| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Brownbear |
Not my problem, ha-ha-haIt's A-level results time again, and once-again record high results are being marked in the traditional manner, with news footage and photos of happy, laughing girls (always girls, never boys) celebrating their results. This time last year, looking forward to the arrival at the university of yet another intake of incurious, ignorant, bored borderline illiterates with three A-grades, I would have got frightfully cross, and ranted about the wanton despoiling of British education.But now, having done with all that sort of thing for ever, I am filled with a lightness of heart, and the joys of Summer. |
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| vegplot |
I take it you're now a full time pest controller and general literary wit? | ||||||||
| Brownbear |
If I was spending half my time killing things, then that would only leave me the leisure to be a half wit. |
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| Penny |
I've already had my annual rant this morning, feel much better now. Eldest has the right attitude, hasn't bothered to go and get his results yet 
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| Rob R |
Sensible, avoid the rush 
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| vegplot |
Oh, so are you now a f***wit? |
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| Brownbear |
Why change the habit of a lifetime? |
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| Penny |
He got an E in IT and failed Law 
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| Brownbear |
Then he can get a job. In a few years if he wants to, he can do an access course and go to University then. |
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| jema |
Ouch, that's quite an underachievement 
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| Penny |
Not really, he did no work whatsoever, so got what he deserved! |
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| Penny |
He has enough points now to go to any so-called "university" on a foundation course, no stop me I'll start my ranting again 
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| Rob R |
Who wants to go to university anyway
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| Brownbear |
Odd isn't it - people used to say, "join the Army if all else fails" but now the standards demanded by the Infantry are higher than those required by many institutions of higher learning. You rant away, it'll do you good. More good than kicking him up the jacksy or setting fire to his collection of CDs. |
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| Pel |
Isn't an E 40 points on UCAS (for A leves), he could do a HND in some of the higher education colleges.
Was it IT or Computing that he did? cos that makes a difference.. in terms of the grade and the subject. |
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| Chez |
BB, I'm very pleased that your blood pressure is remaining lower - although I've been looking forward to reading your rants about this  .
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| Shane |
Except Imperial - they're bringing in an entrance exam, as they can no longer rely on A-level results to tell them a damn thing about students. |
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| dpack |
still awaiting a report of how tt's d has done | ||||||||
| Brownbear |
When I drove past the University this morning, I metaphorically and a tad wryly waved my nether regions in its general direction and wished it joy of its chosen future as a Centre of Excellence in political brown-nosing, careerism, self-serving cant and the turning-out of illiterate dolts on their path to a life of bemused servitude to moneylenders. |
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| vegplot |
Nothing anyone didn't know already.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7554132.stm |
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| Chez |
That's more like it! 
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| Jamanda |
Can I offer my hopes that the young people on Downsizer who have worked hard for their exams and have got their results today, and those are waiting for their GCSE results, get what they want. You are are all intelligent, articulate people and I wish you every success in what ever you do in the future. | ||||||||
| Northern_Lad |
...but your qualifications aren't worth the paper they're written on.
In my day.... |
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| Marionb |
My son got his AS results today.... he didnt do particularly well, just ok but not as well as he thought he would have done. I wasnt surprised at his results as he didnt make much effort at all.
He's going to stay on to finish his A levels but has already decided that he doesnt want to go to Uni.... Trouble is he has an uncle who believes that Uni is the only way to go and will improve his prospects dramatically. But he doesnt want to end up with a £20k overdraft (which is what they're saying the average Uni student ends up with), and he's had enough of education. He'd prefer to do work based learning. He's worked in a hotel for the last year and feels he could work his way up from there. |
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| ariana |
Mine did (or rather didn't do) just the same last year Marion. He stayed on to do his A levels and has managed two Bs (and a spectacular fail). I think in year 12 they (boys especially) often think it is going to be a doddle, particularly if they sailed through GCSEs with little effort, and get a short sharp shock with the AS results arrive. He has another full year to pull up his socks and make sure that he doesn't waste his sixth form experience, so don't worry too much. My son is of the same opinion as yours as regards university. I think at the end of the day, if they want to succeed at their chosen career (via whichever path they decide to take) then they will, regardless of the route and the qualifications they do or do not collect on the way. |
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| Marionb |
I think you are spot on there, Ariana. My son did do well in his GCSE's - how, I dont know - and he has certainly found A levels much harder (although he had several warnings about that!). When he is doing something he wants to do and is interested in, he does well. He hates having to write pages and pages of stuff in school, but enjoys his hotel work and he often surprises me when he tells me the stuff he is given to do in work - stuff I'd never have believed he would do - but he does it because he enjoys it, it interests him, and he gets on very well with his work colleagues. I'm just glad he's staying on to finish his 'A's at this stage... his subjects are Business Studies, IT and Communication, so if he didnt go on to further education, at least his A level subjects are geared towards what he wants to do. |
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| Chez |
I really don't think there's anything wrong with not choosing to go straight on to higher education if you don't want to. I know one can only speak from a personal point of view - but I would have got SO much more out of University if I'd been more mature and appreciated what a privilege it was to have three years studying something that interested me.
