The view from ConHome re the marriage of Boris and Carrie (and I do not normally read ConHome)
Our point is a broader one. Johnson and Symonds have done what many people nowadays do. They lived openly and unashamedly together, and had a child, before they got married.
No previous Prime Minister had behaved quite like that, but by contemporary standards, what they did is conventional.
Lloyd George and the Duke of Grafton both lived quite openly with their mistresses while in No. 10. And Lloyd George did eventually marry Frances Stevenson (Grafton didn’t marry Nancy Parsons, but that’s another story).
So I’m not quite sure I agree with that statement.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
Her comment doesn't sound especially political, regardless of her communism. It's a pity to view people purely by their politics.
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
I think too that Universities have demonstrated that distance learning off campus is viable. White collar apprenticeships and part time distance learning of modular degrees sounds a better system.
The Open University has demonstrated that distance learning degree education is viable for decades. Well before today's technology was around, and you had to tune in to BBC2 at 7:30 on a Sunday morning for a lecture.
These days the student experience is much richer than back in the 70s. For non-practical degrees it delivers everything that is needed educationally. (Drunkenness and fornication are another matter.)
Part of me wonders if we’re simply having big issues in progressively amending a system that was originally intended for either training the children of the middle classes and working classes by rote to be able to be productive in the factories and with the looms (and allowed them to help out in the fields for harvest) mashed with the system that provided the children of the upper classes to be sent away from their parents (at boarding school and later university) and coincidentally get educated in the Classics to be able to hold up their end in a conversation on Greek literature later.
We thus hold up the Classics as “true education”, see the more practical stuff as “lesser” education, and aim to teach our kids the subjects that were seen as important when we were kids, which were seen as important by the generation above us because they were taught them when they were kids, who were taught those because... etc.
And all changes have to fit in the original framework that was designed for that.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
And she speaks on behalf of Independent Sage which has an agenda
This confusion just has to be addressed for the future as Sage advice to HMG cannot be leaked and argued against by the same members who turn up in the misleadingly named Independent Sage
The very use of Independent Sage should be prohibited to be fair
She is a member of SAGE and Sky introduced her as a member of SAGE
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
Her comment doesn't sound especially political, regardless of her communism. It's a pity to view people purely by their politics.
To be honest Nick and I do like your contributions, I think that is rather naive
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
And zero even consideration of the third possibility:
3) it will run away, won't be contained, but won't lead to levels of serious illness that remotely justify further restrictions.
I wish somebody would hit these scientists from a different angle. If Covid had never happened, but there was evidence that we were likely to have a 'bad' flu season this year (say 10k deaths?). Would it be necessary to introduce widespread restrictions about the country? Given how effective we have discovered such restrictions can be...?
So you dont need to speak another language to pass the exam in it. No wonder we got the cringe of Amanda Holden not knowing the difference between French and Dutch at Eurovision.
Ignorance is not bliss, it is stupid.
This must be cost related as the speaking part of A/AS level is the most expensive and time consuming exam component for which to prepare students to a high level. It's also expensive to invigilate and examine.
At my French A-Level oral I was invited to discuss the last book I'd read. Unfortunately for me and the examiner I didn't have the wit to lie and discuss something simple so I had to labour through an analysis of Tropic of Cancer.
"Prof Ravi Gupta, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there had been “exponential growth” in new cases, with the variant first detected in India accounting for three-quarters.
Asked if the third wave had begun, Gupta replied: “Yes.”
He added: “Of course, the numbers of cases are relatively low at the moment – all waves start with low numbers of cases that grumble in the background and then become explosive – so the key here is that what we are seeing here is the signs of an early wave.
“It will probably take longer than earlier waves to emerge because of the fact that we do have quite high levels of vaccination in the population, so there may be a false sense of security for some time, and that’s our concern.”"
It's just the constant apparent assumption that the population of the UK is infinite that i don't get. So "vaccination will slow the growth of hospitalisations/serious illness/deaths etc, but it will always get to the high numbers in the end". Because a small percentage of an infinite population, is a potential infinite level of illness and death.
As opposed to the reality surely that high level of vaccination among the population, and particularly among vulnerable groups, means that the virus will always hit a finite ceiling in a finite population.
And on top of this, it is worth noting that probably the only reason there is a focus on this in the UK is because of the continued of high level of asymptomatic testing we are doing. This "problem" would simply be undetectable if we were relying on on real world observations of level of illness. So if there really isn't a problem, then the level of testing is potentially paralysing in itself. I'm sure that there are many other countries, in Europe or elsewhere who are in no different a situation in respect of this "variant", but aren't really looking for it where it is isn't impacting on the things that matter (hospital resourcing etc). And are not having kittens about it because they've just taken a decision to move on...
I would agree with that, but go further, its time to scale down the mass testing, at least of the asymmetric, abandoned track and trace, its never worked properly, and end all restrictions. just keep vaccinating as farst as possible.
if individuals wish to restrain form meeting friends until they have all had there second does plus 2 weeks, fine, if some company like cinemas wish to only allow in fully vaccinated people, fine, its a privet business.
If there is going to be a bump in numbers of unvaccinated needing hospital treatment, better to get it out the way now in the summer, while there is capacity in the hospitals, not wait till the winter when contagion of all 'respiratory viral infections' in higher and there may be even worse variant out there.
We, well the government have borrowed and spent so much, a few more billion may not seem much, but that is the wrong way to look at it, borrowing money to spend on a 'nice to have' when you are close to your credit limit, is a lot more irresponsible than when you are not.
And yes I know this has been more or less my position for 15 months or so now, but with each additional vaccine the arguments are becoming increasingly overweening IMO.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
Her comment doesn't sound especially political, regardless of her communism. It's a pity to view people purely by their politics.
Quite. BJ seems to be fine with members of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
Possibly because classicists wake up earlier on a bank holiday Monday?
The view from ConHome re the marriage of Boris and Carrie (and I do not normally read ConHome)
Our point is a broader one. Johnson and Symonds have done what many people nowadays do. They lived openly and unashamedly together, and had a child, before they got married.
No previous Prime Minister had behaved quite like that, but by contemporary standards, what they did is conventional.
Lloyd George and the Duke of Grafton both lived quite openly with their mistresses while in No. 10. And Lloyd George did eventually marry Frances Stevenson (Grafton didn’t marry Nancy Parsons, but that’s another story).
So I’m not quite sure I agree with that statement.
I should say my youngest son has lived with his partner, now fiancée, for 12 years openly and have two wonderful children 9 and 7
They would have been married last August but covid cancelled their wedding which has been arranged for the 31st July, again with just 30 present at the ceremony at the local Parish Church
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
And she speaks on behalf of Independent Sage which has an agenda
This confusion just has to be addressed for the future as Sage advice to HMG cannot be leaked and argued against by the same members who turn up in the misleadingly named Independent Sage
The very use of Independent Sage should be prohibited to be fair
She is a member of SAGE and Sky introduced her as a member of SAGE
Its a disgrace!
Read this from Wiki
In 2009, Michie became a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and convened its subgroup, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Behaviour group.In 2020, Michie became a participant in the Covid-19 SAGE's Scientific Pandemic Insights group on Behaviour (SPI-B)[12] and participates in SAGE.
She also sits on the Independent SAGE committee, chaired by Sir David King. She frequently contributes to national news media during the Covid-19 pandemic as an expert in behaviour change.[13][14][15][16][17]
@Richard_Tyndall, I hadn't read your article prior to my previous posts in reply to others. Have now read it and find it fascinating. Not something I had ever thought about, but I think it seems very sound. It will never get implented however. Far too radical. I think it would have been useful for me.
So you dont need to speak another language to pass the exam in it. No wonder we got the cringe of Amanda Holden not knowing the difference between French and Dutch at Eurovision.
Ignorance is not bliss, it is stupid.
This must be cost related as the speaking part of A/AS level is the most expensive and time consuming exam component for which to prepare students to a high level. It's also expensive to invigilate and examine.
At my French A-Level oral I was invited to discuss the last book I'd read. Unfortunately for me and the examiner I didn't have the wit to lie and discuss something simple so I had to labour through an analysis of Tropic of Cancer.
Hope you managed to include some hot sex. Though I have to confess I found Miller’s sex pretty unhot, even as a horny 16 year old.
The view from ConHome re the marriage of Boris and Carrie (and I do not normally read ConHome)
Our point is a broader one. Johnson and Symonds have done what many people nowadays do. They lived openly and unashamedly together, and had a child, before they got married.
No previous Prime Minister had behaved quite like that, but by contemporary standards, what they did is conventional.
Lloyd George and the Duke of Grafton both lived quite openly with their mistresses while in No. 10. And Lloyd George did eventually marry Frances Stevenson (Grafton didn’t marry Nancy Parsons, but that’s another story).
So I’m not quite sure I agree with that statement.
