At my school the standard advice to anyone of uncertain academic prowess was to apply for engineering at Jarrow or somesuch place as you were guaranteed a place on 2 E's. All the school was interested in was the proportion of pupils who got places at university: if you dropped out after one term that was your problem not theirs. Fortunately most of us who were given such advice ignored it.
If you look at their fees for non-UK or non-EU students, they are actually very comparable to the Ivy League colleges and others on the west coast with similar academic standing. They are all in the $30-40k per annum range.
I warned my son in 1990 that if he went to Uni to study "Computer Science" it may no longer be the flavour of the month by the time he hit the job market. He stayed on to do a PHD and left Uni in 1996. He did get a job and is reasonably well paid at the mo, but the rope bridge is collapsing behind him. Both he and his fiance (also in IT) would not be able to get another job in IT if they had to.
In the '90s they were telling us the next tech boom after IT would be biotechnology what happened to that?
You sound like Harodl Wislon in 1963, that was all bullshit as well, the Computer mainframe industry, the car industry, the steel industry, the jet engine industry, and the rest were just on the point of going down the gurgler. The country sold out it's electronics industry to the Chinese/Taiwanese/Koreans at the earliest oportunity.
Expanding numbers up to 50% in HE can only be done on a lowest common denominator principal.
I think it's highly possible that graduates in future could take their degree, enjoy the leaving party, and book a one-way ticket to somewhere else for twenty-five years, after which the debt is cancelled. We will continue to underfund education and research in Britain (the former should be funded from general taxation), so that any lucrative post abroad will seem even better once a graduate sees the resources available in comparison to our penny-pinching short-termist approach. Of course, if we didn't indulge in wasteful excursions like the Iraq war we might have more to spare for something far more important, namely education. I would also say that Blair should concentrate on getting school leavers to an educational stage where they can actually string a sentence together without any spelling mistakes. Universities are having to cram some basic education into some first-year students so that they are capable of following the coursework. I am convinced that the normal standard of education in the public at large in Britain is abysmally low.
I don't agree. The precision is all in the factory, like Ikea flat-pack furniture. British workers erect skyscrapers and other very complex buildings all the time. That crane driver, for example, had a very responsible job and I thought the cooperation between him and the Germans was excellent.
In my experience, no. But I left Germany in 1982, so it may be different now. However, I have relatives in Hamburg and visit there at least once a year. DIY seems to be quite a big thing there, too, but perhaps not quite so much as in the UK. Certainly I bought a lot of the tools there which I still use today. I would have more confidence, though, in having a good job done from any tradesman in Germany, as there is still the work ethic there where people simply take pride in doing a good job. Here I think the cowboys are dragging everyone else down to their level, as job costings are squeezed and otherwise conscientious workers are forced to scamp in order to get the job.
That's because the British, being so isolated (psychologically as well as geographically), simply are unaware of the kind of quality which is taken for granted in much of Europe and beyond.
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