I also had a bit of a wake-up call after O-levels, in the first year of my A-level course .
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| Jamanda |
I think for most people it's better if they don't. But the time needs to be spent more productively than a self indulgent "gap year" | ||||||||
| jocorless |
Yep so did I - I basically never had to work until A Level - I found school so easy - My 'O' Level revision consisted of 10 minutes before the actual exam and I still walked out with 2 B's and 7 C's - To this day I wonder what I'd have got if I'd actually done some work - Probably straight A's As for A levels - I really struggled with them - It was a big shock but I didn't work my way through them - I walked away from them and dropped out of 6th Form because my Mum became ill with Renal Failure and I had to take over running her shop |
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| Penny |
They don't end up with overdrafts or debts, they end up with a slightly increased tax bill if they ever manage to earn over a certain amount of money. Grrrrrrr I feel yet another rant coming on..... Sorry Ariana, nothing at all to do with you, it's the press hyping it all up that drives me completely nuts 
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| Marionb |
Penny, that was my post not Ariana's
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| Penny |
Oh god, I'm so sorry, slip of the finger with the deleting
I must NOT rant!!!!!! |
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| Chez |
Absolutely. That's just another dose of 'not in the real world'. |
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| AnnaD |
I realised that degrees weren't necessary when I failed to get into Art College and failed an HND in Illustration, but still managed to get a job as a botanical illustrator. It's who you know, not what your grades are. | ||||||||
| Penny |
There's loads of companies that run them now
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| Jamanda |
My degree was necessary. It wouldn't matter who I knew. I couldn't have got my post grad qualifications or my current job with out a degree. |
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| Chez |
I think that's one of the things that's kind of got lost in the current system - the difference between *necessary* education and education that is being put forward to replace talent and on-the-job experience. If you are going to teach other people, then, IMHO, one needs to be educated to a high level oneself, as well as being good at communicating with people. But if one wants to be an illustrator, you can be just as good without any qualifications as with them. That's not as clear as I'd like it to because my brain is all foggy ... but I hope it gets across what I mean? |
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| AnnaD |
That's true, it depends what you want to do in life. If you want to be a doctor or builder some form of education is essential. But I suppose what I meant was that you don't need a degree to get some specialist jobs as long as you have the talent and know people who work in such a subject. |
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| Bebo |
Glad they didn't have one when I went there! My nephew got his AS levels today. 2 A's, a B and a C and he was disappointed! I'm with Jamanda on the need for higher education. It's essential for some things. I wouldn't really want to have my gall-bladder removed by someone who hadn't been to medical school for example. However, I think that over recent years there have been a lot of pointless degrees created that have led to high expectations from graduates who leave Uni thinking its automatically going to lead to them getting a good job. We used to have a little joke when I was at Uni that went along the lines: Science graduates ask why it works Engineering graduates ask how it works Business graduates ask how much it costs Arts graduates ask 'do you want fries with that?' I'll shut up now as I've probably offended one of use that has a media studies degree or something. |
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| ariana |
But surely borrowed money (ie student loan) is a "debt" however (and whenever) it is paid back. I think what both Marion's and my sons want to do is avoid student loans per se. In other words, they will continue to sponge off us parents to top up their earnings from part time jobs whilst in college/training
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| Brownbear |
I don't think non-academic degrees are really a problem - that was bound to happen when they called Polytechnics Universities, which meant that their vocational courses became degrees by default. What I used to find profoundly irritating, and now only makes me mildly dejected, is the near-complete lack of curiosity showed by students who were not stupid, just uninterested. Most of them just wanted to get a qualification for a decent job, and would probably have much preferred to do a vocational qualification. Instead of which, some bogus idea of egalitarianism had propelled them into studying an academic subject in which they had no interest at all, but thought they could 'do'.