I should say my youngest son has lived with his partner, now fiancée, for 12 years openly and have two wonderful children 9 and 7
They would have been married last August but covid cancelled their wedding which has been arranged for the 31st July, again with just 30 present at the ceremony at the local Parish Church
Congratulations to them both BigG, as mentioned before I am also getting married in the middle of next month, again with just 30 but a livestream in Oxford with a slightly bigger celebration in Epping in early July
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
Her comment doesn't sound especially political, regardless of her communism. It's a pity to view people purely by their politics.
BigG presumably thinks her politics means she shouldnt be on SAGE
The fact IS she is on SAGE for her expertise on behaviour.
"Prof Ravi Gupta, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there had been “exponential growth” in new cases, with the variant first detected in India accounting for three-quarters.
Asked if the third wave had begun, Gupta replied: “Yes.”
He added: “Of course, the numbers of cases are relatively low at the moment – all waves start with low numbers of cases that grumble in the background and then become explosive – so the key here is that what we are seeing here is the signs of an early wave.
“It will probably take longer than earlier waves to emerge because of the fact that we do have quite high levels of vaccination in the population, so there may be a false sense of security for some time, and that’s our concern.”"
It's just the constant apparent assumption that the population of the UK is infinite that i don't get. So "vaccination will slow the growth of hospitalisations/serious illness/deaths etc, but it will always get to the high numbers in the end". Because a small percentage of an infinite population, is a potential infinite level of illness and death.
As opposed to the reality surely that high level of vaccination among the population, and particularly among vulnerable groups, means that the virus will always hit a finite ceiling in a finite population.
And on top of this, it is worth noting that probably the only reason there is a focus on this in the UK is because of the continued of high level of asymptomatic testing we are doing. This "problem" would simply be undetectable if we were relying on on real world observations of level of illness. So if there really isn't a problem, then the level of testing is potentially paralysing in itself. I'm sure that there are many other countries, in Europe or elsewhere who are in no different a situation in respect of this "variant", but aren't really looking for it where it is isn't impacting on the things that matter (hospital resourcing etc). And are not having kittens about it because they've just taken a decision to move on...
I would agree with that, but go further, its time to scale down the mass testing, at least of the asymmetric, abandoned track and trace, its never worked properly, and end all restrictions. just keep vaccinating as farst as possible.
if individuals wish to restrain form meeting friends until they have all had there second does plus 2 weeks, fine, if some company like cinemas wish to only allow in fully vaccinated people, fine, its a privet business.
If there is going to be a bump in numbers of unvaccinated needing hospital treatment, better to get it out the way now in the summer, while there is capacity in the hospitals, not wait till the winter when contagion of all 'respiratory viral infections' in higher and there may be even worse variant out there.
We, well the government have borrowed and spent so much, a few more billion may not seem much, but that is the wrong way to look at it, borrowing money to spend on a 'nice to have' when you are close to your credit limit, is a lot more irresponsible than when you are not.
And yes I know this has been more or less my position for 15 months or so now, but with each additional vaccine the arguments are becoming increasingly overweening IMO.
The original quote i put in this chain has also introduced a new argument. It is that because of the vaccines the progress of the effect on hospitals is going to materialise VERY slowly. So because it's moving so slowly there's no way we can effectively assess its impact at this time. So best leave it a few weeks (months...) until we know.
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns, Red Wall Blyth Valley for example which the Tories won in 2019 is in the Newcastle commuter belt
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
Her comment doesn't sound especially political, regardless of her communism. It's a pity to view people purely by their politics.
BigG presumably thinks her politics means she shouldnt be on SAGE
The fact IS she is on SAGE for her expertise on behaviour.
Ignore BigG listen to experts
There is a very good argument she should not be on SAGE, which is a government advisory body, and Independent SAGE, which is an independent pressure group with an increasingly radical agenda.
There should be consideration of this in the public inquiry as well.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
And zero even consideration of the third possibility:
3) it will run away, won't be contained, but won't lead to levels of serious illness that remotely justify further restrictions.
I wish somebody would hit these scientists from a different angle. If Covid had never happened, but there was evidence that we were likely to have a 'bad' flu season this year (say 10k deaths?). Would it be necessary to introduce widespread restrictions about the country? Given how effective we have discovered such restrictions can be...?
That is the logical end point to all of this. Masks in supermarkets and public transport in winter will be very tricky to unwind. Hopefully if Khan tries to mandate masks on TfL the Govt. will use all their powers to tell him where to go, and I personally will not be shopping or visiting anywhere that tries to enforce masks/social distancing/sign ins after the 21st of June.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
And she speaks on behalf of Independent Sage which has an agenda
This confusion just has to be addressed for the future as Sage advice to HMG cannot be leaked and argued against by the same members who turn up in the misleadingly named Independent Sage
The very use of Independent Sage should be prohibited to be fair
She is a member of SAGE and Sky introduced her as a member of SAGE
Its a disgrace!
Read this from Wiki
In 2009, Michie became a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and convened its subgroup, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Behaviour group.In 2020, Michie became a participant in the Covid-19 SAGE's Scientific Pandemic Insights group on Behaviour (SPI-B)[12] and participates in SAGE.
She also sits on the Independent SAGE committee, chaired by Sir David King. She frequently contributes to national news media during the Covid-19 pandemic as an expert in behaviour change.[13][14][15][16][17]
She sits on Independent Sage
She is a member of Sage
Was introduced as such
The fact you say she is a communist is completely irrelevant
You say she sits on independent Sage you missed out the word also between she and sits.
She is an appropriate expert for Sky to interview get over it
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
Her comment doesn't sound especially political, regardless of her communism. It's a pity to view people purely by their politics.
BigG presumably thinks her politics means she shouldnt be on SAGE
The fact IS she is on SAGE for her expertise on behaviour.
Ignore BigG listen to experts
There is a very good argument she should not be on SAGE, which is a government advisory body, and Independent SAGE, which is an independent pressure group with an increasingly radical agenda.
There should be consideration of this in the public inquiry as well.
If she is on SAGE for her expertise on behaviour, why is she increasingly a go to person for commenting on expected implications of the variant on progress of the pandemic and the implications of the loosening or otherwise of restrictions?
It appears that for most of the media, all members of SAGE (or "Independent SAGE") are equal, regardless of their specialisations.
As a behaviour expert i wonder what her views are of public response to continuation of restrictions?
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
The view from ConHome re the marriage of Boris and Carrie (and I do not normally read ConHome)
Our point is a broader one. Johnson and Symonds have done what many people nowadays do. They lived openly and unashamedly together, and had a child, before they got married.
No previous Prime Minister had behaved quite like that, but by contemporary standards, what they did is conventional.
Lloyd George and the Duke of Grafton both lived quite openly with their mistresses while in No. 10. And Lloyd George did eventually marry Frances Stevenson (Grafton didn’t marry Nancy Parsons, but that’s another story).
So I’m not quite sure I agree with that statement.
I should say my youngest son has lived with his partner, now fiancée, for 12 years openly and have two wonderful children 9 and 7
They would have been married last August but covid cancelled their wedding which has been arranged for the 31st July, again with just 30 present at the ceremony at the local Parish Church
Congratulations to them both BigG, as mentioned before I am also getting married in the middle of next month, again with just 30 but a livestream in Oxford with a slightly bigger celebration in Epping in early July
I am so delighted for you @HYUFD and it does seem the Church has indicated they may be able to allow upto 50, depending on advice nearer the time
They have hired a Marquee that can already accommodate 50, but they hope that may be increased to 75, but far less than the 150 hoped for
We live in surreal times and part of my continuing questioning of the scientists and media's advice is that it has to be correct, not as a result of a convoluted political agenda and a genuine debate with alternative views is needed.
Mind you, the weather has been fantastic and with an 8 mile queue into North Wales, largely from the North West of England last Friday, we should know soon enough the consequences or lack of them
I would just say I am only interested in hospital numbers, vaccine status and deaths together with vaccination numbers
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Ummmmmm...you really don’t know much about Staffordshire, do you?
Boris Johnson is politically canny, once an issue holds his attention. It would be a surprise to me if he went ahead and got married this weekend, if he was seriously considering delaying the end of restrictions in June.
On the subject of oral exams for languages: it does seem to be really throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Reading the article it is being presented as a temporary measure, but I’ve seen too many temporary measures become permanent to trust that. A qualification in a language implies a basic ability to communicate, and if you can’t at least ask for directions and then understand the answer or ask for something in a shop then I’m not sure what the point of two or three years of education on that subject is for. Perhaps I’m a bit bitter about this because in the school I teach in languages get significantly more time in the curriculum than anything else apart from English (who have to teach two GCSEs: pro rata they get the least), and Maths.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
And she speaks on behalf of Independent Sage which has an agenda
This confusion just has to be addressed for the future as Sage advice to HMG cannot be leaked and argued against by the same members who turn up in the misleadingly named Independent Sage
The very use of Independent Sage should be prohibited to be fair
And those actually advising the government shouldn’t be freelancing on 24 hour news. Should be the same rules that apply to SpAds.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
Her comment doesn't sound especially political, regardless of her communism. It's a pity to view people purely by their politics.
