Rishi Sunak

[mosssideblue]

Lack of doctors has caused waiting lists to go up. Fact.

Doctors leave for better pay and conditions elsewhere. Fact.

Need to add piss poor working condition and falling morale

 

[Vic]

Why would their courses be axed when both your children are experiencing good outcomes from their degrees? The fact that they are both in graduate jobs and doing well for themselves would positively influence the outcome statistics for their respective degrees.

You seem to be under the impression that their degrees would only be judged to have resulted in positive outcomes if your children ended up working in musical theatre and TV / radio production. That’s a misconception.

The proposed reforms would seek to limit places in degree courses which have a high drop-out rate, and/or have a low proportion of students moving into graduate level jobs (in any industry). This clearly wouldn’t be the case with regard to the courses studied by your children.

I can see why you like Sunak as he doesn't answer questions either.

Name a low value degree.

 

[Vic]

because for a while the outcomes were poor - how far down the line do we follow them to judge?

Read any report into the plan and follow several years of reporting - the degree's that they did were already ridiculed.

The arts have been all but abandoned by the Tories post Brexit - Glyndebourne and the like exempt because they are part of the summer circuit.

Finally drop out rates could be caused by the teaching not the course subject per se'. Also many graduate jobs are not well paying - archaeology degree holders are traditionally low paid to scrape away at a hole in the ground. They do it on a vocational level. And I repeat the high paying high skilled and high regarded jobs are not out there in abundance for graduates - the whole thing is about restricting the horizons of a lot of school leavers and bear in mind they don't want the plebs to be well educated because that gives them freedom or thought. They are already saying the quiet bit out loud in newspaper articles

Rishi Sunak vowed to get tough on unis as they're full of non-Tory voters

Rishi Sunak and his Government have changed student loan funding to cut the state’s contribution from 44p in the pound to 19p from September, leaving students to pay off their loans from when they earn £25,000 a year

www.mirror.co.uk

It was always why the masters didn't want children educated. Not just to ensure cheap labour but to stop them realising why.

 

[Vic]

It might not be easy to come up with proper criteria to judge good degree outcomes, but that shouldn’t mean that the issue is just ignored. The figures I posted earlier show exactly why the problem needs to be addressed. Ignoring the issue and maintaining the status quo isn’t an option in my opinion.

As for your point regarding drop out rates and poor teaching, I completely agree. That’s exactly why degree outcomes need to be scrutinised and controls placed on the worst performing universities. It’s not about removing certain subjects entirely from UK universities, it’s about removing the lowest quality offerings and forcing universities to improve standards.

Finally, I obviously don’t agree with your argument about restricting horizons. One of the key problems with the current set-up is that the government effectively has no control where the very significant expenditure related to student loans is directed, whether it offers good value, whether it improves the lives of students, and so on. Poor quality degrees can continue to be offered and the government has no choice but to bankroll a big chunk of it.

I would prefer to see the focus of that expenditure being determined by the government of the day, rather than effectively being forced upon it by universities. In theory it could allow for better secondary education, and more generous support for bright students from poorer backgrounds, which would make a meaningful difference to helping people get on in life.

"It might not be easy to come up with proper criteria to judge good degree outcomes, but that shouldn’t mean that the issue is just ignored."

So it's a good idea but in practice it's bloody stupid? Nice bit of rowing back.

 

[Brewster's millions]

I can see why you like Sunak as he doesn't answer questions either.

Name a low value degree.

We had all this yesterday- it’s like you’re permanently on a 24 hour lag with every thread!

 

[Vic]

We had all this yesterday- it’s like you’re permanently on a 24 hour lag with every thread!

Oh I must have missed it. In which post did you name a low value degree?

 

[Brewster's millions]

Oh I must have missed it. In which post did you name a low value degree?

You’re demonstrating a fundamental lack of understanding of the proposed reforms, I’m afraid to say.

The issue is not about removing entire subjects from being taught at UK universities, it’s about reducing the number of students at the worst performing individual degree courses.

For example if there are 10 universities offering the same degree course, and 4 have great figures around drop out and employment rates, 4 are ok and 2 have really bad figures - discernibly worse than the others - then a cap would be placed on the number of students who can sign up for the two worst courses. That’s it in a nutshell.

 

[bluethrunthru]

That’s where they want them working. Keep them down and prepared to pick the fields.

However both are bright so are actually in management posts and doing well

 

[Brewster's millions]

Well yeah, as I said, the whole thing was a fudge to kick the can down the road while allowing them to claim that they've massively expanded the number of students going to higher education. But let's not pretend it wasn't a policy that the Tories weren't fully behind and didn't expand massively at the first opportunity.


I don't know what the solution is. Perhaps actually fully funding something that is a net benefit to the economy for once with people paying it back by simply spending the rest of their life paying higher taxes from the better-paying jobs they get. Plenty of other countries seem to manage to pay for university-level education for their populations. And most of them managed to do it without having a huge funding boost from ripping off Chinese students. But what we have is a system in which every kid in the country is told that a degree is a great investment for their future, but the country itself doesn't consider it an investment worth making.

It has suited both Labour and Conservative governments to expand the system and kick the can down the road.

I believe that the number of home students going to UK universities increased by around 150k per annum under the last Labour government, and by around 70k per annum since 2010. So hardly a Conservative Party issue.

On the funding issue, I suspect that if the state is going to fund degrees - which I’m not wholly against - then the first thing we’ll have to do is stopping telling every kid in the country that a degree is the best thing for them. But, if you advocate that, then you’ll have the usual suspects on here accusing you of favouring some sort of feudal system where only posh kids go to university, while the poor kids stay in the fields picking potatoes.

 

[The Future’s Blue!]

However both are bright so are actually in management posts and doing well

Great to see. My lad did filmography and after starting out in a large law firm, moved on to the commercial sector and is doing well in his chosen career. Sometimes it does work out.