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UK Politics: The Tory leadership (disg)race to the bottom and beyond - not worth a Penny.


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@karaddin sure, I guess going back to the original point of there being too many ‘useless degrees’, I do think that is true, whether they are poorly taught or not useful for future employment. That is a product of excess demand from a society that wanted a large percentage of its population to go to uni.

Having said that, this doesn’t mean that all degrees need to be job based or vocational, there is always room for degrees which are on things a bit less tangible, but as a society we need to have a balance. 
 

I think the expectation that so many people go to university has had many unintended consequences and it hasn’t been the overall positive that I think the Blair generation expected. Outside of just taking people out of the workforce, not training them properly and loading them with debt, you also create a more divided society than ever, with a more cosmopolitan university going class and a more locally traditional working class, with resentment’s that go with it.

Is there something about Brexit in there? Maybe. 
 

Having said all that, there does appear to be push back to this idea from what I hear, and maybe the trend is reversing ( which makes Sunak’s comments seem misplaced) but I do think more could be done to make it easier to get school leavers into employment quicker, with more on the job training and transferable skills. Employers are also quite often poor at training. 

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A degree should be useful to the person who is studying it. If a person finds a degree was useless to them then they chose the wrong degree. People shouldn't be going to university without some idea of what they want to get out of the time and expense of being there. But also people with an aptitude for trades and vocations that don't require professional degrees should not be encouraged, or feel forced, to get a degree. One of the educational problems is that high school does not give people an adequate enough education in the soft skills so that it is not necessary to go to university to attain them. School is perhaps too academic and focused on preparing students for university rather than preparing them for life.

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13 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

A degree should be useful to the person who is studying it. If a person finds a degree was useless to them then they chose the wrong degree. People shouldn't be going to university without some idea of what they want to get out of the time and expense of being there. But also people with an aptitude for trades and vocations that don't require professional degrees should not be encouraged, or feel forced, to get a degree. One of the educational problems is that high school does not give people an adequate enough education in the soft skills so that it is not necessary to go to university to attain them. School is perhaps too academic and focused on preparing students for university rather than preparing them for life.

Most people choose at 18. Of course they make the wrong choice. 18 year olds are fucking morons. 

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4 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Most people choose at 18. Of course they make the wrong choice. 18 year olds are fucking morons. 

I feel like I made the wrong choice, but fortunately I wrongly chose a professional degree that meant I could get a decent paying job for my whole life. Just not a job that makes me jump out of bed in the morning and want to do nothing more than go to work as soon as possible and stay at work as long as possible.

I think my Dad did the same. He could have been a concert pianist, his heart was probably always drawn to that career, but he decided to do the responsible thing for a person who wanted to have a family and became a chartered accountant instead. He never had more personal pleasure than when he was playing his piano, which fortunately one can still do as a hobby even if you are a chartered accountant by day.

My brother on the other hand has it with physics, absolute passion. Hasn't had a decent job for more than a 3 year stretch. Life kept bowling him bouncers at just the point where he might get established which kept throwing him off balance. Funny how even in what people would call a very meritocratic field like physics it can still be about being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people and picking the right research projects.

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28 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Most people choose at 18. Of course they make the wrong choice. 18 year olds are fucking morons. 

Also you are forced into making a choice, or you were when I was at school. As much as the education system tries to give kids freedom to explore what they like and are good at, mostly its quite limited. At 18 you either have the choice to go do a degree, which became to be seen as the norm, or you go don't and go on to live a life as a bum. Thats not a great choice and I'm sure a lot of people pick a degree just because they have been told they need a degree.. any degree to get a job. That is the issue for me, that degrees became this sort of minimum requirement, rather than a piece of training to improve peoples lives. 

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2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Most people choose at 18. Of course they make the wrong choice. 18 year olds are fucking morons. 

…and to get the right A-levels to get on that degree, you’d need to have made that choice at 15/16. And even then, in certain situations (or at least when I was still at school in 1999) you’d need to select the right GCSEs at 13/14.

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4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

A degree should be useful to the person who is studying it. If a person finds a degree was useless to them then they chose the wrong degree. People shouldn't be going to university without some idea of what they want to get out of the time and expense of being there. But also people with an aptitude for trades and vocations that don't require professional degrees should not be encouraged, or feel forced, to get a degree. One of the educational problems is that high school does not give people an adequate enough education in the soft skills so that it is not necessary to go to university to attain them. School is perhaps too academic and focused on preparing students for university rather than preparing them for life.

So its nearly the same everywhere...

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Most people choose at 18. Of course they make the wrong choice. 18 year olds are fucking morons. 

I'm 18 :)...

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4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

But also people with an aptitude for trades and vocations that don't require professional degrees should not be encouraged, or feel forced, to get a degree

One thing I think we need to change how we view qualifications at a societal level, a completed apprenticeship should be considered equal to an academic degree. There's an inherent elitism in how people elevate academic accomplishment over equally rigorous vocational training. Why doesn't the master carpenter with decades of experience also deserve a fancy title and some letters after their name?

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3 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Why doesn't the master carpenter with decades of experience also deserve a fancy title and some letters after their name?

Those guys are like magicians. And worth so much more to society than some posh twat with an Oxford PPE degree.

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3 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

…and to get the right A-levels to get on that degree, you’d need to have made that choice at 15/16. And even then, in certain situations (or at least when I was still at school in 1999) you’d need to select the right GCSEs at 13/14.

Idk about the UK, but when I was in 8th grade studying French we were told that in France and many other European countries your grades at 14 pretty much determined what you could do with the rest of your life. For all the failures of the US’s educational system at least you can be a complete screw up in HS, go to junior college and still end up earning a law degree or PhD from a top university in the country.

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11 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Also you are forced into making a choice, or you were when I was at school. As much as the education system tries to give kids freedom to explore what they like and are good at, mostly its quite limited. At 18 you either have the choice to go do a degree, which became to be seen as the norm, or you go don't and go on to live a life as a bum. Thats not a great choice and I'm sure a lot of people pick a degree just because they have been told they need a degree.. any degree to get a job. That is the issue for me, that degrees became this sort of minimum requirement, rather than a piece of training to improve peoples lives. 

When I was at sixth form (2012-14) there were the usual talks from various universities on why you should apply there but we also got a pretty good range of talks from alternatives to uni. I knew what I wanted to do so only attended a few but those options were certainly there.

I don't know if this was the norm or just my particular sixth form

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Things were bad here in the 90s when things like apprenticeships and trades training were disincentivised, and not supported by the govt. Surprise, surprise the "free market" in the trades and non-degree vocations didn't want to shoulder the full economic burden of training new generations of workers in these fields. So we ended up with a severe skills shortage in these essential careers. Nearly 20 years ago the govt re-established incentives for apprenticeships and established vocational training standards for with qualifications that have a degree equivalent recognition. If you have a level 4 qualification in automotive mechanical repairs and maintenance (not the official title) then that's basically the same as having a bachelor's degree, and it commands better wages and seniority in businesses that employ automotive mechanics. Indeed some jobs will be advertised with a level 4 qualification as a pre-requisite. I hope that's more or less the same elsewhere.

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6 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

I haven't heard the interview so... this can't possibly be true, right? Like how is any business meant to deal with an increase like that? 

Put up prices. Increases inflation. People lose their jobs. Vicious circle of a horrendous situation. 

Heads, spikes, walls. 

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2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I haven't heard the interview so... this can't possibly be true, right? Like how is any business meant to deal with an increase like that? 

Nah, surely not. That’s over 1000% increase, things are bad but they’re not that bad.

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