BigG presumably thinks her politics means she shouldnt be on SAGE
The fact IS she is on SAGE for her expertise on behaviour.
Ignore BigG listen to experts
I only care that she is introduced correctly, and she sits on Independent Sage and is one of their spokespersons
@Leon I was thinking a bit more about the motivations of all the senior figures in the US security establishment with their “we don’t understand how they work, don’t know what they are and urgently need to find out”.
This would be quite a strange thing to say if they really did believe the objects might be Russian or Chinese. Quite an amateurish tell to your adversaries in fact. Ergo, none of them believe for a minute that they are foreign craft. Which leaves either a US deep state programme they want regulated, or the other thing.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
Her comment doesn't sound especially political, regardless of her communism. It's a pity to view people purely by their politics.
BigG presumably thinks her politics means she shouldnt be on SAGE
The fact IS she is on SAGE for her expertise on behaviour.
Ignore BigG listen to experts
There is a very good argument she should not be on SAGE, which is a government advisory body, and Independent SAGE, which is an independent pressure group with an increasingly radical agenda.
There should be consideration of this in the public inquiry as well.
I absolutely agree that this has to form part of the enquiry together with the role of the media
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Ummmmmm...you really don’t know much about Staffordshire, do you?
Newcastle under Lyme is less than 10 minutes from Stoke by car, as I said most of the highest skilled workers in Newcastle under Lyme will work in Stoke or Birmingham ie they will commute to and from cities in the region.
The jobs in Newcastle under Lyme itself will largely be basic retail, hospitality and warehouse and delivery jobs
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
Ask an historian of the medieval period if a knowledge of Latin is “untainted by anything practical”.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
For Chesham and Amersham 2 guaranteed LD votes have been lost as my parents didn't sort out postal votes in time.
And I expect that will be true for a lot of people who will be heading away and not thinking about such things...
As for your actual post - sorry but degrees are usually fairly specific nowadays - the era of the degree as provider of an overall education died out in the 18th century.
Yes and no. I disliked doing my PhD (it was just "I've started so I'll finish" determination) and am sure that the findings (on point-set topology) were useless, but it did teach me logical analysis which has been useful all my life. I imagine a lot of degrees are like that - as you say, pretty specific, but also teaching a way of thinking.
The view from ConHome re the marriage of Boris and Carrie (and I do not normally read ConHome)
Our point is a broader one. Johnson and Symonds have done what many people nowadays do. They lived openly and unashamedly together, and had a child, before they got married.
No previous Prime Minister had behaved quite like that, but by contemporary standards, what they did is conventional.
Lloyd George and the Duke of Grafton both lived quite openly with their mistresses while in No. 10. And Lloyd George did eventually marry Frances Stevenson (Grafton didn’t marry Nancy Parsons, but that’s another story).
So I’m not quite sure I agree with that statement.
I should say my youngest son has lived with his partner, now fiancée, for 12 years openly and have two wonderful children 9 and 7
They would have been married last August but covid cancelled their wedding which has been arranged for the 31st July, again with just 30 present at the ceremony at the local Parish Church
Congratulations to them both BigG, as mentioned before I am also getting married in the middle of next month, again with just 30 but a livestream in Oxford with a slightly bigger celebration in Epping in early July
I am so delighted for you @HYUFD and it does seem the Church has indicated they may be able to allow upto 50, depending on advice nearer the time
They have hired a Marquee that can already accommodate 50, but they hope that may be increased to 75, but far less than the 150 hoped for
We live in surreal times and part of my continuing questioning of the scientists and media's advice is that it has to be correct, not as a result of a convoluted political agenda and a genuine debate with alternative views is needed.
Mind you, the weather has been fantastic and with an 8 mile queue into North Wales, largely from the North West of England last Friday, we should know soon enough the consequences or lack of them
I would just say I am only interested in hospital numbers, vaccine status and deaths together with vaccination numbers
The rest is irrelevant
I agree BigG, vaccination numbers and hospital numbers are key in terms of full reopening.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
There are a few but the main trend in commuting is towns to cities and where there is commuting from cities it will be as you say largely to business parks and industrial estates outside of the town rather than to work in the town itself
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
Ask an historian of the medieval period if a knowledge of Latin is “untainted by anything practical”.
They would agree, as Medieval Latin is somewhat different from Classical Latin.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
There are a few but the main trend in commuting is towns to cities and where there is commuting from cities it will be as you say largely to business parks and industrial estates outside of the town rather than to work in the town itself
I live in a town. We have teachers who commute in from such small rural hamlets as Oxford and London...
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
Ask an historian of the medieval period if a knowledge of Latin is “untainted by anything practical”.
They would agree, as Medieval Latin is somewhat different from Classical Latin.
My fault for opining on something outside my experience.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Ummmmmm...you really don’t know much about Staffordshire, do you?
Newcastle under Lyme is less than 10 minutes from Stoke by car, as I said most of the highest skilled workers in Newcastle under Lyme will work in Stoke or Birmingham ie they will commute to and from cities in the region.
The jobs in Newcastle under Lyme itself will largely be basic retail, hospitality and warehouse and delivery jobs
No they are not. If anything it’s the other way around. There are huge numbers of high end jobs in manufacturing and of course academia in Newcastle. As there are in Uttoxeter, Rocester, etc.
Newcastle under Lyme is absolutely not a dormitory town for Stoke. No way on Earth.
You’re just projecting your prejudices onto a map. If the Tories want to hold these new seats they’re winning, high time and long overdue they learned something about them.
Here’s another point - lots of those working in industry are drifting away from Labour, as they’re no longer unionised and they’re quite suspicious of immigration undercutting their wages (I see that in Cannock and Brownhills, which are both dominated by manufacturing). Don’t assume it’s all about white collar workers commuting from leafy small towns (indeed, with a population of 75,000 Newcastle under Lyme is larger than several cities).
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
Indeed and there are those such as me who commute across cities from one side to the other. The assumption everyone travels to work in the centre is also false.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
There are a few but the main trend in commuting is towns to cities and where there is commuting from cities it will be as you say largely to business parks and industrial estates outside of the town rather than to work in the town itself
Whether the employment takes place in a town centre or in an industrial estate two miles outside it the jobs are still in the town.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
There are a few but the main trend in commuting is towns to cities and where there is commuting from cities it will be as you say largely to business parks and industrial estates outside of the town rather than to work in the town itself
I live in a town. We have teachers who commute in from such small rural hamlets as Oxford and London...
Teaching, especially secondary A Level teaching of course one of the professions I originally said you still needed a degree for anyway.
Even the smallest town will always tend to have had a few university educated professionals even before the expansion of the universities eg teachers, doctors and the vicar
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
There are a few but the main trend in commuting is towns to cities and where there is commuting from cities it will be as you say largely to business parks and industrial estates outside of the town rather than to work in the town itself
I live in a town. We have teachers who commute in from such small rural hamlets as Oxford and London...
Teaching, especially secondary A Level teaching of course one of the professions I originally said you still needed a degree for anyway.
Even the smallest town will always tend to have had a few university educated professionals even before the expansion of the universities eg teachers, doctors and the vicar
We’ve gone on with this so far I’ve now forgotten what your original point was: can you remind me?
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Ummmmmm...you really don’t know much about Staffordshire, do you?
Newcastle under Lyme is less than 10 minutes from Stoke by car, as I said most of the highest skilled workers in Newcastle under Lyme will work in Stoke or Birmingham ie they will commute to and from cities in the region.
The jobs in Newcastle under Lyme itself will largely be basic retail, hospitality and warehouse and delivery jobs
No they are not. If anything it’s the other way around. There are huge numbers of high end jobs in manufacturing and of course academia in Newcastle. As there are in Uttoxeter, Rocester, etc.
Newcastle under Lyme is absolutely not a dormitory town for Stoke. No way on Earth.
You’re just projecting your prejudices onto a map. If the Tories want to hold these new seats they’re winning, high time and long overdue they learned something about them.
Here’s another point - lots of those working in industry are drifting away from Labour, as they’re no longer unionised and they’re quite suspicious of immigration undercutting their wages (I see that in Cannock and Brownhills, which are both dominated by manufacturing). Don’t assume it’s all about white collar workers commuting from leafy small towns (indeed, with a population of 75,000 Newcastle under Lyme is larger than several cities).
There is Keele University which is near Newcastle under Lyme though not actually in it.
Newcastle under Lyme may well have a few factories too because of its size, in which case that goes to refute eek's point that there are no high skilled jobs or apprenticeships in Red Wall towns.
