absolutely gutted unis and unis like ours.

That is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

 

 

The Ancient Greeks considered a liberal arts education to be the ultimate signifier of an educated person.

In both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, it was thought that studying a range of disciplines, rhetoric, grammar and logic, were essential components of citizenship. In the great medieval universities, this was expanded to seven 'arts', which were designed to give students broad training in areas of enquiry and to amalgamate knowledge rather than train individuals to specific areas or careers.
These seven liberal arts were grammar, logic, arithmetic, rhetoric, geometry, music, and astronomy. The successful study of these subjects would produce well-rounded individuals with general knowledge of a wide range of subjects and with mastery of a range of transferable skills. They would become ‘global citizens’, with the capacity to pursue lifelong learning and perform as valuable members of their communities.

[spyguy]

1 hour ago, debtlessmanc said:

Huddersfield has been hiring for years like its going out of fashion. Their VC was quoted as saying it was going to be    “The oxbridge of the north”. Madness.

 

1 hour ago, debtlessmanc said:

Huddersfield has been hiring for years like its going out of fashion. Their VC was quoted as saying it was going to be    “The oxbridge of the north”. Madness.

Ah, yes. There was this fkwittery-

The Brighouse man began working for the university in July 2005 as a senior lecturer in the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics. While he did not hold a PhD, Mr Duxbury has a professional qualification in accountancy and is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants

50 odd year old accountant, forced to jump thru hoops for pointless dk waving.

It's not like the bloke was working on the tills before.

Seems to have a bit too many Chinese, toqdy degrees to ME and role for Prince Andrew.

 

 

 

[Si1]

1 hour ago, debtlessmanc said:

Huddersfield has been hiring for years like its going out of fashion. Their VC was quoted as saying it was going to be    “The oxbridge of the north”. Madness.

I imagine Manchester, Leeds and Durham universities might be higher in line...

[spyguy]

7 minutes ago, Si1 said:

I imagine Manchester, Leeds and Durham universities might be higher in line...

And York and Newcastle.

VC Bob has done v Kim Il Yong qualities about hys academic achievements.

Iirc he did his thesis on fibre optics at BT.

Youngest this, youngest that.

Yet this Feynman of the North seems to fall short

 

[iamnumerate]

2 hours ago, NoHPCinTheUK said:

You should probably go to Uni only to study Engineering, Medicine and Law and Hard Sciences. 
All the rest is a scam or, it should be really really niche. 

In some ways I like living in a country where some people study history,english, geography etc at Uni - we need them for teachers. Unfortunately, studying them can make people poorer and the universities should say this.

 

[Si1]

6 minutes ago, iamnumerate said:

In some ways I like living in a country where some people study history,english, geography etc at Uni - we need them for teachers. Unfortunately, studying them can make people poorer and the universities should say this.

 

Geography qualifies for planning, environmental management and public health, so it's a bit unfair lumping it in with Eng and Hist..it gets taught as a GCSE option in technical colleges.

[iamnumerate]

11 hours ago, Si1 said:

Geography qualifies for planning, environmental management and public health, so it's a bit unfair lumping it in with Eng and Hist..it gets taught as a GCSE option in technical colleges.

Fair point  - although the only geography graduate I know has never been able to get a job like that and works in HR.

[Si1]

23 minutes ago, iamnumerate said:

Fair point  - although the only geography graduate I know has never been able to get a job like that and works in HR.

They're all tax-funded areas and they got decimated following the financial crisis, so there is that, they're cyclical and first public spendingarea to be cut. And in general they require a relevant master's degree too.

Edited June 16, 2022 by Si1

[iamnumerate]

15 minutes ago, Si1 said:

They're all tax-funded areas and they got decimated following the financial crisis, so there is that, they're cyclical and first public spendingarea to be cut. And in general they require a relevant master's degree too.

He graduated in 1997.

[Si1]

6 minutes ago, iamnumerate said:

He graduated in 1997.

 

And what's your point? I know people who've worked in these fields and the trials and costs they've faced. Certainly far more than professional historians, for example (I never met any)

There was some decent work in planning and the environment from then on, probably more when Gordo opened the spending spigots in 2001. I knew a few people working in it, but had master's degrees in the specialism which was essential. Thing is HR might still have just been better money. But the number of openings cratered from the late 2000s. 

