UK Politics Unexpected Election edition

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

3 minutes ago, mormont said:

That subset of jobs has grown along with the proportion of people going to university, though. The economy isn't static, after all.

As for people doing a job that bears only a slight resemblance to what they did at uni: that was the case in the 1970s, too. University education isn't necessarily vocational. Does that make it 'irrelevant', though? It does not. University teaches skills vital for many jobs - critical thinking, for example, or how to research and present information. As noted, this is one reason why university graduates tend to be more productive.

I'll repeat: the idea that we don't need so many university graduates does not bear out. Some graduates will feel, like yourself and Wolfgirly, may individually feel like it was a waste, and that's sad. But overall, in policy terms, it still makes sense to encourage people to get a degree. The question is, how should it be paid for?

How do you prove that the skills necessary for those jobs could only have been obtained through university and not through.. actually doing the job? You mention learning how to think critically, but in that example you should by rights have been taught that at a very early age at school, although many people manage to get by in their careers just fine seemingly without that. 

One of the problems with academic learning is, it teaches you how to be good at academic learning. It doesn't actually prepare you for the real world in any great way (apart from maybe living away from home ) . Most people when they start their first jobs are in fact starting from zero, their history and english lit degrees not really being very relevant to their new life of project management. So why not start from zero earlier, actually make money instead of costing yourself or the country money. 

So my main point is, does university provide everyone with the skill necessary to enter the workforce, in a substantially superior way that actually doing a job would, and could you get those skills elsewhere without having to drain resources for 3-5 years. I'd suggest in many cases you could. 

 

[Rippounet]

5 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

 

Jeez. You really missed the entire point of education. Universities don't exist just to train people for their future jobs. The point of a university is to spread knowledge and critical thinking. Stuff like that is not very useful for an individual's career, but it is vital for society at large.

Besides which, our developed societies are incredibly wealthy. Perhaps we can afford to have our young spend a few years after high school to grow and develop instead of asking them to start a lifetime of work right away, uh? This isn't the 19th century anymore, for Christ's sake...

[Which Tyler]

15 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Jeez. You really missed the entire point of education. Universities don't exist just to train people for their future jobs. The point of a university is to spread knowledge and critical thinking. Stuff like that is not very useful for an individual's career, but it is vital for society at large.

Besides which, our developed societies are incredibly wealthy. Perhaps we can afford to have our young spend a few years after high school to grow and develop instead of asking them to start a lifetime of work right away, uh? This isn't the 19th century anymore, for Christ's sake...

http://www.rugbyrebels.co/board/download/file.php?id=267

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

50 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Jeez. You really missed the entire point of education. Universities don't exist just to train people for their future jobs. The point of a university is to spread knowledge and critical thinking. Stuff like that is not very useful for an individual's career, but it is vital for society at large.

Besides which, our developed societies are incredibly wealthy. Perhaps we can afford to have our young spend a few years after high school to grow and develop instead of asking them to start a lifetime of work right away, uh? This isn't the 19th century anymore, for Christ's sake...

Well seeing as we have a problem (already discussed with an aging population that need paying for, hence immigration) then in answer to your question, NO, we can't afford that. The problem is most people at Uni are not really picking up those skills, its not affecting them in the way you suggest any more than they would had they just got jobs. All its doing is putting people in debt for little reward.

 

[Rippounet]

3 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

The problem is most people at Uni are not really picking up those skills, its not affecting them in the way you suggest any more than they would had they just got jobs.

And you are basing such a far-reaching conclusion on... ?

You seem to be arguing that people don't need higher education to work. I am arguing that the working world is not the world.
Just because you wasted the last fifteen years of your life making money doesn't mean this is everyone's aspiration.

3 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Well seeing as we have a problem (already discussed with an aging population that need paying for, hence immigration) then in answer to your question, NO, we can't afford that. All its doing is putting people in debt for little reward.

The worth of higher education to a society is not measured in purely economic terms. The moment a society decides it is a privilege and not a right is the moment said society turns back the clock to the 19th century.

