Rishi Sunak

[I'm With Stupid]

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.

The employment figures are really difficult to judge though. Because when do you judge it? I'd argue that any measure you can come up with would be massively flawed. Either we judge it a couple of years after graduation, which naturally favours certain fields with a high short-term return on investment. Or you judge it by long-term results, by which point the degree programme is likely to have evolved so much that it's meaningless. Basically you're trying to judge something that supposedly benefits someone for their entire life on the first few years of their career.

That's not to mention fields that are inherently safer. If you do a nursing degree, your chances of finding a job are basically 'when can you start?' Whereas with something like music, most people are not going to get a high paying job in the field, but occasionally you get an Adele or an Amy Winehouse. If the Man City academy was judged by how many people end up playing football professionally, it'd be shut down. But that doesn't mean that it's not valuable, not just for Phil Foden, but for most of the people who attend it.

And then of course there are the multitude of fields that have little commercial value but are nonetheless important and require an education. Like the aforementioned archeology.

Dropout rates are also a dodgy measurement, because it's almost certainly the case that dropout rates are heavily linked to social class and financial issues. So what you'd effectively be doing is judging courses based on the percentage of people they bring in from low-income backgrounds, when those people's circumstances mean they have to drop out of their course. The results of that in the admissions process would be obvious.

 

[Brewster's millions]

The employment figures are really difficult to judge though. Because when do you judge it? I'd argue that any measure you can come up with would be massively flawed. Either we judge it a couple of years after graduation, which naturally favours certain fields with a high short-term return on investment. Or you judge it by long-term results, by which point the degree programme is likely to have evolved so much that it's meaningless. Basically you're trying to judge something that supposedly benefits someone for their entire life on the first few years of their career.

That's not to mention fields that are inherently safer. If you do a nursing degree, your chances of finding a job are basically 'when can you start?' Whereas with something like music, most people are not going to get a high paying job in the field, but occasionally you get an Adele or an Amy Winehouse. If the Man City academy was judged by how many people end up playing football professionally, it'd be shut down. But that doesn't mean that it's not valuable, not just for Phil Foden, but for most of the people who attend it.

And then of course there are the multitude of fields that have little commercial value but are nonetheless important and require an education. Like the aforementioned archeology.

Dropout rates are also a dodgy measurement, because it's almost certainly the case that dropout rates are heavily linked to social class and financial issues. So what you'd effectively be doing is judging courses based on the percentage of people they bring in from low-income backgrounds, when those people's circumstances mean they have to drop out of their course. The results of that in the admissions process would be obvious.

It’s very easy to talk yourself into not challenging the status quo, but when billions of pounds of taxpayer money are being funnelled into universities with poor standards and poor outcomes, then personally I would still favour making reforms and trying to generate an improvement.

Every other area of public expenditure faces the same type of questions, and every pound spent has an opportunity cost. Difficult decisions are made around child benefits, public sector pay, healthcare expenditure and other forms of education. Is someone wishing to study music at University more deserving of funding than an intensive care nurse wanting a better pay rise? An extreme example, admittedly, but relevant nonetheless.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

It’s very easy to talk yourself into not challenging the status quo, but when billions of pounds of taxpayer money are being funnelled into universities with poor standards and poor outcomes, then personally I would still favour making reforms and trying to generate an improvement.

Every other area of public expenditure faces the same type of questions, and every pound spent has an opportunity cost. Difficult decisions are made around child benefits, public sector pay, healthcare expenditure and other forms of education. Is someone wishing to study music at University more deserving of funding than an intensive care nurse wanting a better pay rise? An extreme example, admittedly, but relevant nonetheless.

We've had thirteen years of your ideology scrutinising the public sector and you've made almost all of it worse. I wouldn't trust it to book a child's birthday party.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

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 logic has never been that every kid has to go to university though, just that everyone who wants to and is capable of doing do should be allowed to. There are two areas to address here. Firstly, the 'capable of' should be based on a standard. It shouldn't be a bunch of universities handing degrees out like confetti because they can make money that way.

