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 Kilkrazy wrote:

The crucial point is that May insists that education has to be fair to tax payers. feth tax payers, I say, I"m a tax payer, my daughter will be a tax payer, what you really mean is you don't want to tax the rich more.

Of course she is. It's standard Tory line:

"It should be fair to tax payers" I.E cost the government as little as possible. "We cut taxes! Yay!"
"Anything paid by the tax payer is inefficient" I.E we think private sector could do better.

 Jadenim wrote:

* note that there is no evidence that increased numbers has affected graduate earnings. You are still much more likely to earn a lot more with a degree, even if there are 10x as many people with degrees as 20 years ago.

The graduate premium however is highly debatable in the first place. It is hugely impacted by a small number of courses that have high pay almost guaranteed, but those are the AAA courses, like medicine and law. It is also hugely impacted by the fact that that it is very unlikely that someone who goes to university was ever going to end up in a minimum wage dead end job long term.

 r_squared wrote:

I also agree that our timetable for the young is somewhat forced, but it must be balanced with the knowledge that the absorption and retention of knowledge becomes more challenging as you age. From experience I know this too be true, however people in their 20s and 30s can easily master new skills when challenged. Those of us who are a little older can still manage a change in direction, but it's a bit more effort.

There is plenty of evidence that late teens is just about the worst time to be taking these major life choices.

 Steve steveson wrote:
It is also hugely impacted that it is very unlikely that someone who goes to university was ever going to end up in a minimum wage dead end job long term.

Yup, if my partners job search is anything remotely representative of the graduate job market, there are a ton of jobs in recruitment.

Why that needs a degree, I don't know. And how there can apparently be more recruitment jobs than any other kind? That is a paradox.

 reds8n wrote:

Spoiler:

Glad to see we're still setting the bar so high here.

On the other hand it seems likely that significant segments of the UK population voted for deadly clashes over petrol, cool looking leather outfits and, if we're lucky, Tina Turner ruling over us as some form of Queen, so who are these elites to stand in the way of the people eh ?

Of course Tina Turner is now a Swiss citizen so, once again, the hard working and slightly irradiated workers of the UK have yet another unelected European ruling over us/our water.

TBF, he's probably right. Brexit on its own won't produce a Mad Max like scenario in the UK. That would require at least some catastrophic climate change, or nuclear exchange, which is, I'm sure you'd agree absolutely impossible in today's socio-political environment.

..we don't even have the weather for it either.


although



course we'll actually get :


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changes_(TV_series)

or


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_God

 reds8n wrote:
..we don't even have the weather for it either.


although

Spoiler:

course we'll actually get :


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changes_(TV_series)

or


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_God

You know, I'd never heard of either of those. I may have to track them down later and give them a watch whilst I'm scrubbing the oven.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Steve steveson wrote:
...

 r_squared wrote:

I also agree that our timetable for the young is somewhat forced, but it must be balanced with the knowledge that the absorption and retention of knowledge becomes more challenging as you age. From experience I know this too be true, however people in their 20s and 30s can easily master new skills when challenged. Those of us who are a little older can still manage a change in direction, but it's a bit more effort.

There is plenty of evidence that late teens is just about the worst time to be taking these major life choices.

As the father of teens, I don't disagree.

 reds8n wrote:


On the other hand it seems likely that significant segments of the UK population voted for deadly clashes over petrol, cool looking leather outfits and, if we're lucky, Tina Turner ruling over us as some form of Queen, so who are these elites to stand in the way of the people eh ?

Of course Tina Turner is now a Swiss citizen so, once again, the hard working and slightly irradiated workers of the UK have yet another unelected European ruling over us/our water.

England can look forward to me as her new Prime Minister "Lord Humungus" I find the oppositions position to be 'delicious' but in fairness will keep cannibalism restricted to certain parts of London and Wales. Because you know nothing stops a Welshman once he has the taste for human flesh. London it's just a matter of business as usual.

 Jadenim wrote:
I’d love to support abolishing fees entirely, but given the vast increase in numbers* from when university was free, I’m not sure it’s a viable proposition.

It's free up here and the sky hasn't fallen in. Plus loans (for living costs etc) are capped at inflation.

We want educated people; they contribute more to society and make better decisions.

