OT A level results and Uni places

[Chris J Dixon]

If I had realised that a substantial proportion of engineering, as taught at degree level, was maths, I would have considered something else.

I can also remember lots of phrases which always made me suspicious, and seldom brought understanding of the underlying process:

By inspection, this becomes... By substitution we get... Clearly, this reduces to...

The final killer was, "and of course you can finish it yourselves from there". I never could.

When I finally ended up designing electrical propulsion equipment for railway rolling stock, one of the "old school" engineers explained that all that was needed was Ohm's Law, plus 25 years' experience. They were, up to a point, quite right.

Chris

[stuart noble]

Given how the media rules these days, the study of it is bound to become an important discipline. The clever people are not the engineers but the ones deciding whether the product is cool or not. It may seem like a lot of nebulous garbage but in that sense media studies is no different to economics.

[Brian Gaff]

Are Universities really irrelevant though? I never got the chance, and many others did not either. In many ways its the short sightedness of employers who seem to want bits of paper instead of actually wanting to see what an applicant can do and maybe train them. Universities should be there to teach complex stuff, but stuff which is relevant. It needs to be funded by the people who can use the trained people, not the poor student. If you just make it ability to pay, you get the idiot rich kids in there, not the down to earth practical people you need. This is why graduates have become a laugh. IE if you want a well educated person with no common sense, employ a graduate.

Brian

[SteveW]

Benefit to the individual and to the companies that they subsequently work for means more tax receipts for the government. In that respect, universities have always been self funding, even when they and the students were receiving grants.

We should have stayed with a sensible (small) percentage of the population attending university and then we'd still have an affordable grant system and wouldn't be pushing unsuitable students into unsuitable courses either.

Blair's 50% target was simply massaging of the unemployment figures. It was (and is) a costly exercise is keeping school leavers out of the total.

SteveW

[Mark]

I can't think of many things that makes me more angry than the way successive governments have tried to completely f*ck up (and have partly succeeded) higher education.

Not only have they devaluted it by allowing universities to offer pointless courses such as the infamous media studies but they have made degrees essential because everyone has one.

I totally agree with you, Brian, that we now have a system where it's your wealth that is a more important factor for whether you can go to university, rather than your intelligence.

AFAIK degrees in the UK (for the English) are now the least affordable in the *whole world*, even compared to the USA[1]. A lot of the brightest students are going to study abroad because it can be actually cheaper. We are in danger is losing the best minds yet again.

However good Universities and good degrees (Physics) still exist and my son is about to start one. I hope we can afford for him to complete it (and we're not poor).

[1] I can't recall the reference to the study but it was done *before* the latest fee rises.

[newshound]

One of our lads read pharmacology at Plymouth, we used to joke that he was the only one of the youngsters we knew who went to university to study drugs rather than to take them

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Oh I dunno. They allow you to get so much more out of watching Big Brother.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And those that are actually passed such courses?

[Tim Streater]

I didn't mean you have to *do* the sums, necessarily. I meant you have to be *able* to do the sums.

[Tim Streater]

And I did Physics in the 60s. We also had a year of Maths so we could do the Physics. And that after doing the two Maths at A-level. I think it was because the Pure Maths A-Level was *too* pure - we did too much geometry like the 9-point circle that I've never heard of since.

It's also a worry when I recall that Uni was between 5 and 10 times harder than A-Level.

[Huge]

I'm doing some work on randomicity at the moment. It appears that I'm the only person in the department with the skills. And I'm an ex-biologist with some 40 y/o Maths 'A' Levels.

[djc]

Not to exonerate smarmy little shit, but that 50% target was just a reductio ad absurdum of policies that had already been running for decades.

[Andy Dingley]

There's a big difference though between being Marshall McLuhan and doing a Meeja Studies degree because you cocked up your A levels and couldn't get in for accountancy.

[sm_jamieson]

People keep saying you need to be rich to go to uni now, but I thought it was all on loans that needed no repaying until you earned 21 grand, and that were wiped out after so many years. Is this true, or are there hidden costs than have to be payed up front ? If its all on loans as described, is it just the fear of debt that is putting people off ? If you go on and get a mortgage, the size of that loan would typically dwarf the student loan, and people are not scared of mortgage debt. I suppose if you earned just over 21 grand maybe the repayments would be a problem. What is the truth of the matter ? Simon.

[Andy Dingley]

Yes. They made themselves irrelevant when they allowed the merge with the polys. This devalued the average standing of a UK university to that lowest common denominator.

I regularly see job adverts now where they aren't just asking for a uni degree, they're asking for a degree from a redbrick. If you went to Fulchester or Scumbag College, that doesn't count.

[Owain]

I suppose it's a step up from MS Office

Owain

[stuart noble]

There are good and bad courses in all disciplines, and centres of excellence evolve over time. I can remember when Oxford Poly was THE place to go for architecture- maybe it still is. I can also remember when creative writing at East Anglia was a joke, and now I believe it's damned near impossible to get a place.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Those courses have been around for quite long enough to have at least started to have an influence on TV etc. If they have, I can't say I've noticed. Except that general standards have fallen - strange given the equipment etc is so much easier to use these days. Which should leave creativity free to flourish.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It still is. When used to create hockey stick graphs.

Hatfield Poly was THE best place to get qualified as a technical practical person. That and Cranfield tech. Superb quality of output. But they ere not graduates with an academic background. Arguably they were more useful and more employable, yes, but they were of a different QUALITY.

[dennis]

8<

I did physics in the '70s. The maths was hard for me.

However despite designing electronic boards, networks, doing software and firmware I haven't used any maths above what was O'level other than learning hexadecimal and octal, which isn't really maths anyway.