"The biggest difference is that a much smaller proportion of young people go to university in Germany. In Germany, about 27% of young people gain higher education qualifications. In the UK, the comparable figure is 48%. The expansion in university entry in the UK has been one of those changes that has been so big that no one really notices."
I'm pretty sure quite a lot of people did notice, actually. In my opinion it was a laudable but misguided goal. You don't really need a University degree for a lot of jobs.
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-34132664
Then again, I'm sufficiently old fashioned to believe in education for its own sake, rather than the modern idea of a degree just being a way to get a better job.
ReplyDeleteWhich is fine, but I'm not convinced half the population want to spend three years studying because they like studying.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor You'd be right that the majority don't study for the sake of study. They're looking for a way to make money.
ReplyDeleteBut I do think Chris Blackmore is right that education should be for its own sake.
Maybe the tuition fees should be scaled according to how likely a degree is to earn you money. :D
ReplyDeleteMaybe learning should be free because having educated people in a country is a nett good.
ReplyDeleteSomeone has to pay the teachers. Nothing is free, but it sure could cost less.
ReplyDeleteTed Huckaby How much have you paid Wikipedia?
ReplyDeleteTraditional schools are going extinct sooner than most people would accept. And that's good because a) they're an enormous waste of resources (sports, legislation, monopoly, industry influence) and b) they're modeled after a century old method that fails in an internet world and c) they imply that education should be a finite stage of one's life.
Soon, education will be so easy and transparent that learning about a topic will be integrated into casual conversations on said topic. And when that arrives, this process will become an integral part of one's lifelong lifestyle.
Todd McKissick I agree for the most part.
ReplyDeleteBut I want to add that universities are not just for teaching. They also engage in research in an environment that should ideally be free from any expectations or restraints. A place where one can peruse knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
Now maybe we'll get to a point where we can all choose to do that. But right now people need to work to eat and I'm not confident private business could support as wide a range of research as universities do.
And then there is the problem of the humanities. That's something that has no direct money making potential that I believe everyone should have to study to some degree.
Daniel Voisin While I agree they're "supposed" to be free from any expectations or restraints (i.e. corrupting manipulations), they're not designed so that's even possible any more. One can think of them in the same manner as a politician who says one thing and takes money to do another.
ReplyDeleteThe entire reason our energy/climate issues haven't been solved is that any research relevant to displacing fossil fuels is co-opted to avoid producing those results. Only minimal, irrelevant research gets approved along these lines.
The other issue is that for some intelligent Joe who is 90% toward having a solution to the problems mentioned above, there is literally no way to make use of any of the state-owned (i.e. taxpayer funded) resources of the U to aid him without major concessions. It's kind of like going on the TV show "Shark Tank" where you have to give everything away to get anything.
Research should be done via some form of community (local or global) supported gathering where everyone has equal stake and opportunity.
While educating people is a good thing in and of itself - if for no other reason than reducing the number of stupid people we have to share the planet with - I don't think that means the state should be obligated to fund University-level education for half the population. Then again I also don't think students should be forced into years of debt to pay the costs of self-improvement.
ReplyDeleteThe current system of paying tuition fees after the degree would have been orders of magnitude better than the old system of paying up-front, if the costs hadn't been increased to ridiculous levels.
My solution would be to reduce the number of students, back to a level where the state could afford to pay most of the costs for most of the students. University isn't for everyone. Well over half the students in my physics group dropped out over the course (probably more like 75%). I think the idea of a target of getting half of all school leavers into University was misguided.