Though that is less likely to be the case in smaller Red Wall towns
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
Ask an historian of the medieval period if a knowledge of Latin is “untainted by anything practical”.
They would agree, as Medieval Latin is somewhat different from Classical Latin.
My fault for opining on something outside my experience.
As if we don't all do it. In fact I would suggest it is the one level of expertise we all share here.
Sky News talking about the situation in Israel. I did laugh when the news reader suggested to her guest that Israel’s form of democracy is dysfunctional.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
There are a few but the main trend in commuting is towns to cities and where there is commuting from cities it will be as you say largely to business parks and industrial estates outside of the town rather than to work in the town itself
I live in a town. We have teachers who commute in from such small rural hamlets as Oxford and London...
Teaching, especially secondary A Level teaching of course one of the professions I originally said you still needed a degree for anyway.
Even the smallest town will always tend to have had a few university educated professionals even before the expansion of the universities eg teachers, doctors and the vicar
We’ve gone on with this so far I’ve now forgotten what your original point was: can you remind me?
That the only jobs which really needed a degree were academia, secondary school teaching (for A level), medicine, the senior civil service and the clergy and the Bar and judiciary (though even the Bar I later conceded could be done through a vocational Bar course).
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
And zero even consideration of the third possibility:
3) it will run away, won't be contained, but won't lead to levels of serious illness that remotely justify further restrictions.
I wish somebody would hit these scientists from a different angle. If Covid had never happened, but there was evidence that we were likely to have a 'bad' flu season this year (say 10k deaths?). Would it be necessary to introduce widespread restrictions about the country? Given how effective we have discovered such restrictions can be...?
That is the logical end point to all of this. Masks in supermarkets and public transport in winter will be very tricky to unwind. Hopefully if Khan tries to mandate masks on TfL the Govt. will use all their powers to tell him where to go, and I personally will not be shopping or visiting anywhere that tries to enforce masks/social distancing/sign ins after the 21st of June.
I can't see June 21st being reneged on in any serious way. I expect a behavioural legacy of mask wearing and distancing to persist - this is inevitable - but not mandated by law. Maybe in some small pockets of activity for particular reasons but not widely.
There's a big political dividend in "Freedom Day delivered on time and on budget" and "Good old Boris, he's got us through this and now we're there, just like he said." They won't be throwing this away. The dividend will be all the greater given the noises off about it "being on a knife edge." It generates a real sense of occasion around the June 14th announcement. Much tension and trepidation, therefore maximum joy and relief when Johnson drops the F bomb.
I reckon the decision is made and only something truly horrid and unexpected could derail it. So although it wouldn't bother me too much if there were a delay, I'll be amazed if there is.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
There are a few but the main trend in commuting is towns to cities and where there is commuting from cities it will be as you say largely to business parks and industrial estates outside of the town rather than to work in the town itself
Whether the employment takes place in a town centre or in an industrial estate two miles outside it the jobs are still in the town.
High skilled jobs in the town itself will bring demand for high street shops and cafes etc, high skilled jobs in an industrial estate outside the town however will tend to have on site cafes
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
There are a few but the main trend in commuting is towns to cities and where there is commuting from cities it will be as you say largely to business parks and industrial estates outside of the town rather than to work in the town itself
I live in a town. We have teachers who commute in from such small rural hamlets as Oxford and London...
Teaching, especially secondary A Level teaching of course one of the professions I originally said you still needed a degree for anyway.
Even the smallest town will always tend to have had a few university educated professionals even before the expansion of the universities eg teachers, doctors and the vicar
We’ve gone on with this so far I’ve now forgotten what your original point was: can you remind me?
That the only jobs which really needed a degree were academia, secondary school teaching (for A level), medicine, the senior civil service and the clergy and the Bar and judiciary (though even the Bar I later conceded could be done through a vocational Bar course).
Thanks.
There are a lot of people in science and engineering who would disagree with you. In fact in many research jobs (which are more often than not outside academia) you need more then just a first degree.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Ummmmmm...you really don’t know much about Staffordshire, do you?
Newcastle under Lyme is less than 10 minutes from Stoke by car, as I said most of the highest skilled workers in Newcastle under Lyme will work in Stoke or Birmingham ie they will commute to and from cities in the region.
The jobs in Newcastle under Lyme itself will largely be basic retail, hospitality and warehouse and delivery jobs
No they are not. If anything it’s the other way around. There are huge numbers of high end jobs in manufacturing and of course academia in Newcastle. As there are in Uttoxeter, Rocester, etc.
Newcastle under Lyme is absolutely not a dormitory town for Stoke. No way on Earth.
You’re just projecting your prejudices onto a map. If the Tories want to hold these new seats they’re winning, high time and long overdue they learned something about them.
Here’s another point - lots of those working in industry are drifting away from Labour, as they’re no longer unionised and they’re quite suspicious of immigration undercutting their wages (I see that in Cannock and Brownhills, which are both dominated by manufacturing). Don’t assume it’s all about white collar workers commuting from leafy small towns (indeed, with a population of 75,000 Newcastle under Lyme is larger than several cities).
There is Keele University which is near Newcastle under Lyme though not actually in it.
Newcastle under Lyme may well have a few factories too because of its size, in which case that goes to refute eek's point that there are no high skilled jobs or apprenticeships in Red Wall towns.
Though that is less likely to be the case in smaller Red Wall towns
So basically you don’t know anything about the place, haven’t even taken a few minutes to attempt a quick bluffers guide using google/wiki, have commented in full knowledge of that fact, but feel confident enough to self-declare that you have won whatever argument you were having anyway.
At least 50% of such seem to result in you using eventually ending up in a diametrically opposed position in which you started but somehow convincing yourself that the other person has for some reason conversely moved towards your original misinformed position.
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
Ask an historian of the medieval period if a knowledge of Latin is “untainted by anything practical”.
Exactly. It has great utility inside the ivory tower. That's the charm. I'm a big fan.
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
Ask an historian of the medieval period if a knowledge of Latin is “untainted by anything practical”.
They would agree, as Medieval Latin is somewhat different from Classical Latin.
Not so different that one is no help with another. It helps that lots of medieval Latin is consciously trying to sound like Cicero or at least Aquinas.
The view from ConHome re the marriage of Boris and Carrie (and I do not normally read ConHome)
Our point is a broader one. Johnson and Symonds have done what many people nowadays do. They lived openly and unashamedly together, and had a child, before they got married.
No previous Prime Minister had behaved quite like that, but by contemporary standards, what they did is conventional.
Lloyd George and the Duke of Grafton both lived quite openly with their mistresses while in No. 10. And Lloyd George did eventually marry Frances Stevenson (Grafton didn’t marry Nancy Parsons, but that’s another story).
So I’m not quite sure I agree with that statement.
My issue with Boris is not that he lived with his girlfriend before they married or had a child out of wedlock but that he treated his former wife, the mother of 4 of his children, like shit. If your own daughter describes you as a "selfish bastard", the chance is that you are one.
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
Ask an historian of the medieval period if a knowledge of Latin is “untainted by anything practical”.
They would agree, as Medieval Latin is somewhat different from Classical Latin.
Not so different that one is no help with another. It helps that lots of medieval Latin is consciously trying to sound like Cicero or at least Aquinas.
True, although my personal experience is that it’s like the difference between modern English and later Middle English.
The view from ConHome re the marriage of Boris and Carrie (and I do not normally read ConHome)
Our point is a broader one. Johnson and Symonds have done what many people nowadays do. They lived openly and unashamedly together, and had a child, before they got married.
No previous Prime Minister had behaved quite like that, but by contemporary standards, what they did is conventional.
Lloyd George and the Duke of Grafton both lived quite openly with their mistresses while in No. 10. And Lloyd George did eventually marry Frances Stevenson (Grafton didn’t marry Nancy Parsons, but that’s another story).
So I’m not quite sure I agree with that statement.
My issue with Boris is not that he lived with his girlfriend before they married or had a child out of wedlock but that he treated his former wife, the mother of 4 of his children, like shit. If your own daughter describes you as a "selfish bastard", the chance is that you are one.
Very like Lloyd George and Grafton then. Heck, Grafton started his affair because his wife was pregnant. How’s that for being a rat?
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
There are a few but the main trend in commuting is towns to cities and where there is commuting from cities it will be as you say largely to business parks and industrial estates outside of the town rather than to work in the town itself
I live in a town. We have teachers who commute in from such small rural hamlets as Oxford and London...
Teaching, especially secondary A Level teaching of course one of the professions I originally said you still needed a degree for anyway.
Even the smallest town will always tend to have had a few university educated professionals even before the expansion of the universities eg teachers, doctors and the vicar
We’ve gone on with this so far I’ve now forgotten what your original point was: can you remind me?
That the only jobs which really needed a degree were academia, secondary school teaching (for A level), medicine, the senior civil service and the clergy and the Bar and judiciary (though even the Bar I later conceded could be done through a vocational Bar course).
