Great footage on the news of some Student Grant complaining that 'O
ur rights have been impeded upon'. No doubt he was studying English at some bizarre institution.
What I haven't heard is anybody saying the obvious:
"Let's just pay for the clever ones to study sensible subjects"
5 comments:
I'm all for that, provided that modern foreign languages are included in the list of sensible subjects. A combination of a science and a language would be even better.
...encroached upon...
I blame the teachers.
No-one's said it because that would be "elitist", and contravene the totally wrongheaded notion that some arbitrary percentage of school leavers should go to university & get a degree?
I don't agree with university being that expensive (and I was lucky enough to get a grant), but maybe (just maybe) it might make some people look at their options & do some sort of cost-benefit analysis on going to university...
Kynon, I agree completely that the idea that a certain percentage of school leavers should go to university is madness, though I would perhaps argue that the problem with encouraging them to do a cost-benefit analysis is that those who most need to be making these calculations are likely to be those least able to do so. Bright kids have the imagination to ensvisage a wide variety of possible outcomes, and I would argue are more likely to be able to talk themselves out of going to university when it would almost certainly benefit them than the kids who are completely clueless and would be wasting their time and money.
The ability to make a rational and objective decision involving variables such as cost, potential earnings, personal motivation and commitment to study and whether a full-time university course is the best route to fulfil their objectives in life requires a level of intelligence and maturity many school leavers simply do not possess - I certainly didn't.
I think one of the problems is that nobody really tells you about the options open to you. When I was at sixth form college the teachers pretty much asked "which uni's are you applying to?" Rather than, "are you applying?" It was just taken for granted that everybody would go to uni.
I was also given pretty shitty careers advice throughout school. I wanted to be a lawyer when I was at school (although I did change my mind for a bit). I was always told you MUST have a degree. Nobody ever mentioned the cheaper and probably more sensible option of training as a legal executive and then converting. Takes a similar amount of time, does not require a degree. You work in law as you study it, which gives you all sorts of benefits. I expect its the same in other professions.
Incidentally, my girlfriend is an occupational therapist. This has only recently become a job requiring a degree. The stupid thing is that to get a job as one now you have to have the degree, but the degree is taught by people who qualified before the degree existed and thus do not have one!
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