Uni Education and student loans

[nabs]

My eldest son reports exactly the same pressure to go to university from his school, despite the fact that he wants to join the police and firmly believes that a practical apprenticeship with work experience would be the best way to prepare (he is in the policde cadets and sees this as the natural next step - quite reasonably IMO).

Unfortunately the indiscriminate use of a degree as a basic requirement for all sorts of jobs that could be better trained using other routes is growing, and that in turn means many young people unsuited to higher education are ending up in unsuitable courses which, to make matters worse, are sometimes badly run and taught.

So you are quite right to ask the skeptical questions, but it sounds like your son has found something he loves doing in which case I would not worry too much if his heart is set on it - for many people it is one of the most enjoyable and memorable episodes in their lives and there are non-financial benefits to universities, particularly for the academically inclined.

 

[Glynne]

There are about 450 so called unniversities in the UK now and only 24 of them are 'proper' unniversities. These are known as 'The Russel Group' all the rest are either the lower echelons i.e. 'Red Brick' or worse they are colleges of further education that have been allowed to change their name and to call themselves a unniversity.

Take a look at the list of universities in the Russell Group, then take a look at the list of Red Brick universities. You'll see that your comment makes no sense.

I read that and thought hang on, the "Red Brick" universities were the ones thought of as proper!

 

[Jacob]

There are about 450 so called unniversities in the UK now and only 24 of them are 'proper' unniversities. These are known as 'The Russel Group' all the rest are either the lower echelons i.e. 'Red Brick' or worse they are colleges of further education that have been allowed to change their name and to call themselves a unniversity.

Take a look at the list of universities in the Russell Group, then take a look at the list of Red Brick universities. You'll see that your comment makes no sense.

I read that and thought hang on, the "Red Brick" universities were the ones thought of as proper!

Yep. Closer to education for all - not just a privileged few.

 

[nabs]

I went to a red-brick and they are indeed noble institutions put in mayor cities with the intention of increasing access to those who were otherwise denied the opportunity. Unfortunately, it does not mean they are exempt for running inappropriate courses for ill suited students!*

*edit - I should add the original vision for these universities was to focus on science, engineering and other practical matters.

 

[RogerS]

.....
Yep. Closer to education for all - not just a privileged few.

Soapbox time. Again.

 

[Jacob]

I went to a red-brick and they are indeed noble institutions put in mayor cities with the intention of increasing access to those who were otherwise denied the opportunity. Unfortunately, it does not mean they are exempt for running inappropriate courses for ill suited students!*

*edit - I should add the original vision for these universities was to focus on science, engineering and other practical matters.

Many of them started as technical colleges. There were technical schools too.
The "powers that be" had reluctantly accepted that work forces need education and training. They made every effort to train the ruling classes separately and with a different syllabus. "Grammar" schools was a last effort to maintain exclusivity and privilege. In the early days they had no science teaching at all and the only technical teaching was woodwork for some reason. Hobby for the gentry I suppose.
Unfortunately education empowers people and leads to democracy - which the "powers that be" don't like.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

There was a letter in The Times a few years ago on the subject of degrees. A chap wrote that when he was young (in the '50s) "O" levels were introduced as being suitable for the top 20% of the population, and now degrees are deemed suitable for the top 50%. Human intellect hasn't changed very much in sixty years - so therefore something else has.

I was at work one day when a friend came to asked for a hand with a problem he couldn't solve. I had changed my job and was working in a different department. I went with him and sorted it out. I returned to my job and another friend asked if I had any qualifications to do the previous job. No, I replied, other than being extremely good at it - why do you ask? That's what I thought, he said, I just think it's funny that he comes to you for advice when you are unqualified and he is an NVQ assessor.
I met another friend, a (very good) builder who had been offered a great job in the local college - he told the bloke he had to turn it down as he didn't have qualifications. Don't worry, we'll get you the teaching qualifications, he was told. That's not what I meant, he said, I meant I haven't got any qualifications to do what I do.
About twenty years ago I worked with a young girl who went for an interview with a top London restaurant. She asked them if they wanted to see her certificates and they said no, not really, there's a bag of ingredients on the table, the ovens are hot, go and cook them -
unfortunately nowadays you are unlikely to get anywhere without the current favourite bits of paper.

 

[Jacob]

There was a letter in The Times a few years ago on the subject of degrees. A chap wrote that when he was young (in the '50s) "O" levels were introduced as being suitable for the top 20% of the population, and now degrees are deemed suitable for the top 50%. Human intellect hasn't changed very much in sixty years - so therefore something else has.