Thanks.
There are a lot of people in science and engineering who would disagree with you. In fact in many research jobs (which are more often than not outside academia) you need more then just a first degree.
As I also said later I included research jobs too as they were similar to academia in some respects anyway
For Chesham and Amersham 2 guaranteed LD votes have been lost as my parents didn't sort out postal votes in time.
And I expect that will be true for a lot of people who will be heading away and not thinking about such things...
As for your actual post - sorry but degrees are usually fairly specific nowadays - the era of the degree as provider of an overall education died out in the 18th century.
Yes and no. I disliked doing my PhD (it was just "I've started so I'll finish" determination) and am sure that the findings (on point-set topology) were useless, but it did teach me logical analysis which has been useful all my life. I imagine a lot of degrees are like that - as you say, pretty specific, but also teaching a way of thinking.
And organising material, Mr Palmer, and expressing oneself clearly in English and a lot more besides. And then trying to make sense of what it all means.
All of this ought to be somewhere in a first degree too.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Not everyone is a commuter to cities.
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
There are a few but the main trend in commuting is towns to cities and where there is commuting from cities it will be as you say largely to business parks and industrial estates outside of the town rather than to work in the town itself
I live in a town. We have teachers who commute in from such small rural hamlets as Oxford and London...
Teaching, especially secondary A Level teaching of course one of the professions I originally said you still needed a degree for anyway.
Even the smallest town will always tend to have had a few university educated professionals even before the expansion of the universities eg teachers, doctors and the vicar
We’ve gone on with this so far I’ve now forgotten what your original point was: can you remind me?
That the only jobs which really needed a degree were academia, secondary school teaching (for A level), medicine, the senior civil service and the clergy and the Bar and judiciary (though even the Bar I later conceded could be done through a vocational Bar course).
Thanks.
There are a lot of people in science and engineering who would disagree with you. In fact in many research jobs (which are more often than not outside academia) you need more then just a first degree.
As I also said later I included research jobs too as they were similar to academia in some respects anyway
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Ummmmmm...you really don’t know much about Staffordshire, do you?
Newcastle under Lyme is less than 10 minutes from Stoke by car, as I said most of the highest skilled workers in Newcastle under Lyme will work in Stoke or Birmingham ie they will commute to and from cities in the region.
The jobs in Newcastle under Lyme itself will largely be basic retail, hospitality and warehouse and delivery jobs
No they are not. If anything it’s the other way around. There are huge numbers of high end jobs in manufacturing and of course academia in Newcastle. As there are in Uttoxeter, Rocester, etc.
Newcastle under Lyme is absolutely not a dormitory town for Stoke. No way on Earth.
You’re just projecting your prejudices onto a map. If the Tories want to hold these new seats they’re winning, high time and long overdue they learned something about them.
Here’s another point - lots of those working in industry are drifting away from Labour, as they’re no longer unionised and they’re quite suspicious of immigration undercutting their wages (I see that in Cannock and Brownhills, which are both dominated by manufacturing). Don’t assume it’s all about white collar workers commuting from leafy small towns (indeed, with a population of 75,000 Newcastle under Lyme is larger than several cities).
There is Keele University which is near Newcastle under Lyme though not actually in it.
Newcastle under Lyme may well have a few factories too because of its size, in which case that goes to refute eek's point that there are no high skilled jobs or apprenticeships in Red Wall towns.
Though that is less likely to be the case in smaller Red Wall towns
So basically you don’t know anything about the place, haven’t even taken a few minutes to attempt a quick bluffers guide using google/wiki, have commented in full knowledge of that fact, but feel confident enough to self-declare that you have won whatever argument you were having anyway.
At least 50% of such seem to result in you using eventually ending up in a diametrically opposed position in which you started but somehow convincing yourself that the other person has for some reason conversely moved towards your original misinformed position.
No, my position remains exactly the same as it originally was in terms of the jobs for which a degree was necessary, the rest can largely be done through apprenticeships and vocational training.
The point about Newcastle under Lyme actually reinforces my original point and refutes eek's point that there are no apprenticeships in Red Wall towns (albeit that would be less so as I also said for the smaller towns)
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Ummmmmm...you really don’t know much about Staffordshire, do you?
Newcastle under Lyme is less than 10 minutes from Stoke by car, as I said most of the highest skilled workers in Newcastle under Lyme will work in Stoke or Birmingham ie they will commute to and from cities in the region.
The jobs in Newcastle under Lyme itself will largely be basic retail, hospitality and warehouse and delivery jobs
No they are not. If anything it’s the other way around. There are huge numbers of high end jobs in manufacturing and of course academia in Newcastle. As there are in Uttoxeter, Rocester, etc.
Newcastle under Lyme is absolutely not a dormitory town for Stoke. No way on Earth.
You’re just projecting your prejudices onto a map. If the Tories want to hold these new seats they’re winning, high time and long overdue they learned something about them.
Here’s another point - lots of those working in industry are drifting away from Labour, as they’re no longer unionised and they’re quite suspicious of immigration undercutting their wages (I see that in Cannock and Brownhills, which are both dominated by manufacturing). Don’t assume it’s all about white collar workers commuting from leafy small towns (indeed, with a population of 75,000 Newcastle under Lyme is larger than several cities).
There is Keele University which is near Newcastle under Lyme though not actually in it.
Newcastle under Lyme may well have a few factories too because of its size, in which case that goes to refute eek's point that there are no high skilled jobs or apprenticeships in Red Wall towns.
Though that is less likely to be the case in smaller Red Wall towns
So basically you don’t know anything about the place, haven’t even taken a few minutes to attempt a quick bluffers guide using google/wiki, have commented in full knowledge of that fact, but feel confident enough to self-declare that you have won whatever argument you were having anyway.
At least 50% of such seem to result in you using eventually ending up in a diametrically opposed position in which you started but somehow convincing yourself that the other person has for some reason conversely moved towards your original misinformed position.
I think the issue is we talk about the Red Wall as some sort of homogenous lump. Well, it isn’t. Eek lives in the north and I can imagine his description is accurate for say, Consett or Bishop Auckland, although I don’t know either place well.
But in the Midlands, places like Bassetlaw, Stoke, or Newcastle, they still are underpinned by manufacturing, just a very different form from seventy or ninety years ago. In fact, arguably that’s been the switch, as previously Cannock and Bassetlaw were of course primary producers (of coal, in both cases). Now you have high end industry. Most of my friends outside teaching work in the production chain for JLR and JCB. In Stoke, you still have lots of manufacturing. Brownhills still has its steelworks.
Flintshire, as well, BigG’s area (well, close enough) is based on the Airbus supply chain. Not so much in retail and warehousing.
And this lack of understanding of the diversity leads people to make errors.
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
The woke will soon be trying to stop.people learning Latin because the Romans were such nasty chaps with all that slavery, buggery and all kinds of perverted non pc behaviour..
I see the wokies at Kings College London have been having a wokeathon over a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh.
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
The woke will soon be trying to stop.people learning Latin because the Romans were such nasty chaps with all that slavery, buggery and all kinds of perverted non pc behaviour..
I see the wokies at Kings College London have been having a wokeathon over a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh.
I thought buggery and transvestism (both key Roman traits) were very much in with the Woke?
The woke will soon be trying to stop.people learning Latin because the Romans were such nasty chaps with all that slavery, buggery and all kinds of perverted non pc behaviour..
I see the wokies at Kings College London have been having a wokeathon over a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh.
It's a competition - how many times can you post ridiculous derivations of the W-word in a single contribution?
So, wokies, wokeathon, wokeish, wokery, wokeworthy, woke-infused, overwoked (and under pid presumably) to name but seven.
The view from ConHome re the marriage of Boris and Carrie (and I do not normally read ConHome)
Our point is a broader one. Johnson and Symonds have done what many people nowadays do. They lived openly and unashamedly together, and had a child, before they got married.
No previous Prime Minister had behaved quite like that, but by contemporary standards, what they did is conventional.
Lloyd George and the Duke of Grafton both lived quite openly with their mistresses while in No. 10. And Lloyd George did eventually marry Frances Stevenson (Grafton didn’t marry Nancy Parsons, but that’s another story).
So I’m not quite sure I agree with that statement.
My issue with Boris is not that he lived with his girlfriend before they married or had a child out of wedlock but that he treated his former wife, the mother of 4 of his children, like shit. If your own daughter describes you as a "selfish bastard", the chance is that you are one.
Father/daughter alienation being one of the themes of the film The Irishman which, in case you have not seen it, is very, very long. That and lots of mafia murders.
eek- Many if not most engineers used to leave school and do an apprenticeship rather than a degree, I agree you can learn IT on the job too and from vocational courses.
Medicine I said was one of the areas you needed a degree for however, if you work in high level chemistry research your job is similar to academia anyway.
