Student protests
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There is something to be said for education for education sake. It doesn't realy matter what the subject is but the process of applying yourself , formulating arguments and assessing the knowledge of others enhances the individual and by extrapolation society.
I did an applied degree "Total Technology" effectively Mechanical Engineering plus and aranged sponsorship through uni by a British manufacturing firm. (remember them?). That degree is
not directly relevant to my later carear in software development. (A little mores so than tourism I'll admit but only a little...)
I have helped one daughter through medical school and she is now on the way to being in a good position to keep me well spaced but happy in my old age. Another has just started history at Cambridge. Can't see the application of History persay to the work place or to keeping me sorted in my old age, but she is very perceptive and the powers that be are going to have their work cut out pulling the wool over her eyes.
My youngest is hoping that she can get the grades likely to be demanded for primary school teaching.
Higher education is something kids should be encouraged to undertake, not punished for and It's tough enough as a 20 something starting a carear, sorting a house, having a kid etc. without having a 20 - 30 K debt on your hands.
I think in the long run in a globaly competetive environment, with a bit of government focus, an educated work force is likely to pay for itself and also provide benefits for others. So yes we all should be doing a bit to ensure all the kids get the best education possible and aren't penalised for trying to extend themeslves.
I did an applied degree "Total Technology" effectively Mechanical Engineering plus and aranged sponsorship through uni by a British manufacturing firm. (remember them?). That degree is
not directly relevant to my later carear in software development. (A little mores so than tourism I'll admit but only a little...)
I have helped one daughter through medical school and she is now on the way to being in a good position to keep me well spaced but happy in my old age. Another has just started history at Cambridge. Can't see the application of History persay to the work place or to keeping me sorted in my old age, but she is very perceptive and the powers that be are going to have their work cut out pulling the wool over her eyes.
My youngest is hoping that she can get the grades likely to be demanded for primary school teaching.
Higher education is something kids should be encouraged to undertake, not punished for and It's tough enough as a 20 something starting a carear, sorting a house, having a kid etc. without having a 20 - 30 K debt on your hands.
I think in the long run in a globaly competetive environment, with a bit of government focus, an educated work force is likely to pay for itself and also provide benefits for others. So yes we all should be doing a bit to ensure all the kids get the best education possible and aren't penalised for trying to extend themeslves.
Last edited by HisNibbs on Thu Nov 25, 2010 11:43 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Don't put off 'till tomorrow what you can enjoy today
LOL - a lot of posts since I started writing this and some of my comments may be duplicated - but you're getting them all the same .....
Don't get me started on higher education and the funding thereof .... too late .... I'm started.
When I was lecturing (back in the day before tuition fees but when they scrapped maintenance grants), a growing number of students had to take jobs to make ends meet.
For students on courses that take some real effort (Science, Engineering, Medicine, Law, etc), that was a bad thing as it took time away from what they should be doing - studying.
You could see the difference.
That and a decline in mathematics skills of the students joining the course were the things that concerned me.
Another thing that bothered me was the "stack em high sell em cheap" approach - cramming more and more students through, increasing class sizes with the inevitable reduction in the ratio of staff to students.
In the Blair years this was made worse with that ludicrous objective to get 50% of school leavers into higher education.
No real benefit - we don't need graduates for half the jobs, we cannot expect half the population to reach degree standard and I find it hard to believe that we've sufficient staff of the calibre required to get them there.
Inevitably, with such an increase, the total cost would be huge and so they introduced tuition fees.
Since then we've had this taken a couple of steps further - top up fees and now the latest hike in charges.
So what does this mean for actual people. Well, if you're a student, it means huge debt. For many it also means working while you should be studying. For some courses, working and studying is not a great problem but for others it does affect the students' education - without doubt.
Over the past few years there has been much concern about the size of debt that the average person has - so what do we do, as soon as (a target of) 50% of people leave school we saddle them with a huge amount of debt. The message comes across as "Large debt is fine, large debt is normal". This is crazy.
Another of society's growing concern is the increasing age at which people have kids. So we encourage 50% to go to uni, they run up huge debt (while most of them live very frugally), then they pair up (pairing up their debt). If they are very lucky they might get a job .... but with their debt can they start a home? Now call me cynical but I find it had to believe that this is going to help bring down the age at which they start a family.
"We" choose to invest in different parts of society (for some reason we pay kids to go to further education colleges, we pay pensioners at rates that we will never afford to in the future etc) but we seem to have decided that we will stop investing in creating some of the groups that the country desperately needs for the future - skills that bring wealth to all (Teachers, Medics, Engineers etc).
Ah but it's not all bad, those that never earn above a certain amount will never have to pay back the loan ...... hmm so those that do courses that don't lead anywhere or don't work hard, don't do well and don't get a job, those that end up not contributing to the economy - well, we'll pay for their education. However, for those that do courses that lead somewhere and help the nation, well they can pay it all back. Very odd logic.
