Again, not on all courses. I have 25 hours of lectures a week, along with labs which can be up to 10 hours. It's also necessary to put in around 20 hours personal study along with on average 2 assignments and 1 lab report each week.

The sweeping generalisation you make is the socially the perceived view on students but not often accurate. Of course some courses which require less work load and some people will indeed live like this during university life. However, that is reflected in the value of their qualifications post graduation.

Yes, my own eldest daughter for instance, she has a 2.1 law degree and gained a job at a legal administrators office, which in effect is an admin job. Its ok because that's what she wanted, not every law student wants to be Perry Mason but its fair to say that a law degree was not totally necessary for the job, but it was necessary to be considered for the job.



My opinion is formed from a time, not so long ago, when "training schemes" were the only way to recruit new employees and employers actually had to invest some money into training new employees, not always over five years but for those jobs that required a nationally recognised qualification then a five year commitment to the employee was an absolute from the employer.

It worked.

Of course it came off the profit margin, but it worked.

"E's" what?

Absolutely spot on.

Employers have been advertising jobs – and demanding you be a graduate, even if the job does not require a degree – for some years now. Couple that with the continuing demand of employers that young people should leave school perfectly trained for the workplace (regardless of what the workplace is): I remember, not that long ago, complaints from the CBI (I think) that people left school with no knowledge of customer relations. Well no – that's not what school is for.

Add in to that the moves to increase tertiary education – the same has happened in other countries too (see Ha-Joon Chang) – and you are inevitably going to end up with so-called pointless degrees.

My son just started a Physics degree at Birmingham. He'll have neither the time nor the money to behave as you suggest.

Maybe you should research some facts and not just believe the negative spin put out by the media?

My niece did fine art at Leeds College of Art and she had masses of tutorials and lectures, plus she had a massive amount of work to produce. Combined with part time work (when she could get it), it's a myth, as you say.

If one was being cynical, one could suggest that the decision to increase university education, coupled with the end of grants and the introduction and growth of fees, which commenced at the same time as apprenticeships were dumped, was a perfect way to develop education as one of those service 'industries' that was going to have to replace the old ones that were being dumped.

What do you mean by the job "does not require" a degree? Entry into certain parts of the Civil Service have always required a degree presumably because the assumption is if you get one you are going to be of a certain level of intelligence and ability. There is no specific degree you need to do for this but they want graduates. Having a degree in order to be considered for a job is not a new idea. If you are saying Tesco want degree qualified check out operatives that is different but certain jobs and careers have always required a degree even if not in a specific subject.

I mean that I remember reading job descriptions in the late 1980s and early 1990s for work that would easily have been within my abilities and experience, but which required a graduate.



I hadn't been intending to suggest that it was. But it has expanded massively since 1980.



See my next response.



Indeed. But I'd suggest that going so far as to whinge that young people are not leaving school knowing about something as specific to business as 'customer relations' is going further than generalised complaints about literacy and numeracy. And it suggests a desire to see major changes to school curricula to change them simply into places to fit people for work within those businesses rather than providing any wider sense of 'education'.



I agree – to a point. There are also degrees that are, frankly, daft. The trend toward 'journalism' degrees is a case in point.

In the olden days (not that long ago) you learnt on the job. The skills you need have not changed much, except to add IT skills for page make up etc.

But I have worked with reporters who would be excluded from journalism by such a demand – yet were good reporters who could find good stories etc. It was part of my skill set to turn what they came up with into good English and the relevant 'house style'.

If someone fancies a career in journalism – and wants to go to university, then do a degree in history or medicine, law or literature

Agreed.

As a recent graduate i.e. this July i find it crazy that people will go to University anymore. I was "lucky" to pay the £3,200 fees, if i was say my younger brother who will be going to University next year i wouldnt consider it in the slightest.
It astonished me that they let the cap rise to £9,000 and that universities would be allowed to set their own fees rather than have an independent board look at their achievements and their succession into full time jobs after graduation. This is a must for anyone going to University at the moment, clear out all the bull they'll give you about the course and what not and get down to the nitty gritty of how many students have got jobs in the field they wanted in the last year etc. I didnt go to a red-brick university, i went to a small university in Leeds mainly because of the course and detailed discussion with lecturers and the abilty to befriend lecturers and have extra guidance when needed, which is something im indebted to them for.
My university has over 90% of graduates in further study or working which i found phenomenal. Im currently waiting on a contract to start work myself in my chosen field whilst working an apprenticeship for another website until i start my new job. In my university it was a non negotiable requirement to complete 6 weeks placement. I dont know how it is elsewhere but this was something i found to be fantastically rewarding and a big thing to put on my CV and something employers WILL look for. Teaching students are out on placement for a much larger chunk of time. My course was very much essay driven and exams mixed in every now and again. I hate it when people say that essays are easier and exams test you more. I have learnt so much more from my essays than i have remembered for exams. I was challenged in my essays, i guess some institutions do not challenge their students enough maybe?

Putting people through University on 80 points is something that makes me angry in a way. I worked hard through my A Levels, i didnt get the grades i wanted and knew i had to step up at Uni. I cannot imagine people with 2 E's having the motivation/desire to do this. Leeds Met is struggling, big time for cash. bad decisions has pretty much red flagged them to authorities. They are now charging £8,500 which for me knowing Leeds Met (pretty well) is horrifying. My lectures contained no more than 40 people at a time, often half that. Leeds Met's lectures can often contain double that sometimes more. The one on one time with lecturers must be non existent.