[iamnumerate]

1 minute ago, Si1 said:

 

And what's your point? I know people who've worked in these fields and the trials and costs they've faced. Certainly far more than professional historians, for example (I never met any)

There was some decent work in planning and the environment from then on, probably more when Gordo opened the spending spigots in 2001. I knew a few people working in it, but had master's degrees in the specialism which was essential. Thing is HR might still have just been better money. But the number of openings cratered from the late 2000s. 

Good point. Sorry I was wrong to lump it in with history etc.

Without getting into the nitty gritty of what degrees are useful. 

One thing that really annoys me about student loans is that the repayments should help people chose between subject x at uni y or subject z at uni a.

As far as I know this is not published (I would love to be corrected).

In a more logical world you would prove me wrong (or I would prove me right) by pointing at these figures - why can't we?

[winkie]

Should teach the skills the country needs, work closely with industry......all universities, else apprenticeships should be made to be easier for trades to take on those willing to learn on the job......stupid that any old degree not even relevent to the job seems to grant access to some jobs.....madness. Most hard workers just want to get out into the workplace after A levels earn money and learn on the job doing the job that interests them....... university for many is a huge waste of both time and money..... saddling that debt over a working life, what a rip off, a business in it to make money,imo.........so glad I didn't go to university, studded in own time, distance learning, courses work paid for and qualifications work paid for......good employers invest in their people, win,win.......

[NoHPCinTheUK]

12 hours ago, iamnumerate said:

In some ways I like living in a country where some people study history,english, geography etc at Uni - we need them for teachers. Unfortunately, studying them can make people poorer and the universities should say this.

 

I also do. But they’re niche fields. You probably only need them if you love it and want a career in academia or government. A dual degree in History and Politics will probably make you a good government advisor. We obviously need people researching and teaching Shakespeare et al. 
Also, the word University comes from the Latin Universitas, Universal. Uni courses should teach in a interdisciplinary fashion and go back to what they were in the past. Universities are there to bake the élite of tomorrow, not to teach how to read a balance sheet or use Excel. Unfortunately we all know why they were inflated and what they’ve become now. Uni campuses and student unions have been politicised.

Edited June 16, 2022 by NoHPCinTheUK

[Si1]

4 minutes ago, iamnumerate said:

Good point. Sorry I was wrong to lump it in with history etc.

Without getting into the nitty gritty of what degrees are useful. 

One thing that really annoys me about student loans is that the repayments should help people chose between subject x at uni y or subject z at uni a.

As far as I know this is not published (I would love to be corrected).

In a more logical world you would prove me wrong (or I would prove me right) by pointing at these figures - why can't we?

One of the problems is that a lot of people don't really know what they want out of life, never mind a job, at the age of 18. Some people are focussed and comfy with that, go, say, for engineering and make lots of money from it and never quite understand why others would have conciously gone for less well paying more wishy washy subjects. Plus the stats aren't that easy to interpret. I know technical subjects often have a stubborn core of unemployment because they have such focussed core of skills that for people who decided they didn't want to do it as a job afterwards meant they were a bit stuck. Humanity subjects like history and geography actually have really decent rates of employment in actual graduate jobs, just not tremendously well paid ones, owing to the wider if not deeper transferrable skills gained. So the stats are quite hard to interpret and of course you can't force someone to want to be a techie or whatever 

I personally think in this day and age it just doesn't make sense for a lot of people to go to university at 18 and a simpler IT or accounting skills apprenticeship or course at 18/19 is way more appropriate and when they understand themselves and the world better they are in a more informed position to go to university at a later age instead 

[ucnvpe0]

1 hour ago, iamnumerate said:

Good point. Sorry I was wrong to lump it in with history etc.

Without getting into the nitty gritty of what degrees are useful. 

One thing that really annoys me about student loans is that the repayments should help people chose between subject x at uni y or subject z at uni a.

As far as I know this is not published (I would love to be corrected).

In a more logical world you would prove me wrong (or I would prove me right) by pointing at these figures - why can't we?

https://discoveruni.gov.uk/course-details/10006840/K0287/Full-time/

"What graduates are doing 15 months after the course" and "earnings". General guide.

Edited June 16, 2022 by ucnvpe0
Extra info

[iamnumerate]

21 minutes ago, ucnvpe0 said:

https://discoveruni.gov.uk/course-details/10006840/K0287/Full-time/

"What graduates are doing 15 months after the course" and "earnings". General guide.

Thanks for that - although it only gives for 18 months earning but still good.

[Si1]

https://cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk/ec185dbd-0445-45a3-bf01-9dee34e4454a.html