Now for the next piece of dubious logic. "Someone's got to pay, we shouldn't burden the taxpayer, we should charge the elite who benefit from this education" ...... an "elite" that is targeted to be 50% of the population.
Just apply the taxes across the board - if graduates become the better paid they will be paying more through paying higher rate tax.
So what do we do about all this?
Well, we can't just turn the clock back - we'll not be able to go back to smaller intakes (except I think that will happen to some extent as people decide they won't go to study and take on silly debt). I also doubt that the nation will fund much of it through across the board taxation.
So, being a bit more realistic, my view is we should incentivise those courses that generate the skills that the nation needs. Pay the fees of the courses that people shy away from because they are hard work but deliver the skills that the country must have - those things I've mentioned before (Medicine, Law, Science, Engineering, Education etc).
Maybe we could get away with a bit less on the media studies, tourism studies and the like - perhaps some scholarships for the best on those courses but the rest could be self funding .....
Just a thought.
The cost of all this to students and their parents is all too familiar - I've just paid off my eldest son's uni costs (just the first level tuition fees plus living expenses .... and he lived at home for much of his study) - that cost an arm and a leg ...... middle son next with top up fees too - that will cost the other arm, leg and several more parts of the anatomy.
Why am I paying it off? Because I strongly object to saddling them with crippling debt at the start of their adult lives.
I could also treat you to an equally long discourse on the sheer incompetence of the Student Loans Company ...... but I'll leave that for another time ....
..... and the general employment for kids when they finish school or uni - tough at the moment - so what's the solution .... yeah, we'll raise the retirement age, keeping older people in those jobs for longer and never getting the youngsters on the ladder.
Without some serious job creation happening this is yet another policy that will just cause even more social problems ....
..... and another thing ......
Don't get me started on higher education and the funding thereof .... too late .... I'm started.
When I was lecturing (back in the day before tuition fees but when they scrapped maintenance grants), a growing number of students had to take jobs to make ends meet.
For students on courses that take some real effort (Science, Engineering, Medicine, Law, etc), that was a bad thing as it took time away from what they should be doing - studying.
You could see the difference.
That and a decline in mathematics skills of the students joining the course were the things that concerned me.
Another thing that bothered me was the "stack em high sell em cheap" approach - cramming more and more students through, increasing class sizes with the inevitable reduction in the ratio of staff to students.
In the Blair years this was made worse with that ludicrous objective to get 50% of school leavers into higher education.
No real benefit - we don't need graduates for half the jobs, we cannot expect half the population to reach degree standard and I find it hard to believe that we've sufficient staff of the calibre required to get them there.
Inevitably, with such an increase, the total cost would be huge and so they introduced tuition fees.
Since then we've had this taken a couple of steps further - top up fees and now the latest hike in charges.
So what does this mean for actual people. Well, if you're a student, it means huge debt. For many it also means working while you should be studying. For some courses, working and studying is not a great problem but for others it does affect the students' education - without doubt.
Over the past few years there has been much concern about the size of debt that the average person has - so what do we do, as soon as (a target of) 50% of people leave school we saddle them with a huge amount of debt. The message comes across as "Large debt is fine, large debt is normal". This is crazy.
Another of society's growing concern is the increasing age at which people have kids. So we encourage 50% to go to uni, they run up huge debt (while most of them live very frugally), then they pair up (pairing up their debt). If they are very lucky they might get a job .... but with their debt can they start a home? Now call me cynical but I find it had to believe that this is going to help bring down the age at which they start a family.
"We" choose to invest in different parts of society (for some reason we pay kids to go to further education colleges, we pay pensioners at rates that we will never afford to in the future etc) but we seem to have decided that we will stop investing in creating some of the groups that the country desperately needs for the future - skills that bring wealth to all (Teachers, Medics, Engineers etc).
Ah but it's not all bad, those that never earn above a certain amount will never have to pay back the loan ...... hmm so those that do courses that don't lead anywhere or don't work hard, don't do well and don't get a job, those that end up not contributing to the economy - well, we'll pay for their education. However, for those that do courses that lead somewhere and help the nation, well they can pay it all back. Very odd logic.
Now for the next piece of dubious logic. "Someone's got to pay, we shouldn't burden the taxpayer, we should charge the elite who benefit from this education" ...... an "elite" that is targeted to be 50% of the population.
Just apply the taxes across the board - if graduates become the better paid they will be paying more through paying higher rate tax.
So what do we do about all this?
Well, we can't just turn the clock back - we'll not be able to go back to smaller intakes (except I think that will happen to some extent as people decide they won't go to study and take on silly debt). I also doubt that the nation will fund much of it through across the board taxation.