Immigration isn't the answer to an aging population. Immigration is one of the means used to hide the fact that were the fruits of higher productivity to be shared fairly, the next generations of humans living in developed societies would barely have to work.

All this being said, universities are on the verge of a grand transformation to adapt to a world in which knowledge is easily accessible. Tomorrow's universities will no doubt find faster and cheaper ways to educate populations on a massive scale.

[Werthead]

Quote

One of the problems with academic learning is, it teaches you how to be good at academic learning. It doesn't actually prepare you for the real world in any great way (apart from maybe living away from home ) . Most people when they start their first jobs are in fact starting from zero, their history and english lit degrees not really being very relevant to their new life of project management. So why not start from zero earlier, actually make money instead of costing yourself or the country money. 

A more practical problem with this approach is that many companies now look for degrees for any kind of senior position, and that qualification trumps any kind or amount of experience you might have. If you can convince companies to make that change and start looking at people without degrees for management positions, great. But they won't, because it's a useful (on paper) winnowing process to reduce the number of candidates they have to look at.

[Which Tyler]

Little early I know, but my vote has just been cast (Labour). It won't make a difference as this seat is about as safe for conservatives, who tend to get 55-60% of the vote, with labour and lib dem typically getting 18-20%; but hey.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

A more practical problem with this approach is that many companies now look for degrees for any kind of senior position, and that qualification trumps any kind or amount of experience you might have. If you can convince companies to make that change and start looking at people without degrees for management positions, great. But they won't, because it's a useful (on paper) winnowing process to reduce the number of candidates they have to look at.

Well precisely, all its done is given a sort of arbitrary reason to hire or not hire someone.. they might as well just do internet IQ tests for all its worth really. 

 

 

13 hours ago, Rippounet said:

And you are basing such a far-reaching conclusion on... ?

You seem to be arguing that people don't need higher education to work. I am arguing that the working world is not the world.
Just because you wasted the last fifteen years of your life making money doesn't mean this is everyone's aspiration.

 

Thats a noble sentiment, but we all need money to live unfortunately, and it will be like that until the robot utopia where nobody has to work happens.. and then we become slaves of Skynet so it won't matter.

 

 

13 hours ago, Rippounet said:

The worth of higher education to a society is not measured in purely economic terms. The moment a society decides it is a privilege and not a right is the moment said society turns back the clock to the 19th century.

Immigration isn't the answer to an aging population. Immigration is one of the means used to hide the fact that were the fruits of higher productivity to be shared fairly, the next generations of humans living in developed societies would barely have to work.

All this being said, universities are on the verge of a grand transformation to adapt to a world in which knowledge is easily accessible. Tomorrow's universities will no doubt find faster and cheaper ways to educate populations on a massive scale.

As you said, the ways we are educating ourselves are changing and becoming more universal, that is the direction we need to be heading in. Educating ourselves is of course a good thing, but questions need to be asked if going away for 3 years, partying it up in nightclubs and student unions, and getting hugely into debt is the best way to achieve that. Life long learning is what we should be aiming for, it shouldn't end at 18, 21 or 25.

 

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Educating ourselves is of course a good thing, but questions need to be asked if going away for 3 years, partying it up in nightclubs and student unions, and getting hugely into debt is the best way to achieve that.

But of course, once you've made higher education so expensive that most of the population can't afford it, it's easy to claim that it's not worth it.

In the first place, contrary to what is often repeated, dramatically raising tuition fees is not an economic necessity for most developed nations. By now, cross-country comparisons should have made it obvious that it is an ideological choice rooted in a reactionary-conservative conception of the place of the individual in society that is at odds with progressivism. It is an ideology that really benefits a very small proportion of the population, but one that is seductive for people who have managed to thrive at work and subsequently developed a set of values that leads them to think that everyone can -and should- do the same. A society based on this ideology would see no value in offering a choice to young people between studying and working ; its proponents would describe higher education as a waste of time and resources, and might even suggest that students spend too much time partying anyway. But the cruelty and callousness that are at its core become apparent when you realize that this is about taking choices away from people without any consideration for their aspirations and wellbeing.
In the long-run, this ideology offers nothing but a return to ages past when humans had nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of labor. Despite spending more than a decade trying to understand its appeal, I am still baffled at times by its success.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

I'm not quite sure what point you are getting at. People HAVE to work, because people need to eat and have somewhere to live and need to pay for that. Work is also a fundamental part of life. Some people might be able to get away with a life of pure education but other people will have to pay to support them. 