What I don't understand with the English system is that the people who pay it back tend to be paying a reasonable amount if tax anyway, and those that don't get it written off (so the taxpayer is paying fir it anyway). So why not drop all the waste and just make it free at use?
Maybe have a small graduate endowment to recoup some of the money from graduates,

I always got the impression most of the resistance was from the "I'm alright, Jack" mentality that keeps the Tories in power. If they don't need to pay it now (because they graduated when it was free 40 years ago), or paid for a prestigious place, why should the plebs get it for free?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Herbington wrote:


I was more fortunate than today's students because my fees were only 1k, and was covered anyway because I come from a low income family. Students graduating with at least £27k of debt is crazy.

I'm currently at £55k. 3 years at 9k fees plus one year at 6k (foundation year), plus ~3k a year in maintenance loan plus 10k postgrad loan.

Oh and 10k from the co-op in the form of a career development loan.

So 55k from the government and 10k from the co-op.

How the gak long will that take you to pay off?

Interestingly, BBC chose this image for the 'London Not Thunderdome' article.



I have to agree it's much sunnier than the south of England.

Perhaps the Humungus' gritty hockey mask conceals the ravaged face of a once bumbling Tory Foreign minister?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43124259


"KFC shuts more stores in chicken crisis"

... I'm sure that's in Revelations.

You know, I'd never heard of either of those. I may have to track them down later and give them a watch whilst I'm scrubbing the oven.

Knights of God is the better of the 2 IIRC.


proper 70s level of dark and WTFedness.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Student loans should match interest rates. Doing otherwise is an admission it’s a profit making exercise, but we’ve been told for years it to fund the university courses.

Student loans are a mess, over the last 10+ years there have been so many different deals with the amounts borrowed, the interest, when you have to start paying it back and how much for how long. Some people have to pay when they earn £18K, others £25K, some get it written off in later life but others carry it forever. And it’s all people who benefited from free university who are screwing the younger generations. Just like with housing, jobs and pensions. Sigh.

I know right?

I don’t know the alternative should be though. A graduate tax is too easily avoided. You could fund it out of general taxation but you’d need a lot more of it. I’ve got two ideas for that though; cleverer corporation tax that can’t be avoided (I believe I mentioned that before) and legalisation of weed. I never touch the stuff but I think it’s stupid (and expensive) to fight it. I’m sure there’s a few billion to be gained there.

P.S:

The deadline for those parking charges has long passed and there’s still no sign of their retaliation. They never stood a chance anyway. Bailiffs don’t exist in Northern Ireland.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:
It is also hugely impacted that it is very unlikely that someone who goes to university was ever going to end up in a minimum wage dead end job long term.

Yup, if my partners job search is anything remotely representative of the graduate job market, there are a ton of jobs in recruitment.

Why that needs a degree, I don't know. And how there can apparently be more recruitment jobs than any other kind? That is a paradox.

1. It's effectively sales, and sales pays better and allows for drinks on expenses
2. There is, effectively, nothing to differentiate one recruiting agency from another - since they're all selling the exact same products - You.
3. Competitive advantage is solely based on price per-placed-person or similar arrangement. That means cost cuts, and in turn a stupendously high churn rate for recruitment monkeys
4. People like me work(ed) in the field of automatic candidate profiling, which means the entrenched winners with resources to burn can take on more and larger caseloads using the same number of people, who are expected to perform better and better without actual upskilling

It's about as rewarding a career as working in retail, with the barrier to entry being the ability to construct sentences to at least a college (HND) level.

 Future War Cultist wrote:

The deadline for those parking charges has long passed and there’s still no sign of their retaliation. They never stood a chance anyway. Bailiffs don’t exist in Northern Ireland.

There's no keeper liability either, so unless you told them who the driver was a court will tell them to GTFO.

Herzlos wrote:


We want educated people; they contribute more to society and make better decisions.

There is such a thing as a degree level course in social media studies.

Herzlos wrote:

What I don't understand with the English system is that the people who pay it back tend to be paying a reasonable amount if tax anyway, and those that don't get it written off (so the taxpayer is paying fir it anyway). So why not drop all the waste and just make it free at use?

Because there is such a thing as a degree level course in social media studies.

I also had the pleasure to work in the Scottish student loans industry for a while as IT monkey, and 'loan defaults' and the logic behind how they're handled is a sight to behold.

A big problem we have up here nowadays is that, yes a bunch of folk have degrees or some other form of further/higher education but it's education of no economic value *in our economy* and quite often of questionable quality. One of the true tragedies in lowland Scotland is the number of folks for which the whole 3+ year investment was a wash, not counting the cost of recklessly subsidised non-completers.

Why is a degree in Social Media Studies so worthless in your eyes?

I'm not being defensive here. I've got a clutch of 20 year old C grade GCSEs to my name....