I agree STEM subjects should charge more than arts and social sciences subjects given they cost more to run and will likely lead to a higher paid job but with government subsidising the most important of them
Hyufd, there was a time when all a surgeon needed was to be handy with an axe and saw, which required strength rather than knowledge.
Those times are, fortunately, gone.
Those who know what they’re talking about, Eek and Richard, have explained that the depth of knowledge needed know for high level engineering is degree level or higher because of the complexities involved. I’ll take their word for it. Why can’t you?
Yes they did but that was also a time most patients died on the operating table, so I would keep the requirement for Medicine degrees for surgeons as now.
However most engineers used to learn the job via an apprenticeship, I would not ban engineering degrees, if people want to study it at university they can but for most engineering roles except the highest level an apprenticeship post A levels would still do if they wanted to go down that route rather than a degree
Cant help thinking that this is Artsy snobbery. Engineering requires a considerable amount of learned knowledge in addition to an understanding of the applications of this knowledge. The fact that power in the Uk is generally held by people who do not understand that detailed information is required before a process is actually initiated is a major problem. There is only so much reality that the Bullshit merchants can ignore before reality comes and bites them.
Remember HYUFD's ambition is to become an MP - the ability to talk about something with a complete lack of knowledge while everyone around them tries to correct his misunderstanding is not so much a problem as an essential skill.
Which is why we now have the politicians we currently have (and deserve). Anyone sane looks elsewhere to earn money
Well you certainly don't need a degree to become an MP either, nor even PM, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Macdonald, Churchill, Callaghan, Major for example did not have degrees.
If you are going to commit 3 years or more of your life after school to just further unpaid study and get into significant debt to do so then many if not most will want to know that that extra study is essential for their future career before they embark on it. Otherwise they can go down an apprenticeship or vocational route and earn while doing so too.
Only if the apprenticeships are available - round here they just don't exist
Apprenticeships are great if you live near a city (especially a big one). If you live in a Red Wall town the opportunities aren't there.
And remember you live at the end of a tube line so your world is very different to other parts of the UK.
If you live in a Red Wall town most of the jobs will probably be in basic retail, fastfood or delivery or warehouses or callcentres now, given the closure of so many mines and factories.
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
Well, that’s not true of say, Stoke/Newcastle. The major businesses there include:
General Electric Goodwin Steel Castings Jaguar Land Rover JCB Michelin AstraZeneca Morrisons Site machinery Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
Stoke and Newcastle are both cities not towns
Newcastle under Lyme is most definitely a town.
And in the Stoke commuter belt
Ummmmmm...you really don’t know much about Staffordshire, do you?
Newcastle under Lyme is less than 10 minutes from Stoke by car, as I said most of the highest skilled workers in Newcastle under Lyme will work in Stoke or Birmingham ie they will commute to and from cities in the region.
The jobs in Newcastle under Lyme itself will largely be basic retail, hospitality and warehouse and delivery jobs
No they are not. If anything it’s the other way around. There are huge numbers of high end jobs in manufacturing and of course academia in Newcastle. As there are in Uttoxeter, Rocester, etc.
Newcastle under Lyme is absolutely not a dormitory town for Stoke. No way on Earth.
You’re just projecting your prejudices onto a map. If the Tories want to hold these new seats they’re winning, high time and long overdue they learned something about them.
Here’s another point - lots of those working in industry are drifting away from Labour, as they’re no longer unionised and they’re quite suspicious of immigration undercutting their wages (I see that in Cannock and Brownhills, which are both dominated by manufacturing). Don’t assume it’s all about white collar workers commuting from leafy small towns (indeed, with a population of 75,000 Newcastle under Lyme is larger than several cities).
There is Keele University which is near Newcastle under Lyme though not actually in it.
Newcastle under Lyme may well have a few factories too because of its size, in which case that goes to refute eek's point that there are no high skilled jobs or apprenticeships in Red Wall towns.
Though that is less likely to be the case in smaller Red Wall towns
So basically you don’t know anything about the place, haven’t even taken a few minutes to attempt a quick bluffers guide using google/wiki, have commented in full knowledge of that fact, but feel confident enough to self-declare that you have won whatever argument you were having anyway.
At least 50% of such seem to result in you using eventually ending up in a diametrically opposed position in which you started but somehow convincing yourself that the other person has for some reason conversely moved towards your original misinformed position.
I think the issue is we talk about the Red Wall as some sort of homogenous lump. Well, it isn’t. Eek lives in the north and I can imagine his description is accurate for say, Consett or Bishop Auckland, although I don’t know either place well.
But in the Midlands, places like Bassetlaw, Stoke, or Newcastle, they still are underpinned by manufacturing, just a very different form from seventy or ninety years ago. In fact, arguably that’s been the switch, as previously Cannock and Bassetlaw were of course primary producers (of coal, in both cases). Now you have high end industry. Most of my friends outside teaching work in the production chain for JLR and JCB. In Stoke, you still have lots of manufacturing. Brownhills still has its steelworks.
Flintshire, as well, BigG’s area (well, close enough) is based on the Airbus supply chain. Not so much in retail and warehousing.
And this lack of understanding of the diversity leads people to make errors.
No it’s all very interesting. And people, especially in areas where “generalism” dominates can’t be expected to know the minute detail of every area (although some do to an astonishing extent). I have no problem with people starting discussions from a simplistic perspective (and sometimes too much focus on the detail can obscure the wood from the trees). But people providing detail and picking up on errors of such can be useful and are IMO better off acknowledged and used to question whether the broad thrust of an argument is correct. There is no need to try to turn every error of detail into something that actually reinforces your basic argument. Either it’s the exception that breaks the rule, or it’s the fact that it is an exception that endorses it! But you cannot co-opt it to apparently not be an exception at all. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. It’s not a weakness!
The woke will soon be trying to stop.people learning Latin because the Romans were such nasty chaps with all that slavery, buggery and all kinds of perverted non pc behaviour..
I see the wokies at Kings College London have been having a wokeathon over a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh.
It's a competition - how many times can you post ridiculous derivations of the W-word in a single contribution?
So, wokies, wokeathon, wokeish, wokery, wokeworthy, woke-infused, overwoked (and under pid presumably) to name but seven.
Until the 60s most solicitors, especially in the provinces, didn’t have degrees, those with law degrees overwhelmingly became barristers while local firms apprenticed articled clerks up a la Uriah Heap (like me, a solicitor from Canterbury) but the expansion of universities meant that people taking that route (via becoming a legal executive these days) has declined. Interestingly the profession is moving back to “legal apprentices” as a route to becoming a solicitor without a degree. Save for snobbery I can’t see a problem with it.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
It's worse than you think. I am pretty sure she actually is on Real SAGE.
Maybe you are thinking of Pagel?
No. Susan Michie is listed as a member of Independent sage, a communist and activist
From Wiki
In 2009, Michie became a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and convened its subgroup, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Behaviour group.In 2020, Michie became a participant in the Covid-19 SAGE's Scientific Pandemic Insights group on Behaviour (SPI-B)[12] and participates in SAGE.
She also sits on the Independent SAGE committee, chaired by Sir David King. She frequently contributes to national news media during the Covid-19 pandemic as an expert in behaviour change.[13][14][15][16][17]
Indie SAGE are very media savvy, which is surprising given they employ Carol Cadwallr as their media consultant
The woke will soon be trying to stop.people learning Latin because the Romans were such nasty chaps with all that slavery, buggery and all kinds of perverted non pc behaviour..
I see the wokies at Kings College London have been having a wokeathon over a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh.
It's a competition - how many times can you post ridiculous derivations of the W-word in a single contribution?
So, wokies, wokeathon, wokeish, wokery, wokeworthy, woke-infused, overwoked (and under pid presumably) to name but seven.
The woke will soon be trying to stop.people learning Latin because the Romans were such nasty chaps with all that slavery, buggery and all kinds of perverted non pc behaviour..
I see the wokies at Kings College London have been having a wokeathon over a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh.
It's a competition - how many times can you post ridiculous derivations of the W-word in a single contribution?
So, wokies, wokeathon, wokeish, wokery, wokeworthy, woke-infused, overwoked (and under pid presumably) to name but seven.
Are those of us who refuse to go along with it the woke-shy?
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
It's worse than you think. I am pretty sure she actually is on Real SAGE.
Maybe you are thinking of Pagel?
No. Susan Michie is listed as a member of Independent sage, a communist and activist
From Wiki
In 2009, Michie became a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and convened its subgroup, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Behaviour group.In 2020, Michie became a participant in the Covid-19 SAGE's Scientific Pandemic Insights group on Behaviour (SPI-B)[12] and participates in SAGE.
She also sits on the Independent SAGE committee, chaired by Sir David King. She frequently contributes to national news media during the Covid-19 pandemic as an expert in behaviour change.[13][14][15][16][17]
Indie SAGE are very media savvy, which is surprising given they employ Carol Cadwallr as their media consultant
You may have just noted why the Guardian posts every rancid comment they make.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
It's worse than you think. I am pretty sure she actually is on Real SAGE.
