The student issue again

[Lance]

At the time, tuition fees were 'only' £3k a year unlike the £9k they are today. I didn't think it was good value then (in my final year I had only 6 hours contact time per week) and I'm sure it isn't now. I don't understand why colleges and sixth forms assume most students will go to university. Had I wanted a different career I would definitely have either started work straight out of college or done some vocational qualification instead.

University has to be the most over-priced and over-rated way of spending 3 years of your life. Whenever I talk to young people, I actively discourage them from going unless they want a career that absolutely requires it (e.g. doctor). Many of them don't even know what they want to do after university, they've just had it drummed into them that it's part of their education process.

And yet applications go up and up every year (Note they are down this year due to lack of bursaries for healthcare, so this is the first year they've had to pay - expect that to be up again next year).
Foreign students pay more than £9k p.a.
So is it over-priced? The market suggests not.

Me. I went in the 80s when it was totally free and dropped out. My CV says 'studied for' a BSc. After 5 years it made no difference anyway.
On reflection, in this day and age, I'd suggest that people got accepted, and if they didn't fancy it, make sure that the acceptance is on the CV as getting into a good university is almost certainly harder than passing the degree.

[tiggat]

What's wrong with you lot?
You didn't enjoy 3/4 years of behaving like a reprobate at the cost of an inflation only loan?

[shaunbhoy]

Many of them don't even know what they want to do before OR after university, they've just had it drummed into them that it's part of their education process.

Exactly.
In the dim and distant past, the only people that went to University were the top 10-15%.

Once there they generally studied Degrees that were in disciplines that the nation as a whole might require such as Medicine, Law, and Accounting and the like.

The country could afford to subsidise that level of attendees as there was a clear quid pro quo nationally.

Most others would take up posts within companies and be trained according to the needs of those companies either through Apprenticeships or relevant in-house courses. Their suitability being gauged by their Academic achievements at School.

Sadly these alternatives have been whittled away over the years, with parsimonious Companies cynically latching onto the fact that they can save the costs of providing much of this Training and Development by sitting back and letting the students themselves absorb the attendant costs.

A sad indictment of the penny-pinching mentality of modern Britain.

[Willapp]

I graduated some 14 years ago now with a CS degree. Even before I started I didn't expect to learn much during the course, I only knew it was a required stepping stone to get me the job I wanted. At the time (and probably still), it's very hard to get a job as a software engineer/developer/programmer without a related university degree.

At the time, tuition fees were 'only' £3k a year unlike the £9k they are today. I didn't think it was good value then (in my final year I had only 6 hours contact time per week) and I'm sure it isn't now. I don't understand why colleges and sixth forms assume most students will go to university. Had I wanted a different career I would definitely have either started work straight out of college or done some vocational qualification instead.

University has to be the most over-priced and over-rated way of spending 3 years of your life. Whenever I talk to young people, I actively discourage them from going unless they want a career that absolutely requires it (e.g. doctor). Many of them don't even know what they want to do after university, they've just had it drummed into them that it's part of their education process.

[Hobosapien]

Seems those students decrying degrees may be on to something. They could have just paid for an instant degree. Fake it until you make it.

Employers too dumb/lazy to check they are legit anyway so why bother?

'Staggering' trade in fake degrees revealed - BBC News

Axact, which claims to be the "world's largest IT company", operates a network of hundreds of fake online universities run by agents from a Karachi call centre.

If they're so large someone here must have had a contract with them, or was that fake (for the CV) too.

According to documents seen by BBC Radio 4's File on Four programme, more than 3,000 fake Axact qualifications were sold to UK-based buyers in 2013 and 2014, including master's degrees, doctorates and PhDs.

Tip of the iceberg. I can see a government programme being set up to vet everyone at our own cost, yet it will still operate at a loss and cost the taxpayer billions as they pay out millions to those who run it from their old boys network.

But Higher Education Degree Datacheck (HEDD) chief executive Jayne Rowley said only 20% of UK employers ran proper checks on applicants' qualifications.

And while purchasing a fake diploma was not illegal in the UK, using one to apply for employment constituted fraud by misrepresentation and could result in a 10-year prison sentence.

Do you like those odds punk?

Former FBI agent Allen Ezell, who has been investigating Axact since the 1980s

Job for life if you're crap at your job.

Action Fraud, the UK's national cybercrime reporting centre, said it did not have the power to close fake Axact websites but instead had to provide evidence to domain registries and registrars, which could take months.

Check back in a few months, the sites will still be there.

So why are the BBC reporting on this now when it's one of those issues that has been known about for decades? We've all probably received spam emails offering to sell us bogus qualification docs. Maybe it's about the governments wanting to crack down on internet freedom 'for our own good'.

[NotAllThere]

I didn't go...

That's always been quite evident.

[vetran]

Keep telling yourself that, princess.

I didn't go & I'm doing Mrs Nat & Mrs AssGuru!

[Jog On]

Keep telling yourself that, princess.

Just taking it one day at a time.

[xoggoth]

Except Corbyn is planning on bribing those rich kids for their votes

Think it's only rich people who vote Labour. It sure isn't the party for working class British people that it used to be.

[Lance]

]

Anyone still in favour of free higher education for all?

It’s universally accepted that free university is a regressive tax on poor people. Middle and upper classes benefit disproportionately from free university.

Except Corbyn is planning on bribing those rich kids for their votes.

[NotAllThere]

I didn't go and I'm doing OK :/

Keep telling yourself that, princess.

[Jog On]

I didn't go and I'm doing OK :/

[NotAllThere]

...
Anyone still in favour of free higher education for all?

For the record, I've never been in favour of it.

[xoggoth]

Done this topic before I know, but here's some rather under-reported news that only seems to be in local papers:

The research showed that more than half (58%) of graduates in the South East felt they could be in the same position without a degree, while (13%) said their degree was a waste of money.

More than half of the region’s graduates think they could be earning more if they had started working straight from school.

Nationally, the work showed that almost half of all graduates surveyed across the UK (48%) believe they could be earning more if they started working straight from school and (35%) wish they didn’t go to university at all.

https://www.midsussextimes.co.uk/new...less-1-8329627

Not sure if this "new" research is actually the same as The Mirror carried a few months back but says much the same thing:

A quarter of graduates say they regret going to university and reveal their most pointless subjects - Mirror Online

Anyone still in favour of free higher education for all?