Gave my usual blood donation yesterday. It always amuses me how they treat the slightest pinprick bleed as if it were nuclear waste, yet the juices they extract from my body are pumped into some poor bugger within a few days or weeks.
I was listening to one of the student protesters yesterday saying that it was unfair that their parents went to university for free, but they have to pay. What these youngsters don't realise is that in the days their parents (or grandparents) went to university, perhaps only 5-10% went in the first place and it was therefore affordable for government.
The Labour government's social engineering experiment of dumbing down the GCSE and A level (and consequently university entry qualifications), the proliferation of Mickey Mouse degrees from polytechnics and the professionalisation of every job under the sun means that sending 50% of school kids to university is not affordable without a large increase in taxation - which no-one (not even a university student) will vote for.
These days you need a degree to become a nurse, but hospital care is becoming a topic of national ridicule. TV is littered with media studies graduates, but TV programmes are more dire than they've ever been. These days a degree does not result in and improvement in one's performance, but an inflated sense of self-importance.
Jimmy Savile - now if only other celebs would use him as a role model! It says a lot about the bloke that thousands turn up to pay their respect. How's about that then?
4 comments:
I worked in a 'Russell Group' University for eleven years, and witnessed the negative changes brought about by 'widening participation'. Many of the so-called 'new' universities are still polytechnics wearing a shiny badge.
Can I hereby declare in public that I for one would support an increase in taxation to pay for higher education. And why, oh why, is the increase in numbers going to university always a result of dumbing-down rather than an increase in educational attainment. Given the changes in society and the money we have invested in the education system over the last 50 years we are entitled to expect more people to qualify for university.
I too would pay higher tax for higher education. What are the alternatives? More and more youth unemployment and an inevitably growth in the disenfranchised and the "Lumpen". The problem is not the "young" or "dumbing-down", it is the general decline in society that has taken place throughout the latter part of the 20th C and this.
I took an Economics Degree, as a Mature Student, in the 70s at a Polytechnic and the course was, according to the Times Education Supplement, more mathematically based than Oxbridge. What was, and probably is still, missing is the Social Networking and contacts afforded by attending Oxbridge Colleges.
Martin/Alan/Mile - the enlightened may well be willing to pay more tax, but any party that campaigns for a tax increase will never get into government. That's a simple fact.
Half of those going to university today would never have gotten in 30 or 40 years ago when it was truly free.
I did a vocational qualification, which today is considered the equivalent of an MSc. Thank God the marine industry has retained the vocational route.
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