Maybe you are thinking of Pagel?
No. Susan Michie is listed as a member of Independent sage, a communist and activist
From Wiki
In 2009, Michie became a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and convened its subgroup, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Behaviour group.In 2020, Michie became a participant in the Covid-19 SAGE's Scientific Pandemic Insights group on Behaviour (SPI-B)[12] and participates in SAGE.
She also sits on the Independent SAGE committee, chaired by Sir David King. She frequently contributes to national news media during the Covid-19 pandemic as an expert in behaviour change.[13][14][15][16][17]
Indie SAGE are very media savvy, which is surprising given they employ Carol Cadwallr as their media consultant
You may have just noted why the Guardian posts every rancid comment they make.
How on earth can you be on SAGE and independent SAGE at the same time?
I notice lots of "independent sage" members don't have it (anymore) in their twitter bios.
The two experts quotes by the guardian last night were, but no mention of the fact either in the article or their twitter bios....you had to go googling to find this out.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
It's worse than you think. I am pretty sure she actually is on Real SAGE.
Maybe you are thinking of Pagel?
No. Susan Michie is listed as a member of Independent sage, a communist and activist
From Wiki
In 2009, Michie became a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and convened its subgroup, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Behaviour group.In 2020, Michie became a participant in the Covid-19 SAGE's Scientific Pandemic Insights group on Behaviour (SPI-B)[12] and participates in SAGE.
She also sits on the Independent SAGE committee, chaired by Sir David King. She frequently contributes to national news media during the Covid-19 pandemic as an expert in behaviour change.[13][14][15][16][17]
Indie SAGE are very media savvy, which is surprising given they employ Carol Cadwallr as their media consultant
You may have just noted why the Guardian posts every rancid comment they make.
How on earth can you be on SAGE and independent SAGE at the same time?
Because you have no interest in collective agreement and responsibility, you think that you’re cleverer than anyone in the room (and so can never be wrong) and the hint of a tv camera has you running towards it.
'Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London who sits on government advisory group Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), told Sky News: "We're on a knife-edge.
"We could go either way with this new variant.
"Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we'd have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.'
Introduced as a member of Sage when she is in fact in Independent Sage, a communist and political activist.
The media need to be part of the public enquiry, as they have been abysmal in informing in a fair and unbiased way
It's worse than you think. I am pretty sure she actually is on Real SAGE.
Maybe you are thinking of Pagel?
No. Susan Michie is listed as a member of Independent sage, a communist and activist
From Wiki
In 2009, Michie became a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and convened its subgroup, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Behaviour group.In 2020, Michie became a participant in the Covid-19 SAGE's Scientific Pandemic Insights group on Behaviour (SPI-B)[12] and participates in SAGE.
She also sits on the Independent SAGE committee, chaired by Sir David King. She frequently contributes to national news media during the Covid-19 pandemic as an expert in behaviour change.[13][14][15][16][17]
Indie SAGE are very media savvy, which is surprising given they employ Carol Cadwallr as their media consultant
You may have just noted why the Guardian posts every rancid comment they make.
How on earth can you be on SAGE and independent SAGE at the same time?
Because you have no interest in collective agreement and responsibility, you think that you’re cleverer than anyone in the room (and so can never be wrong) and the hint of a tv camera has you running towards it.
I am glad the vaccine task force weren't of this ilk.
Learning those social skills is one of the important features of early Primary School. Learning to read is probably worth it too.
I am taking an increasingly jaded view of higher education in Britain. It seems an expensive way to run a finishing school for the middle classes.
I would suggest that no one is eligible for a Student Loan until they have worked for two years, proven by NI contributions. People would only go if they really wanted to do so, rather than drift into it.
The problem with this idea is employers won't employ someone who they will have to train - most 18 year olds have no idea what the world of work is all about - and then two years later that individual will likely leave and never be seen again.
Some organisations do this and recognise this in terms of professional development - you get a newly qualified surveyor for example, who comes to work for you for two or three years while he or she is getting more professional qualifications and then moves on but at least they've got some professional knowledge and are keen to impress and learn so they are valuable.
You would need some form of incentive to employers to employ these "pre-students".
I think the answer is more white-collar apprenticeships, of the type we see in law and accounting, combining work and formal study - rather than companies hiring graduates with little experience.
For many, three years living away racking up £50k of debt just isn’t economic value.
There’s room for both systems, but the starting point has to be employers not insisting on degrees as part of the recruitment process.
Re Richard’s article, very thought provoking. I’m with the suggestion that schools provide facilities so children can be dropped off but that formal education starts at 7, with socialising / playing the priority before.
Re the adult education, the problem with this country is we send too many to university. Decades ago, you could become a solicitor or an accountant by leaving school and being apprenticed. It would be good to see that restarted.
Really you only need a degree to become an academic, secondary school teacher (for A Level), barrister and judge, doctor and surgeon or senior civil servant or to go into the Church.
For most other jobs you would probably be better of financially and skills and experience wise after university doing a higher level apprenticeship combined with vocational training than a university degree but it should be up to individual choice
There are a whole swathe of industrial specialist occupations where you actually do need a degree to understand even the basics of what you are doing. Indeed they have now been caught up in the inflationary process so that you can't get a job without a Masters of a PhD - which given the degree of specialisation involved does seem a step too far.
I would suggest most such jobs in industry could be learnt on the job after A levels with some vocational training alongside, unless you are doing very high level and complex research and experiments in which case your job is similar to academia anyway
Um no. The amount of general background knowledge you would need would be far in excess of what could be taught to you 'on the job'. The problem being that 'on the job' they are already teaching you the next stage which is the specific proprietary and job specific stuff, none of which you could start to understand without having studied the subject in depth previously.
For what? The number of jobs in business and industry which actually need knowledge beyond A levels is very small and where there is that can be learnt on the job through vocational qualifications and training.
The only exceptions as I said might be high level research but that is similar to academia anyway.
The most popular degree nowadays is some form of business studies, most of which 40 or 50 years ago those studying it would have learnt on the job.
If they want to study it that is fine but a degree should not be compulsory for management roles in industry
In my industry there is almost no one below the board level who is not an expert in the relevant field and who has reached that position from working up through the business. There has just been a merger in one of the companies I contract to and they are looking at filling the CEO-2 roles. Everyone of those people is a specialist in some field or other of geology or engineering and all are part of the functional oversight system. None of them are just managers.
Which again they could mainly have learnt post A level on the job via an apprenticeship or vocational course, they did not have to do a full degree
When you're in a hole......
See my post about how my son, apprenticeship plus later degree, could not, in his own opinion done the job he did without the latter.
There is of course another point, even regardless of the validity of the specific argument. Engage in an apprenticeship and you are pretty well burning your bridges if you decide you've embarked on the wrong path.
A good degree may not provide universal skills but it does provide assurance of basic employability.
Lots of people at senior levels of organisations have nostalgic ideas of plucking people out of schools at 16 or 18 and training them up the old way. Whilst this would probably work for the vast majority of the population, the population interested in following that path is not quite the same now as it was in the 80s. Students have been conditioned to believe that they need to go to university, so the pool of people you would be fishing in is not the same. Not saying it couldn't succeed, but you won't be able to assume pretty basic levels of educational competence that you might have been able to in the past.
Not that you can guarantee that from universities etc these days either!
One other thing is that i'm not sure you can even rely on professional qualifications to be an indicator of professional competence these days! Certainly in things like accountancy with some awarding bodies...
Three years (or often four now) at university is an expensive and time-consuming way to "provide assurance of basic employability".
Yep, i didn't phrase that very well. But it is the reality that huge numbers of employers now require a degree (and a good one, often from a well respected university, in a traditionally acknowledge "academic" subject) as a threshold level of achievement for people at the beginning of their career. Whether they are actually employable or not is another matter, but if you can't even get a foot in the door you never even get the opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, university is what @Foxy called earlier in this thread, finishing school for the middle classes. For most people, and most jobs, it does not particularly matter what anyone studies. This may exaggerate the desirability of Oxbridge: three years of networking and learning which knife and fork to use.
Tbh, I think Michael Gove was right to defend liberal arts education: there should be more to life than vocational training; but perhaps we (collectively) need to step back and decide what education and training are for. Three years doing Latin is not the same as three years doing nursing, for instance.
In defence of Latin, it was a classicist will got the first correct answer to the maths/logic problem upthread
We also have a PM now who studied classics, not PPE
My best and favourite subject at school, Latin. Can't say I've used it much since but I don't think that's the point of it. Or rather that IS the point of it. It's the epitome of an "academic" subject, completely untainted by anything vocational or practical or in any way grubby like that. It's pure and you feel pure when you study it.