So, being a bit more realistic, my view is we should incentivise those courses that generate the skills that the nation needs. Pay the fees of the courses that people shy away from because they are hard work but deliver the skills that the country must have - those things I've mentioned before (Medicine, Law, Science, Engineering, Education etc).
Maybe we could get away with a bit less on the media studies, tourism studies and the like - perhaps some scholarships for the best on those courses but the rest could be self funding .....
Just a thought.
The cost of all this to students and their parents is all too familiar - I've just paid off my eldest son's uni costs (just the first level tuition fees plus living expenses .... and he lived at home for much of his study) - that cost an arm and a leg ...... middle son next with top up fees too - that will cost the other arm, leg and several more parts of the anatomy.
Why am I paying it off? Because I strongly object to saddling them with crippling debt at the start of their adult lives.
I could also treat you to an equally long discourse on the sheer incompetence of the Student Loans Company ...... but I'll leave that for another time ....
..... and the general employment for kids when they finish school or uni - tough at the moment - so what's the solution .... yeah, we'll raise the retirement age, keeping older people in those jobs for longer and never getting the youngsters on the ladder.
Without some serious job creation happening this is yet another policy that will just cause even more social problems ....
..... and another thing ......
“Scientists investigate that which already is. Engineers create that which has never been.”
-- Albert Einstein
-- Albert Einstein
Some very good points there, Howard.
I think part of the reason - a small part, perhaps - for the upgrading of so many courses to degree status was to counter the entrenched disdain towards vocational training and 'trades' - engineering, for example, might seem more desirable as a career if the qualifications were to have a higher status.
Another problem - quite a fundamental one, I believe - in this debate is the nation's very skewed sense of values - as a nation, we do not attach to expertise, real value to society, and commitment to the well-being of society, anything like their true worth. For example Patrick Steptoe, one of the pioneers of IVF treatment, whose work has brought immeasurable and lasting joy to thousands, never received more than his consutlant's salary, while semi-literate yobs kicking a ball, and whose loutish antics help fill the tabloids, are worshipped as heroes and receive - I hesitate to write 'earn' - unjustifiably and obscenely large rewards for something so ephemeral. Our health care workers, our servicemen, our firefighters, social workers, teachers, to name but a few, all doing, in their own way, work of great value to British society, receive at best modest rewards for the demands upon them and for what they contribute to our well-being as a nation. At the same time, some whose activities verge on the parasitic - in the worlds of finance, tax avoidance/evasion, property, for example - receive huge payments, often, it seems, for f**king up the lives of countless others. It's regularly reported that the country loses £5.2 billion in benefit fraud; the tabloids make great play with this, ignoring the fact that the real figure is £1.1 billion, the remainder being 'errors' in the Dept. of Work & Pensions and HMRC(government's own figures). But, £42 billion (government figures; some say the real figure could be £75 billion) is lost through large-scale tax avoidance/evasion, much of it by large corporations (including some well-known high-street retailers) and very wealthy individuals (remember non-doms?). This is rarely reported by the popular press, although the rest of us have to make up the shortfall - we are paying nearly 40 times as much to support wealthy tax-dodgers, as we are to support dole-moles. They get away with it because in our distorted system of values their elevated status allows it.
Until these imbalances are addressed and redressed, higher education in this country will not be accorded its true value, and funded as it deserves to be.
I think part of the reason - a small part, perhaps - for the upgrading of so many courses to degree status was to counter the entrenched disdain towards vocational training and 'trades' - engineering, for example, might seem more desirable as a career if the qualifications were to have a higher status.
Another problem - quite a fundamental one, I believe - in this debate is the nation's very skewed sense of values - as a nation, we do not attach to expertise, real value to society, and commitment to the well-being of society, anything like their true worth. For example Patrick Steptoe, one of the pioneers of IVF treatment, whose work has brought immeasurable and lasting joy to thousands, never received more than his consutlant's salary, while semi-literate yobs kicking a ball, and whose loutish antics help fill the tabloids, are worshipped as heroes and receive - I hesitate to write 'earn' - unjustifiably and obscenely large rewards for something so ephemeral. Our health care workers, our servicemen, our firefighters, social workers, teachers, to name but a few, all doing, in their own way, work of great value to British society, receive at best modest rewards for the demands upon them and for what they contribute to our well-being as a nation. At the same time, some whose activities verge on the parasitic - in the worlds of finance, tax avoidance/evasion, property, for example - receive huge payments, often, it seems, for f**king up the lives of countless others. It's regularly reported that the country loses £5.2 billion in benefit fraud; the tabloids make great play with this, ignoring the fact that the real figure is £1.1 billion, the remainder being 'errors' in the Dept. of Work & Pensions and HMRC(government's own figures). But, £42 billion (government figures; some say the real figure could be £75 billion) is lost through large-scale tax avoidance/evasion, much of it by large corporations (including some well-known high-street retailers) and very wealthy individuals (remember non-doms?). This is rarely reported by the popular press, although the rest of us have to make up the shortfall - we are paying nearly 40 times as much to support wealthy tax-dodgers, as we are to support dole-moles. They get away with it because in our distorted system of values their elevated status allows it.
