18 year old electrician paying the tuition fees of 'toffs'

[grumbledoak]

PurpleMoonlight said:

The whole thing needs a rethink.

It has become an enormous rip off, of the students, for the benefit of the Unis and the landlords, via the taxpayer.

Students should be expecting to pay for their three to six years extra schooling, and in many cases advised that it is not ever going to benefit them as much as it costs them.

[RizzoTheRat]

Wobbegong said:

Personally I don't think nursing should be a degree. There's too much emphasis on being an academic rather than a nurse. I know several people who have dropped out of courses because although they were fantastic nurses on placement (which is simply pass or fail and contributes nothing to the final grade) they couldn't cope with the academic side. On the other hand I know a few useless nurses who graduated with a first class degree and struggle in the real world of nursing.

However I do agree with what you're saying. There needs to be a tiered system of degrees/universities with different costs/funding available depending on the course / institution. A friend of mine studied "zoo studies" or something like that at Wolverhampton University, cost the same as a course her friend did studying law at Birmingham. The quality of teaching and value of the degree was very different!

Maybe we could have a system where one type of institution focuses on academic qualifications, much as universities do today, but then we could have another type which focusses more on practical, hands on aspects. We'd need a new name for such a place though, maybe something like polytechnic...

[Eddie Strohacker]

grumbledoak said:

It has become an enormous rip off, of the students,

Yes!

grumbledoak said:

Students should be expecting to pay for their three to six years extra schooling,

No!

[anonymous-user]

roachcoach said:

...

It is disingenuous to suggest that one can only gain problem solving and life skills by going to university. That is an personal attitude more than anything else.

No one has suggested that you can only gain those skills by going to university. This NPE habit of caricaturing what others say is so cheesy. We should all take a vow to renounce the habit.

Please don't come back and say "oh, but you implied it" (another NPE thing), because neither I nor, as far as I can see, anyone else has so implied. This NPE thing of telling each other what the other intended when he or she posted something ought to be another one for the skip.

I also say, as I almost always do when someone says "disingenuous", that people ought to look that word up and/or stop using it as much. It is not a synonym for "wrong".

[Wobbegong]

SamR380 said:

Wobbegong said:

Personally I don't think nursing should be a degree. There's too much emphasis on being an academic rather than a nurse. I know several people who have dropped out of courses because although they were fantastic nurses on placement (which is simply pass or fail and contributes nothing to the final grade) they couldn't cope with the academic side. On the other hand I know a few useless nurses who graduated with a first class degree and struggle in the real world of nursing.

A nurse these days has a vastly different role and range of responsibilities than they had 30 years ago. Where before there were doctors and nurses, there are now health care assistants, associate nurses, nurses and doctors. Jeremy Hunt is now pushing for nurses to be able to prescribe medication, if this is to be implemented it surely justifies a degree-type education?

Edited by SamR380 on Tuesday 3rd October 12:46

Nurse prescribers have been able to prescribe medicines for a number of years now, I believe they need to do a level 7 post-graduate course.

I don't see why a degree qualification is required for basic nursing, however if they want it to be a degree level job, maybe put more emphasis on real nursing during the course rather than the academic filler.

Associate nurses train on the job (paid) with a university placement taking them to DipHE level. I think this should be the way for full degree nurses too, the majority of relevant learning takes place in the placement and not in a classroom.

I think my issue is with the way the degree is laid out rather than it being a degree. I feel that the NHS and healthcare system is losing out on a lot of potential nurses who are either put off or do not apply because they're not academics or unable to write in an academic style.

[Yipper]

Nanook said:

Yipper said:

Uni students are just *posh benefit-scroungers*.

They are *grown adults* who want someone to give them free money for 3-6 years to go drinking and banging.

Grown adults (not kids) who moan relentlessly about their £30k graduation "debt"... but can't wait to get a £30k BMW on PCP debt... and a £3k diving holiday in Thailand on creditcard debt... and a £300k shed on a cringey newbuild estate with even more debt...

They are just chancers and scroungers.

Could be worse, they could be misersable, jealous, simple-minded losers complaining about it on the internet.

Ah, the good old "attack the poster, not the argument" trick...

That education came in handy

[Type R Tom]

Currently I have no problem with people doing what they like at uni as long as they pay it back. I do have a problem with people who build up debt that will inevitably get written off due to their life choices.

[roachcoach]

Breadvan72 said:

roachcoach said:

...