The woke will soon be trying to stop.people learning Latin because the Romans were such nasty chaps with all that slavery, buggery and all kinds of perverted non pc behaviour..
I see the wokies at Kings College London have been having a wokeathon over a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh.
By the way, before the curse of Nuth R'ead descends, anyone interested in all this stuff about early years schooling might like the "Too Much Too Soon" website which covers far more than just school starting age
Shame on youngvulgarian for being so sickeningly, boringly, predictably boilerplate lefty stereotype as to having to hate everything about someone she doesn’t like’s wedding.
Comments
So I’m not quite sure I agree with that statement.
We thus hold up the Classics as “true education”, see the more practical stuff as “lesser” education, and aim to teach our kids the subjects that were seen as important when we were kids, which were seen as important by the generation above us because they were taught them when they were kids, who were taught those because... etc.
And all changes have to fit in the original framework that was designed for that.
Its a disgrace!
So not only are there not as many apprenticeships there, there are not as many skilled jobs either.
The Red Wall voters who own their own houses and now vote Tory will often have commuted from a nearby city
3) it will run away, won't be contained, but won't lead to levels of serious illness that remotely justify further restrictions.
I wish somebody would hit these scientists from a different angle. If Covid had never happened, but there was evidence that we were likely to have a 'bad' flu season this year (say 10k deaths?). Would it be necessary to introduce widespread restrictions about the country? Given how effective we have discovered such restrictions can be...?
At my French A-Level oral I was invited to discuss the last book I'd read. Unfortunately for me and the examiner I didn't have the wit to lie and discuss something simple so I had to labour through an analysis of Tropic of Cancer.
if individuals wish to restrain form meeting friends until they have all had there second does plus 2 weeks, fine,
if some company like cinemas wish to only allow in fully vaccinated people, fine, its a privet business.
If there is going to be a bump in numbers of unvaccinated needing hospital treatment, better to get it out the way now in the summer, while there is capacity in the hospitals, not wait till the winter when contagion of all 'respiratory viral infections' in higher and there may be even worse variant out there.
We, well the government have borrowed and spent so much, a few more billion may not seem much, but that is the wrong way to look at it, borrowing money to spend on a 'nice to have' when you are close to your credit limit, is a lot more irresponsible than when you are not.
And yes I know this has been more or less my position for 15 months or so now, but with each additional vaccine the arguments are becoming increasingly overweening IMO.
BJ seems to be fine with members of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
They would have been married last August but covid cancelled their wedding which has been arranged for the 31st July, again with just 30 present at the ceremony at the local Parish Church
In 2009, Michie became a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and convened its subgroup, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Behaviour group.In 2020, Michie became a participant in the Covid-19 SAGE's Scientific Pandemic Insights group on Behaviour (SPI-B)[12] and participates in SAGE.
She also sits on the Independent SAGE committee, chaired by Sir David King. She frequently contributes to national news media during the Covid-19 pandemic as an expert in behaviour change.[13][14][15][16][17]
She sits on Independent Sage
Though I have to confess I found Miller’s sex pretty unhot, even as a horny 16 year old.
The fact IS she is on SAGE for her expertise on behaviour.
Ignore BigG listen to experts
See you all next March!
General Electric
Goodwin Steel Castings
Jaguar Land Rover
JCB
Michelin
AstraZeneca
Morrisons Site machinery
Pirelli
Plus, of course, two universities.
There should be consideration of this in the public inquiry as well.
Was introduced as such
The fact you say she is a communist is completely irrelevant
You say she sits on independent Sage you missed out the word also between she and sits.
She is an appropriate expert for Sky to interview get over it
It appears that for most of the media, all members of SAGE (or "Independent SAGE") are equal, regardless of their specialisations.
As a behaviour expert i wonder what her views are of public response to continuation of restrictions?
They have hired a Marquee that can already accommodate 50, but they hope that may be increased to 75, but far less than the 150 hoped for
We live in surreal times and part of my continuing questioning of the scientists and media's advice is that it has to be correct, not as a result of a convoluted political agenda and a genuine debate with alternative views is needed.
Mind you, the weather has been fantastic and with an 8 mile queue into North Wales, largely from the North West of England last Friday, we should know soon enough the consequences or lack of them
I would just say I am only interested in hospital numbers, vaccine status and deaths together with vaccination numbers
The rest is irrelevant
A qualification in a language implies a basic ability to communicate, and if you can’t at least ask for directions and then understand the answer or ask for something in a shop then I’m not sure what the point of two or three years of education on that subject is for.
Perhaps I’m a bit bitter about this because in the school I teach in languages get significantly more time in the curriculum than anything else apart from English (who have to teach two GCSEs: pro rata they get the least), and Maths.
But do not let facts get in your way
I was thinking a bit more about the motivations of all the senior figures in the US security establishment with their “we don’t understand how they work, don’t know what they are and urgently need to find out”.
This would be quite a strange thing to say if they really did believe the objects might be Russian or Chinese. Quite an amateurish tell to your adversaries in fact. Ergo, none of them believe for a minute that they are foreign craft. Which leaves either a US deep state programme they want regulated, or the other thing.
The jobs in Newcastle under Lyme itself will largely be basic retail, hospitality and warehouse and delivery jobs
In fact there are people who live in cities who commute out to towns.
Take a look on google earth and you will see business parks and industrial estates circling towns and running alongside motorways.
I wish them both a very happy wedding day
My fault for opining on something outside my experience.
Newcastle under Lyme is absolutely not a dormitory town for Stoke. No way on Earth.
You’re just projecting your prejudices onto a map. If the Tories want to hold these new seats they’re winning, high time and long overdue they learned something about them.
Here’s another point - lots of those working in industry are drifting away from Labour, as they’re no longer unionised and they’re quite suspicious of immigration undercutting their wages (I see that in Cannock and Brownhills, which are both dominated by manufacturing). Don’t assume it’s all about white collar workers commuting from leafy small towns (indeed, with a population of 75,000 Newcastle under Lyme is larger than several cities).
Even the smallest town will always tend to have had a few university educated professionals even before the expansion of the universities eg teachers, doctors and the vicar
Newcastle under Lyme may well have a few factories too because of its size, in which case that goes to refute eek's point that there are no high skilled jobs or apprenticeships in Red Wall towns.
Though that is less likely to be the case in smaller Red Wall towns
First dose 99,213
Second dose 179,424
Total doses 278,637
A bit down on last Sunday but significantly better than the two previous bank holiday Sundays.
There's a big political dividend in "Freedom Day delivered on time and on budget" and "Good old Boris, he's got us through this and now we're there, just like he said." They won't be throwing this away. The dividend will be all the greater given the noises off about it "being on a knife edge." It generates a real sense of occasion around the June 14th announcement. Much tension and trepidation, therefore maximum joy and relief when Johnson drops the F bomb.
I reckon the decision is made and only something truly horrid and unexpected could derail it. So although it wouldn't bother me too much if there were a delay, I'll be amazed if there is.
There are a lot of people in science and engineering who would disagree with you. In fact in many research jobs (which are more often than not outside academia) you need more then just a first degree.
At least 50% of such seem to result in you using eventually ending up in a diametrically opposed position in which you started but somehow convincing yourself that the other person has for some reason conversely moved towards your original misinformed position.
https://twitter.com/youngvulgarian/status/1399334206942101512?s=20
All of this ought to be somewhere in a first degree too.
The point about Newcastle under Lyme actually reinforces my original point and refutes eek's point that there are no apprenticeships in Red Wall towns (albeit that would be less so as I also said for the smaller towns)
But in the Midlands, places like Bassetlaw, Stoke, or Newcastle, they still are underpinned by manufacturing, just a very different form from seventy or ninety years ago. In fact, arguably that’s been the switch, as previously Cannock and Bassetlaw were of course primary producers (of coal, in both cases). Now you have high end industry. Most of my friends outside teaching work in the production chain for JLR and JCB. In Stoke, you still have lots of manufacturing. Brownhills still has its steelworks.
Flintshire, as well, BigG’s area (well, close enough) is based on the Airbus supply chain. Not so much in retail and warehousing.
And this lack of understanding of the diversity leads people to make errors.
I see the wokies at Kings College London have been having a wokeathon over a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh.
So, wokies, wokeathon, wokeish, wokery, wokeworthy, woke-infused, overwoked (and under pid presumably) to name but seven.
I'll get me cloak and trident.
It’s such a lovely day I didn’t bring my coat - but I’ll get it anyway,
The two experts quotes by the guardian last night were, but no mention of the fact either in the article or their twitter bios....you had to go googling to find this out.
https://www.toomuchtoosoon.org/
Particularly 'interested' that someone has been suggesting we test 4 year olds.
Shame on youngvulgarian for being so sickeningly, boringly, predictably boilerplate lefty stereotype as to having to hate everything about someone she doesn’t like’s wedding.
Uurgh indeed 👏🏻