All university is doing is either preparing you for that life of work or putting it off for a few years. 

Unless you can come up with a new society where people don't work I'm not sure what your point is.

[Rippounet]

23 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

All university is doing is either preparing you for that life of work or putting it off for a few years.

Which makes a world of difference for people. Seriously, how many people know what they want to do with their life at 18? In countries where higher education is still cheap (so, not England anymore), Uni is when you figure it out (well, if you have to, that is, not everyone does). Conversely, throwing most people into work at 18 would robb them of their agency and would mechanically limit social mobility. Which is exactly what is described in countries where higher education has become a privilege: a loss of liberty for young people, and a significant rise in inequality.

The funny thing is... It seems you have reached the conclusion that your years in Uni were wasted and that you would have been better off starting work immediately. But you would have never been able to reach this conclusion without spending those  years studying... In fact, you have absolutely no way of being certain that you would have enjoyed the working world as much had you started work at 18. For all you know, being deprived of any agency would have made you miserable and taken away the gratification you found through your work.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

8 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Which makes a world of difference for people. Seriously, how many people know what they want to do with their life at 18? In countries where higher education is still cheap (so, not England anymore), Uni is when you figure it out (well, if you have to, that is, not everyone does). Conversely, throwing most people into work at 18 would robb them of their agency and would mechanically limit social mobility. Which is exactly what is described in countries where higher education has become a privilege: a loss of liberty for young people, and a significant rise in inequality.

The funny thing is... It seems you have reached the conclusion that your years in Uni were wasted and that you would have been better off starting work immediately. But you would have never been able to reach this conclusion without spending those  years studying... In fact, you have absolutely no way of being certain that you would have enjoyed the working world as much had you started work at 18. For all you know, being deprived of any agency would have made you miserable and taken away the gratification you found through your work.

My issue isn't with education, but with front loading your education by doing some vague course that doesn't give you the slightest preparation for your life ahead. 

We live in a world where careers are not for life, people change them constantly, jump from role to role and try new things. I personally have had about 3 major career changes and have educated myself in order to make those changes. Uni didn't help any of that. Most people do not know what they want to do with their lives, in fact the idea that you CAN know what you will do with your life is daft and outdated. The world moves too fast for that. 

 

[Rippounet]

2 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

My issue isn't with education, but with front loading your education by doing some vague course that doesn't give you the slightest preparation for your life ahead.

You're talking about having skill-based courses rather than knowledge-based ones. That's a transition that's been happening in schools and universities throughout the world for the past decade at least (in some countries, it started happening more than twenty years ago).

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

1 minute ago, Rippounet said:

You're talking about having skill-based courses rather than knowledge-based ones. That's a transition that's been happening in schools and universities throughout the world for the past decade at least (in some countries, it started happening more than twenty years ago).

There are many vocational courses out there, which would be better served by apprenticeships and on the job learning. 

[Rippounet]

Just now, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

There are many vocational courses out there, which would be better served by apprenticeships and on the job learning. 

Perhaps, but the student/apprentice then needs to find a company to be trained with. I have many people around me who went for what is called here "alternate training" which mostly involves on the job training and they have struuuggled to find a company.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Just now, Rippounet said:

Perhaps, but the student/apprentice then needs to find a company to be trained with. I have many people around me who went for what is called here "alternate training" which mostly involves on the job training and they have struuuggled to find a company.

Yes and plenty of people I know have spent the last 3-4 years in Uni, have amassed a ton of debt and are having trouble finding a company to hire them as well because they don't have any experience. 

[Pebble thats Stubby]

for another perspective.