It is disingenuous to suggest that one can only gain problem solving and life skills by going to university. That is an personal attitude more than anything else.

No one has suggested that you can only gain those skills by going to university. This NPE habit of caricaturing what others say is so cheesy. We should all take a vow to renounce the habit.

Please don't come back and say "oh, but you implied it" (another NPE thing), because neither I nor, as far as I can see, anyone else has so implied. This NPE thing of telling each other what the other intended when he or she posted something ought to be another one for the skip.

I also say, as I almost always do when someone says "disingenuous", that people ought to look that word up and/or stop using it as much. It is not a synonym for "wrong".

I know what disingenuous means and I stand by it.

So let me ask this: Why should the other people pay for someone to learn transferable skills, which they can also learn by doing paid work?

A degree in, lets say Scottish Ethnology, might well teach people "how to analyse and reason" however so would working. Or perhaps let's try another tact: How many people do you know who would have done degrees if there were no graduate schemes, or no bias put on it?

I firmly believe the tax payer has no business funding chemistry degrees for people to ps off and work in a bank. If people want to do that, they should be doing it themselves.

The taxpayer has a very invested interested, however, in paying for engineers, medical staff etc.

As I've said, the money can be better spent and a fundamental attitude adjustment from both students, degree holders and employers really needs to happen.

[SantaBarbara]

footnote said:

On the Today programme this morning, - Theresa May asked Nick Robinson why an 18 year old electrician should pay the tution fees of a university student.

Clearly Chairman May has stepped over to 'the other side' and is now defending the pound in the working man's pocket against the extravagances of the hoity toity middle classes - all very laudable.

But in the interests of stoking Chairman May's class conflict scenario...

Why should the poor pay for the education of the rich?

Why should the rich pay for the education of the poor?

Why should the healthy pay for the care of the sick?

Why should the young pay for the care of the old?

Why should anyone give a fk about anyone else unless they can make a bob out of them?

This is the nub of Chairman May's argument - why should anyone pay for anything for anyone else - unless there's something in it that even the dopey working man can perceive in his thick, dense, working class skull as a clear benefit for him.

Why should anyone vote Conservative - other than 18 year old electricians?

If the particular conservative candidate in your constituency is bett than the Liberal candidate then it is your choice obviously

[Eddie Strohacker]

roachcoach said:

So let me ask this: Why should the other people pay for someone to learn transferable skills, which they can also learn by doing paid work?

You're equating two different things, on the job & academic learning. They are not the same, not done in the same way, do not produce the same outcome, are not equivalent. It's a very narrow view to promulgate & doing so repeatedly suggests you're either dismissive of the answers you're getting or not getting it at all.

One may not be better than the other, a risk of inverse snobbery exists in those who push such a view, but having said that, I know very few if any Brain surgeons who started out as porters & worked their way up.

[anonymous-user]

There is also the wider question posed by the thread. Why should anyone do anything that brings them no direct and readily apparent advantage? Theresa May appears to be playing to the "what's in it for me?" voters.

[RizzoTheRat]

Yipper said:

Nanook said:

Yipper said:

Uni students are just *posh benefit-scroungers*.

They are *grown adults* who want someone to give them free money for 3-6 years to go drinking and banging.

Grown adults (not kids) who moan relentlessly about their £30k graduation "debt"... but can't wait to get a £30k BMW on PCP debt... and a £3k diving holiday in Thailand on creditcard debt... and a £300k shed on a cringey newbuild estate with even more debt...

They are just chancers and scroungers.

Could be worse, they could be misersable, jealous, simple-minded losers complaining about it on the internet.

Ah, the good old "attack the poster, not the argument" trick...

That education came in handy

You see if you'd gone to uni you'd know that in order to attack the argument there'd need to be a rationally presented argument rather than a rant based on ignorance and stereotypes

I was lucky enough to go to uni before tuition fees and in the last days of student grants. Coupled with a sponsorship from a year out before uni I was one of the few of my mates who didn't have to have a part time job to support myself. I have no doubts that my degree means I contribute a hell of lot more to society, both through my work and the tax I pay, than I would have done without it, so it would seem to have been worthwhile.
- R.T.Rat, BEng(Hons), Farmers son, no BMW, no PCP, no debt, diving holidays in UK, South African and Icelandic waters only.

