Rishi Sunak

Brewster's millions said:
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.
Click to expand...
I can see why you like Sunak as he doesn't answer questions either.

Name a low value degree.
 
bluethrunthru said:
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



www.mirror.co.uk

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 www.mirror.co.uk
Click to expand...

It was always why the masters didn't want children educated. Not just to ensure cheap labour but to stop them realising why.
 
Brewster's millions said:
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.
Click to expand...
"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.
 
Vic said:
Oh I must have missed it. In which post did you name a low value degree?
Click to expand...
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.
 
I'm With Stupid said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
Brewster's millions said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
I'm With Stupid said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
Brewster's millions said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Brewster's millions said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
Brewster's millions said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
bluethrunthru said:
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



www.mirror.co.uk

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 www.mirror.co.uk
Click to expand...


Here you go @Vic your pal here thinks Archaeology is a low value degree as they “scrape away at a hole in the ground”.
 
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.
 
CarlosTevez'sEnglishTutor said:
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.
Click to expand...

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

worldcrunch.com

How Argentina Has Become China's Foothold In Latin America

.
worldcrunch.com worldcrunch.com
 
bluethrunthru said:
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

worldcrunch.com

How Argentina Has Become China's Foothold In Latin America

.
worldcrunch.com worldcrunch.com
Click to expand...

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.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top