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:
It is also hugely impacted that it is very unlikely that someone who goes to university was ever going to end up in a minimum wage dead end job long term.

Yup, if my partners job search is anything remotely representative of the graduate job market, there are a ton of jobs in recruitment.

Why that needs a degree, I don't know. And how there can apparently be more recruitment jobs than any other kind? That is a paradox.

It's a bloody pyramid scheme. Once you've been recruited into recruitment yourself, you have to then recruit x amount of other recruiters before you get recruited into a senior recruitment role, and again and again ad infinitum...

Given the novelty and impact of social media in the world today -- FaceBook and Twitter, etc are only 10-15 years old -- some academic rigour of research and analysis in their activities is a very good thing.

Kings College London, one of the best universities in the world, started a degree course in digital culture a year or two ago. I was chatting to a lady student on it at their open day last autumn. It sounded quite interesting.

The thing is, you can do a course like that at KCL or at Thames Valley University. Guess which one is going to open more doors in the future?

The question is whether we should be sending kids to places like Thames Valley University (now renamed the University of West London, to lose their stinking reputation as the worst university in the UK) to study degree level courses?

Does everyone need to get a first degree? What should they pay for it? Why should Thames Valley and KCL charge the same tuition fees? The idea was that cheapshot places like TV would charge less, but everyone actually charges the same.

An educated population benefits the whole of society in a similar way to pot-hole free roads benefit car owners and people who buy stuff that gets delivered to shops or homes by van. Why should only car owners be expected to pay for road upkeep? If they do, wouldn't it be better to charge them via usage, meaning by a tax on petrol, rather than a special fee deferred for up to 25 years then waived, for having a car whether you use it or not?

In other words, I believe that university education should be paid for out of general taxation. Graduates with high-paying jobs will end up paying more income tax. This avoids the time-bomb of unpaid loans which is going to explode in about 20 years.

If this means that universities have to take in fewer undergraduates, perhaps that is a good thing. We have to make sure that everyone else gets a good quality further education.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Why is a degree in Social Media Studies so worthless in your eyes?

I'm not being defensive here. I've got a clutch of 20 year old C grade GCSEs to my name....

I'm afraid to say that those GCSEs, like mine, are about as likely to get you a job these days as a degree in Facebook. They don't expire, but they're considered pretty irrelevant compared to your life skills since then.

However, thinking on it, considering the supposed threat from foreign actors attempting to derail western democracy via spoofed troll accounts, bots and outrageous out-rider blogs, maybe a degree in social media would be quite handy in countering that potential threat.

Could be a use for the degree after all.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Why is a degree in Social Media Studies so worthless in your eyes?

I'm not being defensive here. I've got a clutch of 20 year old C grade GCSEs to my name....

Consider;

To be viable as a course, it requires at least 10-15 registered participants, between 1-4 lecturers, and perhaps 200 hours of supervised course work a year which would easily pass the £80,000 mark for expenditure. As there is to my knowledge no such thing as a professor of social media, that means pulling lecturers off different subjects - i'm guessing dept of psychology for behavioural science, faculty of arts for creative writing, maybe *maybe* compsci dept for scripting and automation and arts again for video editing - with the consequent drain in resources available to those faculties who will already be fighting to get their much more established disciplines effectively taught. This is training that really applies to one specific job, of which there are very few with eye watering competition, and someone hoping this course *alone* will be an easy route into such a position is sadly mistaken.

Now someone already doing the job would quite likely benefit hugely from such a course, and should either be funded by their employer as part of on-the-job training or wealthy enough to self-fund. It should be in response to business need, not in advance of it, since we're all footing the bill for the dropouts anyway. That is why I believe Urist O'Levels shouldn't be funded to go into such a course.

With that said, I would remind everyone that education for profit is still very much a thing, even if the US is the only nation where it's so blatantly obvious. The current higher/further education facilities outside of world class institutions are simply not rigorously policed and audited enough for their return on investment that pouring in billions in universally subsidised tuition money would not be abused to the point of doing more harm than good. The default response to that might be "We'll just have to police it better first" but consider how easy that is in the nation that Sort Of voted for Brexit, since it's a political issue of similar scale.

Yet Social Media is the great innovation of our time, a key part of the digital revolution.

It's a rich source of marketing data and things like that. Someone taught about how best to turn that to a given business' needs will be well placed in the future in terms of employment and earnings. Example? If someone is able to understand and 'translate' Facebook's latest algorithims, their employer has an edge over competition who doesn't in terms of social media visbility. No idea if that's on the course like, just something off the top of my head.