Edited by RizzoTheRat on Tuesday 3rd October 13:44

[StottyGTR]

Eddie Strohacker said:

grumbledoak said:

It has become an enormous rip off, of the students,

Yes!

grumbledoak said:

Students should be expecting to pay for their three to six years extra schooling,

No!

Do you have any ideas for a solution Eddie? We could make all university fees free but I'd imagine we'll have to raise 50bn in taxes.

[roachcoach]

Eddie Strohacker said:

I know very few if any Brain surgeons who started out as porters & worked their way up.

If that is what you took from my post, there is little point in continuing.

[anonymous-user]

I feel much the same about you, given your misreading of what I posted above, and your stty allegation of dishonesty.

[PurpleMoonlight]

Breadvan72 said:

There is also the wider question posed by the thread. Why should anyone do anything that brings them no direct and readily apparent advantage? Theresa May appears to be playing to the "what's in it for me?" voters.

Is that what she is saying?

Society via taxes pays for the education of children. When those children become adults they can leave school and work or continue further in education.

Is she saying society (which includes an 18 year old worker) shouldn't be paying for the lifestyle choices of adults?

[anonymous-user]

Regarding university as simply a lifestyle choice may play well with the PM's target demographic.

On a separate note, the age of majority comes at 18, but modern adults are taking longer to develop as adults, and why shouldn't lots of humans, who can now expect to live longer than ever before (in developed countries anyway), carry on in education well into their third decade of life? This is not unusual in the more educated countries of the EU (and in some places schooling starts later in life as well) .

[RizzoTheRat]

StottyGTR said:

Do you have any ideas for a solution Eddie? We could make all university fees free but I'd imagine we'll have to raise 50bn in taxes.

Does nursing or any other "worthwhile" occupations have a "Golden Handshake" policy? My wife's a maths teacher and back when she did her PGCE our local authority were offering a lump sum on starting a job that paid off some of her student loan. Might work as a way of the state effectively paying for education for needed but not well paid jobs, while ensuring they do work in the UK for at least a few years rather than qualifying here and moving somewhere better paid (she would have had to pay it back if she left within a certain time).

[johnfm]

roachcoach said:

Breadvan72 said:

roachcoach said:

...

It is disingenuous to suggest that one can only gain problem solving and life skills by going to university. That is an personal attitude more than anything else.

No one has suggested that you can only gain those skills by going to university. This NPE habit of caricaturing what others say is so cheesy. We should all take a vow to renounce the habit.

Please don't come back and say "oh, but you implied it" (another NPE thing), because neither I nor, as far as I can see, anyone else has so implied. This NPE thing of telling each other what the other intended when he or she posted something ought to be another one for the skip.

I also say, as I almost always do when someone says "disingenuous", that people ought to look that word up and/or stop using it as much. It is not a synonym for "wrong".

I know what disingenuous means and I stand by it.

So let me ask this: Why should the other people pay for someone to learn transferable skills, which they can also learn by doing paid work?

A degree in, lets say Scottish Ethnology, might well teach people "how to analyse and reason" however so would working. Or perhaps let's try another tact: How many people do you know who would have done degrees if there were no graduate schemes, or no bias put on it?

I firmly believe the tax payer has no business funding chemistry degrees for people to ps off and work in a bank. If people want to do that, they should be doing it themselves.

The taxpayer has a very invested interested, however, in paying for engineers, medical staff etc.

As I've said, the money can be better spent and a fundamental attitude adjustment from both students, degree holders and employers really needs to happen.

I think you are taking a slightly narrow view of 'tax payer'. The chem grad who pisses off to work in a bank will most likely contribute far more to the exchequer in income tax (and consumption taxes) that if he works in chemistry. Though I think your point is that he coul dhave gone straight into the bank job without the uni education. At this point I think the bank is using the uni education as a 'sifting mechanism' to narrow the selection pool.

[Eddie Strohacker]

StottyGTR said:

Do you have any ideas for a solution Eddie? We could make all university fees free but I'd imagine we'll have to raise 50bn in taxes.

We could slim down tertiary, save a few quid there I suppose. Then again, turning the idea on it's head, introducing the radical idea that it's not necessarily all about the £££'s why not fund it? Why shouldn't we as one society say that we want to produce the most rigorously & highly educated population in Europe, sod it, the world?

What then if we as a nation produce the brightest & best? What does that do for taxes? Industry, technology, politics, public discourse? The benefits are immeasurable. If you say well, it's ll cost billions, no way can we do it, then that's that. I think it's what intellectual giant, George Bush called the vision thing.