 

I left school at 16.  I got an apprenticeship in engineering maintenance.  when I was 20 I got my first real job.   I have been able to move sideways, but not UP.  I will never get a promotion or paid any more (apart from the general annual union negotiated wage increases) because I will always be the same grade, until the day I retire in about 10 years time.    I do not have a degree.   I do however get paid a good rate for my job, and I was paid an extremely good wage for a 20 year old all those years ago when I was still living at my Parents.    If I ever loose my job to redundancy or change company I will be paid far far less.   I am in fact trapped in the company I work for, and have no real way of changing jobs for anything more.

 

I was given bad advice at school.  I was told for what I wanted to do I should get an apprenticeship and work my way up from there.  I should of done A levels and an engineering degree.    I don't regret my choices as I would not of met my Husband and would not of had the life I do now.   When I left school there was no Uni fees.     I have had a very good life,  the extra money earned when I was younger I put to good use and was able to buy a house young before prices got silly.  But that is all rather besides the point. 

 

[Werthead]

Quote

I'm not quite sure what point you are getting at. People HAVE to work, because people need to eat and have somewhere to live and need to pay for that. Work is also a fundamental part of life. Some people might be able to get away with a life of pure education but other people will have to pay to support them. 

This is the paradigm that exists right now. It will not exist for very much longer.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

3 hours ago, Pebble said:

for another perspective.

 

I left school at 16.  I got an apprenticeship in engineering maintenance.  when I was 20 I got my first real job.   I have been able to move sideways, but not UP.  I will never get a promotion or paid any more (apart from the general annual union negotiated wage increases) because I will always be the same grade, until the day I retire in about 10 years time.    I do not have a degree.   I do however get paid a good rate for my job, and I was paid an extremely good wage for a 20 year old all those years ago when I was still living at my Parents.    If I ever loose my job to redundancy or change company I will be paid far far less.   I am in fact trapped in the company I work for, and have no real way of changing jobs for anything more.

 

I was given bad advice at school.  I was told for what I wanted to do I should get an apprenticeship and work my way up from there.  I should of done A levels and an engineering degree.    I don't regret my choices as I would not of met my Husband and would not of had the life I do now.   When I left school there was no Uni fees.     I have had a very good life,  the extra money earned when I was younger I put to good use and was able to buy a house young before prices got silly.  But that is all rather besides the point. 

 

Yes this is the unfortunate part of the the way people view degrees. You might well have been far better at your job than someone with a degree and far more capable of moving up, but because of some arbitrary piece of paper you are not deemed worthy.  Degrees are no longer a measure of competence, their are the bare minimum, and that doesn't really make a great deal of sense.

[mormont]

8 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Well precisely, all its done is given a sort of arbitrary reason to hire or not hire someone.. they might as well just do internet IQ tests for all its worth really. 
 

Except that it isn't arbitrary: as noted, possession of a university degree, unlike an internet IQ test, is predictive of your ability to learn the job quickly and perform well at it. It is by no means the only predictor of this ability, nor is it infallible, but it's not like plucking a name out of a hat.

8 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Educating ourselves is of course a good thing, but questions need to be asked if going away for 3 years, partying it up in nightclubs and student unions, and getting hugely into debt is the best way to achieve that.
 

I work in a student union and have done for twenty years. I'm here to tell you that students today spend less time and less money in our bars than they ever have. Their top demands are more study space, better library facilities and more contact time with lecturers, not more nightclubs.

They would agree 100% about the debt bit, though.

4 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

My issue isn't with education, but with front loading your education by doing some vague course that doesn't give you the slightest preparation for your life ahead. 

And your knowledge of university curricula across the entire country comes from where, exactly? Do you work for the QAA?

You are talking about a subject you know little about as if you know a lot about it. This is a bad habit. It tends to make one look like a fool. So does generalising about thousands of courses across hundreds of subject areas offered to over a million students from a whole range of different backgrounds, with different ambitions, taught by different people in different institutions in a variety of ways.

Please try to bring a bit more to the table than some reheated Daily Mail letters page grumbling.