I was at work one day when a friend came to asked for a hand with a problem he couldn't solve. I had changed my job and was working in a different department. I went with him and sorted it out. I returned to my job and another friend asked if I had any qualifications to do the previous job. No, I replied, other than being extremely good at it - why do you ask? That's what I thought, he said, I just think it's funny that he comes to you for advice when you are unqualified and he is an NVQ assessor.
I met another friend, a (very good) builder who had been offered a great job in the local college - he told the bloke he had to turn it down as he didn't have qualifications. Don't worry, we'll get you the teaching qualifications, he was told. That's not what I meant, he said, I meant I haven't got any qualifications to do what I do.
About twenty years ago I worked with a young girl who went for an interview with a top London restaurant. She asked them if they wanted to see her certificates and they said no, not really, there's a bag of ingredients on the table, the ovens are hot, go and cook them -
unfortunately nowadays you are unlikely to get anywhere without the current favourite bits of paper.

If you have intelligence and skills you are likely to get further and more quickly if you also have the benefit of some training and education.

 

[Eric The Viking]

As someone who works in the film/tv commercials industry I can safely say that a degree is a complete waste of time and money...
... I dropped out of school at 15 and got a job as a runner next to recent uni graduates, it really didn’t matter. We were all in the same boat.

I joined BBC engineering straight from school (they used to advertise in Radio Times!). Our first three months was intensive physics, electronics and operational training. The lecturers said it was the equivalent of the entire first year of an electronics degree* (back then), and that was just the academic part (in roughly six weeks!).

Every Friday there was a test, against the clock and with a pass mark of 90%, and you were only allowed to fail one of those tests (two failures meant termination). Around 1/3 of my course were graduates, about four of them were electronics graduates. The rest of us were straight from school. Two people (graduates) walked off the course as they couldn't take the pressure. I had several weekends of solid study (we were told what would be tested the following week), and friends often pulled all-nighters on Thursdays. I think two or three people were terminated.

All that was in the 1970s and 1980s. I did eleven years in the BBC and loved it. I worked on a number of BAFTA-winning TV shows (including all three of Attenborough's first wildlife "blockbusters", Life On Earth, Living Planet, etc.), and at the age of 22 was a Radio 4 producer (on attachment), but I finally resigned when I couldn't get the production job I wanted because I didn't have a degree (I kept coming second at interview).

So I did a four-year sandwich course at our local Polytechnic, which turned into seven years, when my sandwich employer offered me a job in the middle of a recession (so I finished part-time).

So when my son wanted to study a media course (at Bournemouth), I took a keen interest. We went down to the open day together. The place is rated as one of the best meejuh universities in the country, and the BBC even sponsors some of its courses. All I can say is, "If that's true, heaven help people on some of the other courses."

It was evident the lecturers were teaching stuff they had learned from books, not practiced themselves, and that many of the subjects had been dumbed-down to suit the abilities of the students. They had a bizarre TV studio - full of then state-of-the-art kit, but physically laid out in such a way as to be practically unusable. It had cost millions, but evidently been designed by nobody who had ever worked in a production TV studio, nor understood the necessities.

We (parents and potential undergrads) watched some promotional videos in a big lecture theatre, including cameos of four graduates, saying how wonderful the courses were. When the lights came up, I asked the Dean (who was taking questions), how many of those four were working at degree level in the industry. One of them was a runner, and that was it.

It turns out that each year, meejuh courses "graduate" more people than there are jobs in the entire UK broadcast industry, by several times. So small companies use them as unpaid interns, because supply exceeds demand by so much. And every day one sees and hears amateurish errors in broadcast activities, because the commitment to skills and operational training is no longer there.

One of my daughters, incidentally did her degree and PGCE at Bath Spa. She is livid about the Vice Chancellor's pay-off. Never mind the salary and perks, the golden handshake alone is worth around 25 yeas of her salary at the peak of her teaching career (certainly not now!).

Russell Group universities aren't exempt, either - my other daughter goes to one presently, and I've seen some of her coursework.

It's all horribly broken as far as I can tell.

E . :-(

 

[RogerS]

Jacob

Why the Hell do you have to derail every thread by getting on your tediously boring soapbox ?

There are some very good points being made by others to help the OP but you're cant about 'privilege' blah blah blah and your constant virtue-signalling is tedious in the extreme.

 

[Jacob]

This has turned into one of those moaning old men threads, with Roger leading the stumble! Or Gadarene rush more like. Very depressing, very inaccurate.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

"You should never let school get in the way of a good education."

I used to think that was rather cynical and tongue-in-cheek, but as life rolls on, I become more and more convinced that it's actually very sound advice, once you get past the basic educational foundation of reading, writing and mathematics.

Should you go to university these days? Take a long, hard look at what you want to study, and try to weigh up whether lifetime earnings will significantly exceed the costs of a degree. If yes, go for it. If not, dive into the world of work; you can always study most subjects later in life if need and desire are strong enough.

It's more likely that hard sciences, engineering, law and medical subjects will open the door to a well-paid career. The humanities - maybe not so much. The humanities are also subjects that are much easier to study yourself at your own leisure, and with much less likelihood of contamination with political indoctrination, which seems to be something of a problem in the humanities departments of many universities these days.

 

[Matt@]

Hi Eric, when did you go down to Bournemouth, was it recently?