It's not so long ago some might've said the same of Computer Science. To most of the populace, computers were a thing purely of Science Fiction, not something the majority ever encountered in day-to-day life. Sure, some far sighted souls saw the potential - but that knowledge had to start somewhere. Now look where we are - all within my 37 year life time.

Apologies if it feels like I've singled you out, I swear I haven't. I'm more challenging the overall concept of 'worthless' degrees in the mind of the general populace.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Given the novelty and impact of social media in the world today -- FaceBook and Twitter, etc are only 10-15 years old -- some academic rigour of research and analysis in their activities is a very good thing.

Kings College London, one of the best universities in the world, started a degree course in digital culture a year or two ago. I was chatting to a lady student on it at their open day last autumn. It sounded quite interesting.

The thing is, you can do a course like that at KCL or at Thames Valley University. Guess which one is going to open more doors in the future?

It's a difficult question. One side sits there and shouts 'academic snobbery', and the other sits there and shouts 'Mickey Mouse degrees for cash farming'. And both sides have very accurate points which somewhat miss all the good points and focus on the negative.

The Golden Triangle does tend to look down on any University regularly ranked past about no.80 by the Complete University Guide (there's a good 130 or so) as a waste of time. The entrance grades for students are virtually nil (my brother got into London South Bank with a single D at A level), meaning that the marking criteria is laughable to try and get them to pass so as to not show up the uni as a joke. It also leads to a proliferation of 'fad' courses which little educational merit or prospective career path in order to try and appeal to people with poor judgement.

The flip side of the coin is that the academic staff at most institutions are usually pumping out research which is often just as good as that of the Golden Triangle; half of them got their PhD's from there after all, but they have to do their work with virtually no funding and everyone else looking down on their workplaces. Some of those bottom ranking institutions also often still have specific areas of expertise left over from their polytechnic days which are more vocational that they're really still pretty damn good in. Others still try and focus on 'levelling up' as it were, a particular department on the basis that the rest of the place might suck; but their psychology/history/english/it/whatever department is pretty good, so some feel that slating the whole institution with crass generalisations is unfair to those departments.


So in actuality, it's all a bit variable. If it's a digital studies course run by people doing cutting edge research in that field in a generally terrible Uni which has a specific bent and focus upon their IT/information environment department, you'll be good to anyone who knows anything about the field (if not more general employers who just see the name of the uni and throw it in the bin). If it's a more vocational subject (say, teacher training or nursing), it doesn't matter which uni name is on the label, and some low ranking unis are very well respected (say, Canterbury Christ Church on teacher training).

But if you're doing Psychology at the University of Bolton, everyone knows that you only need two D's at A level to get in and you'll pass with a 2:1 if you hand in something with your name on twice a term. Making it a waste of time and money for the poor 18 year old sods who do it, not quite realising that they're sacrificing three years of their lives and a wad of wonga for a worthless scrap of paper.

My father's advice was always to be a doctor, undertaker, pub owner, taxman, or soldier.

That way, you'd never be out of a job.

This wisdom of the ages do I pass on to the younger generation

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
My father's advice was always to be a doctor, undertaker, pub owner, taxman, or soldier.

That way, you'd never be out of a job.

This wisdom of the ages do I pass on to the younger generation

Not sure pub owner is as secure as it used to be but otherwise sound advice.

 Future War Cultist wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
My father's advice was always to be a doctor, undertaker, pub owner, taxman, or soldier.

That way, you'd never be out of a job.

This wisdom of the ages do I pass on to the younger generation

Not sure pub owner is as secure as it used to be but otherwise sound advice.

Maybe not pub owner, but in my experience, nobody ever went bankrupt flogging booze.

I hope by pub owner you don’t mean landlord, but owner of one of the major breweries. Pubs are not doing well. And I’m not sure that working for HMRC is a good job given how often government departments go through layoffs and restructure.

 Steve steveson wrote:
I hope by pub owner you don’t mean landlord, but owner of one of the major breweries. Pubs are not doing well. And I’m not sure that working for HMRC is a good job given how often government departments go through layoffs and restructure.

It's a shame that pubs are not doing well, because I've been in some wonderful pubs in my time, the length and breadth of Britain, they're part of the national DNA, and it's an easy fix to get more people back into the pubs: give them tax breaks/cuts, and crack down on the supermarkets flogging cheap booze.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Maybe not pub owner, but in my experience, nobody ever went bankrupt flogging booze.

People go bust flogging booze all the time, it's a terrible time to be publican.