As a result, their interest is in 'passing' their subject rather than studying it. The writings of Plato or Aristotle, or Machiavelli, or Hume or even the wretched Rawls had no interest for them, no relevance to them or their lives either then or in the future. Very few people have such an interest. But by shoving ever-larger numbers through the system in order to 'get a degree', you have to either fail most of them or turn the subject into a simple matter of remembering basic information and what academics have written about it, rather than learning it and applying it directly and creatively. The former can be accomplished with a certain amount of work and application, the latter is only to be found an a few people to whom it appeals. So they get short-changed (as do the others who have to begin their vocational training after graduating in a subject that they will cheerfully leave behind them for ever), whilst the subject itself becomes debased. |
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| Bebo |
You may well be right. I've only experienced it as a student rather than a lecturer and what I studied could probably be termed as vocational anyway, which probably colours my view. Not many people do a Civil Engineering degree because they have a burning desire to know all there is to know about shear force and bending moment diagrams. | ||||||||
| Brownbear |
Anyone with such an interest should be studying advanced Physics. Civil Engineers need to know how to apply such rules, not how to divine them. Accountants don't need to study Advanced Mathematics. People who want to earn a living as hotel managers ought to start at the bottom and do day-release or sandwich courses. Would-be Advertising Executives should be beaten about the head and body with stout wooden staves. |
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| Bebo |
No reason all vocational courses shouldn't be day release. I did my ONC, HNC, BEng and MSc that way and it made me a better engineer than if I'd come out of Uni straight into a graduate job thinking that I knew everything. A few years on the drawing board (as it was in those days) helps to give you a wider perspective. |
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| Chez |
I think that that's my beef with the system, too - learning for learning's sake is pretty much out of the window at the moment. One of my recreational reads is Dorothy L Sayers, particularly the books featuring Harriet Vane, her alter ego. At one point she uses Vane to expound on women's education - how learning and the fight for women's education, was wasted on women who were going to leave academia after three years and become farmer's wives and never open a book, even for pleasure, again. That was in the 20's and 30's - but it might just as well apply to today's students who go through the university system for three years and then leave their subject behind altogether. A degree course should be something that one does for the love of it, rather than just to get a job. I'm not arguing that people should only enter in to it if they want to immerse themselves in their subject forever - just that it shouldn't simply be a means to an end. |
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| Penny |
Hear hear and indeed hear!! |
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| Brownbear |
I used to ask students, at the start of the year, why they were studying the subject - Politics (with significant Philosophy components thrown in as there was no Philosophy Dept). I probably asked several hundred - not one of them - not one - ever said that it was due to an interest on the subject. Some of them said it was a good way 'into' some career.
Most of them looked stunned at the question. They hadn't 'chosen' to study the topic - they had been told that they had to do a degree or they were failures for life, and Politics was one they thought they could manage. I pointed out that they would earn a much better and more secure living as industrial electricians or domestic plumbers than they would as middle-managers. One girl burst into tears. |
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| sally_in_wales |
I'm eternally grateful to whatever inspiring spark it was that prompted me to take a degree that I fancied rather than the one that I thought might help me get a job. At the time I doubted I'd ever be able to put a joint honours in Old English and Archaeology to any earthly use, but I did stumble into work that used it, and it still amazes me. | ||||||||
| Sherbs |
Like Sally, I went to university to study a subject that I was passionately interested in at the time, Medieval and Dark Ages literature.
