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by Sydney
Cheers people - I feel great about my Media and Cultural studies degree I studied really hard for

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If you worked hard for your degree then you should feel great about it

If however folks bum around for 3 years, and scrape a pass when they know in their heart of hearts they could have got a first, if they'd gone to lectures type thing, then I think maybe there should be a feeling of guilt resting on their shoulders when the fact is that somehow they could have been freeing up some money for the folks who DID study hard!!!

As someone who did bum around at Uni (for personal messed up reasons), getting by without working is very, very hard. Standards once on the course are very high and if you don't make the grade you don't get a second chance.

Combined with the poverty that goes with being a student, the idea that it is an easy life is just so much hog wash. Working, that's an easy life. I get paid good money, th moment I work out the door I don't have to spend a second thinking about it. As a student you are continually scrimping and saving and doing part time or temporary jobs that no one else would be daft (or stupid) enough to do for so little money. And you never leave you work behind. It's there 24x7.

Really, I see nothing easy or dosing about being a student, whatever the degree.

As for rewarding hard workers and making those who don't pay isn't that easy. What about the student who is sexually assaulted in their third year and is not emotionally able to study? You can make an exception? Well, not everyone who goes through something like that is able to tell anyone else. They often feel ashamed or to blame. Or any other set of emotional and/or psychological issues can derail an honest student. Should they be punished? The cost of higher education is miniscule on the scale of GDP, so why is this so much an issue, when there are other, far more costly, burden's on the tax payer?

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by In a State of Dan
(quotes)
And apparently you can earn more as a plumber than a lot of jobs a degree might help you to get..

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And why shouldnt a plumber who hasnt been to university be able to get more, he will have done a apprenticeship or trained for a few years for it.

I can remember seeing somewhere that there is a lack of scientists in this country maybe there should be bigger incentives placed on important courses.

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by Sydney
Similarly it seems that the argument here is that more people are getting degrees without putting the effort in.

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I'm willing to believe any degree takes time and effort to complete: the problem is that they're not necessarily intellectually stretching or rigourous pursuits, which is what universities are for. Whatever the content of the degree the student should at least come out of it with a vastly improved ability to think critically and structure arguments.

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More people actually being able to apply and afford education than a few yaers ago (despite current concerns) is the overriding factor in this.

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In the past few years tuition fees have been introduced and grants replaced with loans. If anything fewer people can afford it and yet the numbers of students in HE is still increasing. Some universities can't fill the places they have. More students are going into HE because the governnment is funding the places (by the measures cited above...) because it wants more people in HE.

I'm having a case of de ja vu here , didn't we have a thread about this before?

I'm not really up on this subject but as a mum to 4 boys whom will sooner or later probably go into higher education I am reading with interest.

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by Sange
I'm having a case of de ja vu here , didn't we have a thread about this before?

I'm not really up on this subject but as a mum to 4 boys whom will sooner or later probably go into higher education I am reading with interest.

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Top-up fees have only recently become a seriously proposed idea. I should know, as it's my institution (Imperial College) who is trying to get them introduced. Although, it looks unlikely for the moment.