Pretty terrible time to be a soldier too, since we keep reducing numbers.
Terrible time to be a doctor since the NHS is so underfunded and over worked.

Taxman is probably fairly stable, as is anything legal. We'll always need lawyers and accountants.

Herzlos wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Maybe not pub owner, but in my experience, nobody ever went bankrupt flogging booze.

People go bust flogging booze all the time, it's a terrible time to be publican.

Pretty terrible time to be a soldier too, since we keep reducing numbers.
Terrible time to be a doctor since the NHS is so underfunded and over worked.

Taxman is probably fairly stable, as is anything legal. We'll always need lawyers and accountants.

A lot of money in the private sector for doctors.

Sadly, war seems to be endemic to the human condition, so we'll always need soldiers of a kind...

I think we're at one of those watershed moments in human civilization, like when horse and cart was dominant, and motorcars first appeared on the scene. Sure, the horse and cart disappeared, but think of the jobs created by motoring.

Robots and automation are threatneting to take over, but I think a basic income and opportunites for people in a widely expanded volunteer sector, could be a good thing.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Given the novelty and impact of social media in the world today -- FaceBook and Twitter, etc are only 10-15 years old -- some academic rigour of research and analysis in their activities is a very good thing.

No argument on that point - it's a dangerous and disruptive force, for now. What I expect will happen in the future is that if it does get a 'proper' academic reputation it'll be operated alongside degrees in journalism. I'll leave the implications of that open to the reader.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

The thing is, you can do a course like that at KCL or at Thames Valley University. Guess which one is going to open more doors in the future?

Strictly, the one where you got a job earliest and lasted longer. True that'll usually be KCL because the folks who make the cut for KCL are motivated enough and well supported enough that they're not unlikely to just slip into their first position.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

The question is whether we should be sending kids to places like Thames Valley University (now renamed the University of West London, to lose their stinking reputation as the worst university in the UK) to study degree level courses?

I vote no, with gusto

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Does everyone need to get a first degree? What should they pay for it? Why should Thames Valley and KCL charge the same tuition fees? The idea was that cheapshot places like TV would charge less, but everyone actually charges the same.

An educated population benefits the whole of society in a similar way to pot-hole free roads benefit car owners and people who buy stuff that gets delivered to shops or homes by van. Why should only car owners be expected to pay for road upkeep? If they do, wouldn't it be better to charge them via usage, meaning by a tax on petrol, rather than a special fee deferred for up to 25 years then waived, for having a car whether you use it or not?

The way Germany addressed this problem might be the way to go. As part of the unusual post-war scenario of effectively rebuilding the whole industry at once they opened up a huge variety of non-degree level education programmes, much of which persists to now. The result was their top tier thinkers have consistently high quality support provided by capably educated mid-skilled workers who still have the option to extend their education further.

As for the road analogy, a road is usable to at least some level in most conditions and states of repair, as the alternative is starvation in some cases. A university washout costs just as much as a graduate (if not more factoring in repeat years) and may still be useless at the end of it, as the alternative is Sainsburys. This is not an endorsement of Sainsburys Soylent Graduates.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

In other words, I believe that university education should be paid for out of general taxation. Graduates with high-paying jobs will end up paying more income tax. This avoids the time-bomb of unpaid loans which is going to explode in about 20 years.

If this means that universities have to take in fewer undergraduates, perhaps that is a good thing. We have to make sure that everyone else gets a good quality further education.

Graduates with high paying jobs are likely to leave the country at the first opportunity if their options are open wide enough. The UK isn't and hasn't been the top choice to live in for some time now. Brexit might actually change that ... since residency permits are an ordeal, and living/working in a better paying, shorter working hour, nicer climate EU country will become a bit harder. Or alternatively it might galvanise the thinking population to leave and damn the torpedoes if they were on the fence. CHF 10 on the later.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

It's a shame that pubs are not doing well, because I've been in some wonderful pubs in my time, the length and breadth of Britain, they're part of the national DNA, and it's an easy fix to get more people back into the pubs: give them tax breaks/cuts, and crack down on the supermarkets flogging cheap booze.

It's more that pub culture is dying off - you can't have a cheeky pint and drive anywhere, people tend not to go to the pub after a hard day in the mines anymore. Social media and internet means you don't need to go to one to socialise or watch the game.

The younger generations aren't as interested in pubs, alcohol or smoking these days. I can't remember the last time I was in one other than a Wetherspoons for lunch.
They seem to be going to coffee shops and restaurants instead.