In actual fact I didn't get the required A level grades for that particular course but they gave me a place anyway, maybe because I was actually interested, maybe because there were so few applicants. Anyway, one of my friends at University spent 3 years hating her course because she had been persuaded to do a subject she had the grades to apply for and would be more likely to help her get a job, rather than one she also had the grades for and was interested in. I've never regretted doing that course, even though I didn't follow it into a career (working in the Bodleian maybe?). I enjoyed it, and I learned a lot of transferrable skills in the process. I firmly believe that Education should not become a glorified version of Training, and that it should be available for students to allow them to pursue an interest and develop their understanding and thinking about a subject, NOT for the sole purpose of turning out potential employees. |
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| vegplot |
It must be demoralising for those in higher education, who have a passion for the subject they teach, to know their students aren't interested in the subject itself. |
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| Brownbear |
The majority of the new generation of academics don't have that much of a passion for it either - they're 'experts' on the 'subject', which doesn't mean that they have a desire to understand it, but that they're familiar with the 'theoretical models' and the 'academic literature' on it, in the way you can be an expert on anything if you study it enough, but it's a career rather than an interest in itself. A bit like, say, a competent but passionless civil engineer who can design and build solid, sturdy, well-made bridges, but never looks at an unfamiliar structure and thinks 'I wonder how they designed and built that'. Certainly in my field, I found it dispiriting to try to discuss, say, the invasion of Iraq and how events might unfold, what factors might affect it and what the historical comparisons were, only to be asked what theoretical model I would apply to an article on it. Academia is now full of people who would cheerfully study rotten herrings or Play-Doh if that was where the research funding lay. The idea of being a 'public academic', that one might have some sort of duty to try to understand the world and how it works, in the hope of making things a bit better or less bad next time things like that happen, is anathema. The reaction is incomprehension at best, open scorn at worst. The 'point' of academic study (certainly as far as International Relations is concerned) in the UK now is just a silly, self-referential round game in which theories are squabbled over without any reference to an application outside putting Professor Tomnoddy's nose out of joint. There are little 'camps' of theory - constructivists, postmodernists, English School, the Meta-theoreticians etc, who have so far removed themselves from any connection with the world around them that they may as well be writing about conflict between the Klingons and Cardassians for all the application it has to the real world (the postmodernists would dispute that there is anything one could define as a 'real world' anyway). I can honestly see no reason for the public purse to support this foolishness. I think I would have found the serene uninterest of the students easier to cope with if it had not been mirrored so completely by the academics. The ones who did care have either walked away in disgust or have been edged out to make way for more single-minded little careerists. I was once asked why I preferred to spend my days shooting things rather than writing Oozlum Theory, and my response - that at least there's something intellectually honest about a bullet - did not go down well. |
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| ariana |
But it must be equally demoralising for the students who have to endure three or four years studying a subject they are not passionate about, just to get the recognised qualification they need for their chosen career. It is surely the system that is at fault, not the young people who use it. |
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| Treacodactyl |
Yep. I spent four years, actually six if you include the A-levels I needed to get on my course, just to get a degree so I could get a job interview. As soon as I got the interview and the job I've not needed the qualification and hardly use any of stuff I learnt in the six years. In hind sight there may have been a way to work my way into an equivalent job without doing the degree but no one at the school I went to ever suggested not going to Uni/Poly was an option if you had a chance of getting in. |
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| Erikht |
Got fired, did you? |
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| Shane |
I agree with pretty much everything you've said so far, BB, but you've kind of contradicted yourself with the above. An engineer who is passionate about his subject and looks at a bridge (or a distillation column, in my case ) and asks himself "now I wonder how that works" is not going to be happy being told "this is the equation to do that, so just learn how to use it". They are going to want to know where the equation has come from, how it was generated, how they can do so from first principles. Only when you understand all this can you learn when an equation applies and when it's best to use another.
Sure, I could design a distillation column just by using equations in a spreadsheet written by somebody else (or, nowadays, but putting the column inlet flow and composition into a simulation program and not even looking at a single equation), but I think an intimate understanding of the principles involved in the mass and energy transfer at each point in the column are essential for an engineer to really be able to do the job properly. Dear me, I'm sounding right proper nerdy, like
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| Rob R |
Those were the days...