Until these imbalances are addressed and redressed, higher education in this country will not be accorded its true value, and funded as it deserves to be.
It flies sideways through time
It's an electric line
To your zodiac sign
I've got a Black and Silver Machine!
It's an electric line
To your zodiac sign
I've got a Black and Silver Machine!
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HowardQ
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P.S. Will the day ever come when an armless, legless Andy has to sell his beloved Falco to pay the remaining fees off.
Not really a problem if he has no arms or legs so can't ride it, and no money left to fettle it any more or put petrol in the tank.
Not really a problem if he has no arms or legs so can't ride it, and no money left to fettle it any more or put petrol in the tank.
HowardQ
Take a ride on the Dark Side
2001 Aprilia Falco in Black
2002 Kawasaki ZX9R F1P
Take a ride on the Dark Side
2001 Aprilia Falco in Black
2002 Kawasaki ZX9R F1P
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HowardQ
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Again I totally agree Mart, most parties said they would do something about non doms and massive tax avoidance in these areas, but in reality all have found out that the Civil Servants or sometimes Local Aurthority staff who have to try and tackle this problem do not have the legal skills to achieve this aim. They also do not have the funding for long expensive court battles.
That is before you even consider the proffessional lobbyist who are constantly getting EU and UK laws changed to stop these people being hit or more positive changes to enable them make even more.
We all know that we cannot hit these people any harder because they would run off somewhere else and whatever tax they do pay now would be lost.
Sorry but
to the lot of them.
That's the polite version.
That is before you even consider the proffessional lobbyist who are constantly getting EU and UK laws changed to stop these people being hit or more positive changes to enable them make even more.
We all know that we cannot hit these people any harder because they would run off somewhere else and whatever tax they do pay now would be lost.
Sorry but
to the lot of them.
That's the polite version.
HowardQ
Take a ride on the Dark Side
2001 Aprilia Falco in Black
2002 Kawasaki ZX9R F1P
Take a ride on the Dark Side
2001 Aprilia Falco in Black
2002 Kawasaki ZX9R F1P
Eat the rich!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h45WnW0ASFY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_Rich_(film)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h45WnW0ASFY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_Rich_(film)
It flies sideways through time
It's an electric line
To your zodiac sign
I've got a Black and Silver Machine!
It's an electric line
To your zodiac sign
I've got a Black and Silver Machine!
-
Willopotomas
- GP Racer
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Erm.. Since it's 'birth' in 1994 when Tony Blair became leader.Nooj wrote:.The previous lot changed so much to keep their supporters and members happy, like axing the pensions cap and letting the banks self-regulate.. Socialism doesn't work.
Since when were New Labour ever a socialist party???
Most motorcycle problems are caused by the nut that connects the handle bars to the saddle.
errr ..... no - that's why, after years of longing for an end to tory rule, new labour didn't get my vote. In the nick of time I realised they were going to be more of the same.Willopotomas wrote:Erm.. Since it's 'birth' in 1994 when Tony Blair became leader.Nooj wrote:.The previous lot changed so much to keep their supporters and members happy, like axing the pensions cap and letting the banks self-regulate.. Socialism doesn't work.
Since when were New Labour ever a socialist party???
If only John Smith had not died .....
“Scientists investigate that which already is. Engineers create that which has never been.”
-- Albert Einstein
-- Albert Einstein
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BikerGran
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I'm agreeing with most of what's been said but
I don't know what pensioners you know but if that were true I wouldn't be still pushing myself to work age 63 and with rapidly worsening arthritis, neither would my husband still be working aged 71 and with prostate cancer!
Ok, derail and personal rant over, back to the subject.
?????????we pay pensioners at rates that we will never afford to in the future
I don't know what pensioners you know but if that were true I wouldn't be still pushing myself to work age 63 and with rapidly worsening arthritis, neither would my husband still be working aged 71 and with prostate cancer!
Ok, derail and personal rant over, back to the subject.
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
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mangocrazy
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Absolutely. Had John Smith lived and become Prime Minister I cannot believe he would have become George Bush's poodle (as TB did) and gone along with the invasion of Iraq.D-Rider wrote:errr ..... no - that's why, after years of longing for an end to tory rule, new labour didn't get my vote. In the nick of time I realised they were going to be more of the same.Willopotomas wrote: Erm.. Since it's 'birth' in 1994 when Tony Blair became leader.
If only John Smith had not died .....
John Smith was a man of principle. Tony Blair was a man who put his principles up for sale to the highest bidder.
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Aladinsaneuk
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