Universities push for even higher fees

mglover070588 said:
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Fund degrees that are worthwile (obviously needs to be somewhere good!) such as:
Maths
Medicine
Engineering (all areas)
Business Studies
Physics
Chemistry
Law (Law at crapholes does not count)
Etc


...
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No, just no. Business Studies is mickymouse everywhere. There is no value in the degree whatsoever. Otherwise, yes, the sciences are important. Most of the arts are utterly useless. If one wishes to be a journalist, they should train on the job, using their superior English skills from school. There's no need for a three year course in something half-way relevant.

However, there are SO MANY universities teaching those respected courses in a micky-mouse way. From what I've seen, you can disregard graduates studying those subjects if the university doesn't rank in the top 10-15 for that subject.

You'd be shocked at the difference in Medicine graduates between Oxbridge/Imperial/UCL and other universities, for example. Similarly, natural sciences and engineering are relatively easier to complete at lower-grade universities. Law can be completely worthless almost everywhere. Same with Maths.

Economics is an excellent example of how important the university is. At Oxbridge, LSE and at a stretch UCL, it's respectable. Outside this, the drop-off is massive; the exams at say Nottingham are less than half the difficulty of those at Cambridge, for example.
 
Fair enough if it's an arts-based university, they don't run normal courses because they're obviously trying to go in another direction.

However I dislike the copious numbers of students at Bristol uni that take History/Geography and complain about their 4 hours of contact time a week because it "too late in the evening and means I'll be late meeting up with my friends".

I guess we have to understand that for every subject that can be taught in at primary school or secondary school level, there needs to be a degree to cover it so that someone is actually qualified to teach it. The majority of History students (that go on to work and don't live off mummy and daddy ;)) will go into teaching.

Cut down the crap courses at college level and the crap degrees will start to drop!
 
N9ne said:
Similarly, natural sciences and engineering are relatively easier to complete at lower-grade universities.
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You can easily complete and engineering degree somewhere crap, but no-one will employ you are you don't really know anything.

Which brings me back to the point of cut the funding for crappy unis.
Where I used to live our neighbour tought some social crap at Preston Uni (East lancs iirc?). They uni was so crap and desperate for numbers they considered students with for Us at alevel for their social sciences courses.

The graduates would be worth absolutely nothing to the world.
 
I'll be honest, if my course was dropped i wouldnt be fussed, they will be doing be a favour.

I did Media in college and we did some really interesting market research, product research etc and did bit of practical work. This course however is just dull, college was better and that was bad in all respects.

As said in here they unis should stop doing sympathy degrees.
 
mglover070588 said:
The graduates would be worth absolutely nothing to the world.
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A-Levels aren't the absolute conclusion on a person's academic ability. It's easy for someone from a public/independant to walk with As. Someone from a poor background could make the absolute best of their situation and only walk with Cs and Ds.

If Preston is all that's available to them for social mobility, then why stop them? A 'poor' degree is better than no degree and no a-levels. It's obviously not going to be any comparason to the likes of Oxbridge/UCL, etc. but the students are probably already well aware of that. I'd even say it shows a lot of gusto to be able to get up and earn a degree from having nothing. It wont get them into say, the top 100 companies but it will certainly help in other areas.

Do people seem to think that we live in perfect suburbia on these forums?
 
mglover070588 said:
Sorry i did edit it a bit:p
Look at the times university guide, there is a list of unis iirc in england and wales. The bottom half are not worth 3 years of your time.
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That is not a very good ranking system really. I went to UWE, which if I cared to look probably going to be somewhere at the bottom, mainly due to useless degrees they tend to do, however the one I did, was taught very well (bar few issues, but then what doesn't have them), we covered large number of relevant areas and everyone I kept in touch with after uni got jobs within the industry.

Hardly a bad course, even though uni probably isn't ranked very high. Add to that, 20 years that the course has been running for with large number of graduates staying in the industry.
 
Concorde Rules said:
Ditch funding for pointless degrees.
Up funding for engineering.

I don't particularly want this to happen but if Bristol needs more money to maintain its top 8 or so place in the UK or top 30 in the world then I'd rather that then a drop in standards :/
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Biased :p

Agree with this, need more engineers to start coming through the ranks, plenty still do teh degree though but just go off chasing silly monies in great areas like accountancy and the ever so stable financial industry ;)

N9ne said:
No, just no. Business Studies is mickymouse everywhere.
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Agreed. Going by example of the business graduates at my company, who are no more competant than myself as an Masters engineering grad.

Better to have the skills of an engineer and be able to pickup the extra skills and knowledge for use in business, which isn't particularly hard to be hoenst.
 
Moses99p said:
Edit ::

The "problem" comes when we get to the end of this slippery slope and the cap is lifted... at that point the very top universities will do what the very top universities do in America - charge crazily high fees. This WILL lead to a divide where poorer people (who have massive levels of ability) cannot afford to go to the elite universities. These people will have to go to universities that aren't as good... but are cheaper.

Should choice be down to the amount of wealth one's family possesses?
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You pay when you start earning so poor people shouldn't be put off. If might take them longer to pay off the debt than a rich person but they'll still earn more in the long run.
 
Thorpy said:
Can someone give me a reason to stay at uni?
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What are you studying? I;m not really fussed about where people do degrees, IMO its more important to have a good degree with a good grade - I could have got into Bath Uni but I went to a lower down one for lots of reasons.

A lot of people seem so hung up on where people study, a degree is a degree surely?
 
mglover070588 said:
Fund degrees that are worthwile (obviously needs to be somewhere good!) such as:
Maths
Medicine
Engineering (all areas)
Business Studies
Physics
Chemistry
Law (Law at crapholes does not count)
Etc

Do NOT fund:
Social Sciences (criminology included!)
English
Art
Geography
All those random manaement degrees

The problem with unis is a very obvious one - Too many people go and study something of absolutely no real world use, and/or study it somewhere that is a laughing joke.

Encourage people to do something worthwhile and then they WILL get a job over 15k and WILL pay back their loans!
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By criticising all those arts based subjects you seem to be forgetting that a university is a place for high-level academic study, not simply for producing people to fill jobs.

All the best universities offer courses in English, geography, and social sciences such as economics and politics. To say these are useless is to tell all the people who work their arses off researching and teaching these disciplines that they are useless.

"Real world use", as you put it, is not black and white, but I don't know how you can say Social sciences, English, Art and geography have no use.
 
bibalasvegas said:
I really don't see the problem. If you do a good degree at a good uni you'll probably earn back that 32k in 5 years and over your lifetime will earn a lot more than if you hadn't gone to uni. British unis are underfunded compared to the international competition and if we want them to stay as good as they are, we need to give them more money. Either we make everyone pay, or we make the people who directly use and benefit from the service pay.

I assume everyone who is against this wants taxes to go up instead?
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This; good post!

People don't appreciate how expensive some subjects can be.
 
People forget just how big and how expensive Universities are to run. Most have at least 5 or 6 faculties each with numerous schools within each - with their own buildings, lecturers, administration staff, IT staff, site maintenance staff, security and so on.

The government doesn't expect you to pay back any of the student loan unless you start earning enough. And, even then, it is only 8 or 9% of what you earn about £14k which I think is very reasonable. If you do a good degree and do it well, you'll pay off a 3*£5k loan in a few years.
 
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