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| colour it green |
yes - so often it is a foot in the door,,, as the door is closed to those without a degree - 'only graduates need apply' etc. whereas in many subjects.. IT for example.. experience can count for lots more. what particularly narks me about A level becoming easier to pass, is that my own A levels of 20 years ago have become devalued. if they are going to change them, they should call them something else. |
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| Brownbear |
Actually, that was precisely my point. |
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| James |
I'm glad there are still parents on this forum who's kids did not get a set of wonderful grades. Perfect grades a sign of automaton children who'll sit there and read passed papers and practice model answers
I failed my A levels really well. I got a U, an N and a C. I drank and smoked my way through sixth form and girls were farm more important than books. If I had my time again, I'd do it all the same. It was great. Prior to that, I'd never failed anything. When my results came, I couldn't get into my first place, but was excepted into Thames Poly (now the University of Greenwich). I scraped through first year in drunken haze, then failed second year. I was one of the ignorant fools that made Brown Bear's life hell. I shouldn't have gone to Uni. What I should have done is gone to work and grown up a bit. Instead, I used up my grant and was left high and dry. On returning from university, I went back to technical college, got a couple more decent A levels & got a dull job that encouraged me to get a degree via the OU. On and off since then, I've been studying part time in evening and weekends. Now, I'm weeks away from finishing an MSc in hydrogeology . Its been a very long, slow, uphill struggle. And its been a struggle not becuase I failed my A levels, but because I went to uni prematurely. Failing A levels is just a sign that structured eduction isnt working for you at this point in your life. Just because your sons have failed A levels, it's not a problem. Their priorities are girls, beer and weed (probably...), not past-papers. Going into HE now will only be a total waste of time and money, which they'll spend years trying to recover from. They will learn when they're ready. And it WILL happen. A dull, dead end job is a great way to provide enough money for a Friday night on the beer and a crap car to get them into town and back. And more importantly, it also teaches them how important an education really is : do you really want to spend the rest of your life doing this? working with people like that? |
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| marigold |
That doesn't always work  . Years ago I was offered a contract as an IT Project Manager with C4 television via a personal contact - all agreed and ready to start the following Monday. Or so I thought, but the bloke I was going to be working for had to do some formalities with HR and they refused to employ me saying I was "too expensive"  . My contact said that he was pretty sure that when HR realised SHOCKHORRORGASP that I hadn't got a degree they got the vapours at the thought of employing me . TV companies were apparently very snooty about such things in the days before "everyone" got a degree.
When I went into IT (Data Processing as it was called back then) there were no Computing/IT degrees and you certainly didn't need a degree to get into computer programming. It's been interesting watching the profession evolve over the years - such huge changes over less than 30 years... |
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| James |
yep. I cant progress any further with my carrier until I get my masters. Even though Ive been doing the work for 13 years.
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| vegplot |
I've never been to a 'proper' university. My degree was with the OU (5 years) and the masters part time at CAT. I didn't do brilliantly at school but did a lot better at Technical college (Farnborough and Crawley) and PolyTechnic (Kingston). I think this was because they weren't academic in the same way as a university being more hands on, if that's possible with physics, maths and technology. I didn't do A levels as it wasn't encouraged at the time, we were expected to go straight into work from school. My secondary education, I had pneumonia and missed one of the 11+ exams so never had the option of going to grammar school, was appalling. | ||||||||
| gil |
@BB : Ah, but what you missed out (perhaps assumed was inherent ?) was that along with knowing how to apply the rules, you would also need to understand the principles behind them, and how to calculate from scratch. BUT not to come up with those principles in the first place (which I think was your point), which would be more the field of those involved in 'advanced Physics' |
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| oldish chris |
An awful lot of kids work very hard for their A levels. Now one of my sons has one GCSE, no A levels at all. He went to a local college to do something called a "GNVQ". He then got a degree (2/2) and complains about repaying student loans and about paying 40% income tax!
I do wonder if loads of dead clever A levels and the struggle to get into a "good" University is worth the bother. |
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| Rob R |
Soon sort that, tell him to send everything 15k+ to me, I don't mind paying tax
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| oldish chris |
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| Cathryn |
I had no idea you had met my son.
Unfortunately he didn't fail his A levels badly enough but worked hard and made up for that in his first and then his second year at University. Because he is completely endearing (as well as bone idle) he wanders in and out of tedious jobs. But he is happy and one day he will wander into something he really wants to do. He has met this rather nice woman as well...
Life happens, though it does seem a shame though that we cannot somehow alter the way education is funded or thought of, so that we can go for it when we know we want to and can make a wiser choice. |
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| Bebo |
Cathryn, not sure about now, but when I was in HE there were lots of opportunities for 'mature' students and part time studying. Because I worked and did day release I was considered a mature student even at 22! The part-timers and thos coming back to education were usually there because they really wanted to be and as a result did better than those that did degrees straight from school. Then again, it might also have been because we'd had a few years to get over the novelty of being able to drink as much alcohol as we wanted without being answerable to anyone and were therefore able to attend more lectures with fewer hangovers! |