And secondly, I don't buy this idea that it's a huge funding issue when other countries with similar levels of participation in higher education manage to fully fund degrees. What may need to be cut back is this whole idea of the 'university experience'. In a lot of countries, a university looks like an office building in the city centre and you go there to learn. America is obviously the extreme example, where universities have become this arms race of unnecessary facilities where money is more likely to be spent on a new stadium or media centre than a professor or their research. It amazes me that American complain about paying 40 grand a year and yet when you go on academic Twitter, it's full of PhD-educated people complaining about precarious work contracts. And the UK seems to be going more that route. There's also a huge industry of leeches like academic journal publishing that universities fork out millions to in order to access research that they paid for. I don't see why universities haven't collectively cut them out of the process, but if I was going to be conspiratorial, I might suggest that universities benefit from keeping research behind a paywall that's inaccessible to most people.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

It’s very easy to talk yourself into not challenging the status quo, but when billions of pounds of taxpayer money are being funnelled into universities with poor standards and poor outcomes, then personally I would still favour making reforms and trying to generate an improvement.

Every other area of public expenditure faces the same type of questions, and every pound spent has an opportunity cost. Difficult decisions are made around child benefits, public sector pay, healthcare expenditure and other forms of education. Is someone wishing to study music at University more deserving of funding than an intensive care nurse wanting a better pay rise? An extreme example, admittedly, but relevant nonetheless.

But that's not typically the decision being made. The decision being made is between allowing the person to study music at university and offering a tax cut, frequently to those who are already wealthy (who ironically in many cases got their university education paid for by the state). Which is how we get into this situation in the first place. Politicians want to provide a service (or claim they do) but don't have the balls to raise taxes to pay for it. And so they end up funding it with debt instead.

 

[metalblue]

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

Here you go @Vic your pal here thinks Archaeology is a low value degree as they “scrape away at a hole in the ground”.

 

[CarlosTevez'sEnglishTutor]

I'm apolitical but I hope the PM gets his foot down on this EU wording of the Falklands.

I've visited Argentina several times, great place, but too many of our men lost their lives in the Falklands for it just be forgotten about. Same for all those who live on the islands who are British and see themselves as just that.

Believe me, this will be celebrated like another World Cup win in Buenos Aires. This should be up for discussion between the two countries, not the EU.

 

[bluethrunthru]

I'm apolitical but I hope the PM gets his foot down on this EU wording of the Falklands.

I've visited Argentina several times, great place, but too many of our men lost their lives in the Falklands for it just be forgotten about. Same for all those who live on the islands who are British and see themselves as just that.

Believe me, this will be celebrated like another World Cup win in Buenos Aires. This should be up for discussion between the two countries, not the EU.

Firstly the EU have signed up to an agreement with Argentina which names the Falklands the Malvinas this is not - as yet - an attempt to have them re-named world wide.

However if - a biggish IF - the Argentinians were to get aggressive the idea we could defend the Islands as we did in 1982 is for the birds. The task force mustered 30k personnel currently the Army have 78,060 active personnel (2023) 4,060 Gurkhas (2023) 27,570 Volunteer Reserve (2023) Many of whom are already on deployment

Oh and Argentina would have the backing of a new mate in the neighbourhood

How China Turned Argentina Has Become China's Foothold In Latin America

.

worldcrunch.com

 

[CarlosTevez'sEnglishTutor]

Firstly the EU have signed up to an agreement with Argentina which names the Falklands the Malvinas this is not - as yet - an attempt to have them re-named world wide.

However if - a biggish IF - the Argentinians were to get aggressive the idea we could defend the Islands as we did in 1982 is for the birds. The task force mustered 30k personnel currently the Army have 78,060 active personnel (2023) 4,060 Gurkhas (2023) 27,570 Volunteer Reserve (2023) Many of whom are already on deployment

Oh and Argentina would have the backing of a new mate in the neighbourhood

How China Turned Argentina Has Become China's Foothold In Latin America

.

worldcrunch.com

Thanks for the reply, I wasn't aware of the political alliance with China.

I agree re the military numbers and any strong retaliation, it's not the army it once was.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

I wouldn’t trust you at a children’s birthday party, but that’s another matter.

Notice I didn't make it personal to you.

I think you are projecting.