Outside of lectures and reading time i worked a part time job on weekends but still went out and had a good time. It wasnt the weekly alcohol filled parties culminating in throwing up outside a kebab shop on a wednesday evening after having the afternoon off downing pints of high percentage cider that people often have as a stereotype for students these days. It was a once or twice a week thing for me. I knew people who were in the other category of people and they seemed happy doing that. Expect many horror stories coming from Freshers Weeks' in the media over the next 2 weeks however.

I loved my University time, i worked hard and earned my degree. I had a good time out of University and will hopefully be in a job come the end of this year in my chosen field. I'm happy for Leeds Met to let people in with 2 E's if they want but morally i think its wrong. University is still a challenge but the rewards are drastically falling from grace.

With all due respect I wouldn't see 6 weeks placement as a reason to consider one applicant over another. It's just not long enough. It is many years since I was at Uni but when I went I did a full year in industry between my 2nd and 3rd years. This was when we had Uni's and Poly's and so it was fairly unique for a Uni to want their students to work in industry. The Computer Science dpeartment still pushes this strongly.

I am concinved I got a better degree because of this year out and that it also helped me with my subsiquent employment.



Well I also work for the Open University as a tutor and Computer Science students results are determined by the lower of the assignment score or the exam score. I wasn't keen on this myself when I did some courses there but now I am on the other side of the fence I can see the reasons why.

When I was a student my course had masses of practical work to do and we even had deadlines the day before the final exams started. Some of the practical work counted for less than 1% of the final mark but still required a lot of work to complete. Some students elected not to submit some of these assignments and it counted against them later if they were marginal on a grade boudary.



My son is off to Uni tomorrow and throughout the application process I was pretty impressed with all the Uni's visited. On one visit while they said they were strict on the minimum points total (280) they understood that A level grades don't tell the whole story. They realise other factors can come into it. For example my son had no phyiscs teachers for the majority of the year as both were off on sick leave. The school didn't get supply teachers in but had the Chemistry teachers cover. This was rubbish and probably affected his grade. He also broke his hip in January in the middle of exams so missed those and quite a few lessons. He did get the points required in the end but what was said at that Uni told me if Uni's let people in on lower grades it is not always because they Uni's are rubbish. It is because they want the particular student to go and will give them a chance despite screweing up their a level exams. There is a limit though and being several grades off the requirment ought to mean it is the exception rather than the rule that you get a place.

When I was applying to university in the 80s it was common place for them to offer students who they expected to get straight As a 2E offer as a sign that they really wanted that student to come to them. These days it appears to be a means to put bums on seats and pocket the tuition fees.

Employers should not expect ready trained employees to come out of any educational institution. Schools and universities have a broad remit in terms of the education they provide and cannot pander to the needs of each and every employer. In the old days the polys provided vocational degree courses for students on day release from their employers. This would be the ideal way of paying for the highly educated workforce the powers that be tell us we need. Sadly employers do not want to spend money developing their staff in this way.

As stated in an earlier post, the well paid graduate jobs are not out there to the level they were anymore. In my own field I recently saw an ad for a chemistry graduate to work in an analytical lab for £12k a year and a couple of years back saw a similar job at £9k (both in the SE). To be fair, these were permanent jobs rather than the temporary positions that are prevalent in a lot of science/tech based companies at the moment. These are cases of exploitative employers trying to get employees on the cheap while telling the employee that they are doing them a favour as the pay is that low that they won't have to pay back their student loans. The job situation is just as bad at the PhD level. When made redundant at the back end of 2007 I had to take a £5k pay cut and the situation has only got worse since with the Big pharma companies announcing thousands of redundancies. The government and business are perpetuating the lie that if you get a degree in a tech/science subject you will end up in a well paid job. It just isn't true. All that sending 50% of the population to university achieves is to keep a few more school leavers off the dole for another 3 years. I know this sounds very cynical and somewhat depressing for some of the younger posters on this board, but in my personal experience it is also very true.

I have to say that compared to a lot of other students I had things very easy at uni. With living at home I only left with £3000 of debt, and had a really enjoyable three years. The way I did it was work hard from Monday morning to Friday evening (in the second and third years I had a 100-day placement each year, so sometimes it would be placement 9am-5pm and then private study at the library from 5pm-9pm), but then I unwound and went out over the weekend, rarely picking up a book on Saturday or Sunday. This worked for me personally - I was never the type who could be up reading until midnight on Sunday and still being refreshed and ready to go for a 9am Monday lecture. Came out with a 2:1 Social Work degree four years ago.
Since then I've been knocked for 'not using' my degree, which is somewhat true in that I'm not in a full-time social work position, but I usually do 40 hours a week, spread over three jobs (doing a night care assistant role for a disability team and sessional work for two family support teams), + my voluntary job with Samaritans which I've had for four years. So fair dues I've not climbed the career ladder like many of my fellow students on the course will have, but I enjoy what I do and the degree gave me the confidence and self-belief to do things that I never thought I would be able to. For example I supervise family contacts in places such as prisons and rehabilitation facilities. In all honesty before uni I would have found the thought of prison work very daunting (not that people should, but I'm just the type who's shy and feels easily intimidated sometimes I guess), whereas now I love doing it and find it really interesting.
Likewise with my voluntary work - there's no way in a million years that I would have though pre-uni that I could do something like that (working all types of shifts e.g. midnight-6am) but it's easily the most-rewarding thing I've ever done and I've learned / gained so much from it whilst also 'giving back' a bit.
So for me university has opened doors in different ways, and though it's a bit unconvential the way I earn a living at the moment (i.e. across 3 / sometimes 4 services) I'm enjoying what I do for the time-being, and am chipping away bit-by-bit at what is admittedly a relatively-small student loan.

Can I just say, you sound like a a really great person and the sort of invaluable asset to society that most of the millionaire "celebrities" should look up to.



THAT is the most important thing you wrote, if you enjoy your work then you can't put a price on that.