Thanks everyone for all the great info on this thread

 

[Eric The Viking]

About eight or nine years ago. I went twice (with two different children). The second visit wasn't for the Media school, but I popped in quickly. It hadn't changed.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I did few seasons of exam invigilation in the local sixth form college, and I used to hear staff advising students and think to myself you've never worked a week in a real world job, have you? The conditions and wages they were led to expect were unreal. I have teacher friend who maintains that no one should be allowed to teach anything until they've worked outside teaching for a minimum of ten years (he went into it from industry).
As far as the Meejuh Studies is concerned, I worked with a girl the better part of twenty years ago who went to university for that. I showed her a newspaper article that said (even then) that there were more M.S. graduates every year than there were people employed in the whole media industry, and she said no one had told her this in careers advice. She's working now, though - she's a postie.

 

[Jacob]

Funny how people slag off media studies. It's actually a mega employer.
This is media that you are looking at now. Amazon, Google, Apple are all media industries.
Then there's press, TV, radio, publishing. Extend it a bit further into the arts and it's even bigger.
Much bigger than motor manufacturing, and a massive export trade too.

I was chatting to an old mate of mine who was also anti media and art studies. He thinks 'making things' is more important than abstractions. He's a double bass player - he thinks learning making musical instruments is important ("manufacturing") but he thinks learning to play them is arts nonsense. He's confused, as are a lot old men wittering on, as per this thread.

 

[jw00d]

Hi Matt,

I'm a freelance designer/animator who works in advertising/post-production world and went to Uni to study graphic design. Whilst I do see that it taught me the basic principles of design it did little to prepare me for my first day in a busy studio. They tried to teach the Adobe suite of software to us but it was largely implied that if we hadn't already become pretty handy in photoshop etc. by that point already then there wasn't much hope! (most of us had to of done a 1yr foundation course prior to the degree). The only other thing that did help was that most of the tutors were also working in the industry as well as teaching, some were running small agencies on the side so we had the benefit of them bringing in various contacts from other companies to give us an idea of what we'd really be doing if we got a job at their studio, and the possibility of a few work experience positions.

That was the invaluable part - mostly because they ingrained in us that in most creative jobs despite being able to use the software and having a degree, your work/portfolio is the most important thing. I'd imagine with the games industry it is a similar kettle of fish, there'll be plenty of people out there who can use all the software but it's the past work/personal projects etc that shows what you can do, as competition will be tough in the games industry because it's smaller (as in no. of companies) than say advertising/post production industries. Nobody has ever asked to see my degree, and to a point even a CV is a little irrelevant besides showing the no. of years experience - having a good showreel and being able to talk through some of your work is the key.

I've got friends who are quite senior animators who never finished their degrees as they got a taste for the freelance money, but the contacts, friends and acquaintances you make at Uni can help a lot when it comes to finding jobs, freelance or permanent, in the future as most creative jobs, I've found, seem to rely on word-of-mouth to find people to fill roles. The other thing that studying a subject with a bunch of other people gives is there's generally a few side projects going on that you can get involved with and that will pad out your (mostly!) empty portfolio of work when you start looking for jobs.

The other place I will mention that a few people I know have been through is courses at Escape Studios https://www.pearsoncollegelondon.ac.uk/escape-studios/course-list.html and seem to be regarded well within the industy, you can do anything from an evening course to a degree and maybe a cheaper route than Uni with the benefit that they have their own recruitment department for placing people in jobs. I have used them as a recruiter even though I didn't do a course there.

So after that rambling reply, I would say it's a tough choice but there are some benefits that a degree gives beyond simple learning of the subject, but then degrees didn't cost 50k+ when I was deciding. Hope some of that helps, happy to answer any other questions if you have them.

Jamie

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Funny how people slag off media studies. It's actually a mega employer.

Certainly- but that doesn't alter the fact that we are paying to train hundreds of thousands of people who will never work in it or will work in it but in fields that don't require a degree anyway.

 

[Matt@]

jamie, great info, thank you

the issue I have here is that on a personal basis I have a level of tenacity that my son/ his Mum dont even begin to touch!. I realise that making the right choice is entirely possible but it needs an awful lot of work in order to do so. The more I go on about it all the more peoples eyes seem to glaze over! I seem to be surrounded by people who want to skim over the surface of things and expect it all to fall into place and . Many of my sons mates wont even go the Uni open days for gods sake. Most frustrating :roll:

The link to Pearson looks interesting - I'll look into that....

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I am reminded of the late radio presenter Mike Dicken, who was asked to lecture on a media studies course at some university or other. The interviewer told him he was ideal for the job and could he drop his qualifications at the desk. He said he didn't have any. What? None? No, he replied, other than fifty years working in local and national press, radio and television. Oh, sorry, said the interviewer, we can't employ you if you're not qualified. :roll: :lol:

Incidentally Falmouth is thought to be very good for computer gaming etc. ............... I mean programming, not playing.