Britain's Universities in Existential Crisis? (prospectmagazine.co.uk) 229
Britain's university sector, a key contributor to the country's economy and global standing, is facing an unprecedented crisis that threatens its very existence, according to an analysis by Glen O'Hara, a professor of modern and contemporary history at Oxford Brookes University. Despite collectively generating over $61.1 billion in annual income and $28 billion in export earnings, universities across the UK are grappling with declining funding, widespread cuts, and internal divisions. The sector's annual losses stand at $2.55 billion, with one in four universities in the red.
Job cuts have become a daily occurrence, with institutions such as Coventry, Goldsmith's, Kent, and Lincoln slashing staff numbers. The downsizing is primarily occurring through retirements and voluntary severance schemes, but the long-term outlook remains bleak. Experts cited in an analysis by Prospect magazine warn that without fundamental re-engineering and strategic direction, the sector risks a gradual decline, with some universities potentially facing bankruptcy. The government's focus on the "culture wars" has further divided the public from their local campuses, while the real crisis lies in the finance and organization of the sector.
The frozen tuition fees for home students, coupled with unpredictable inflation, have left universities struggling to cover costs. Attempts to offset losses by recruiting more students in cheaper-to-teach subjects and attracting international students have reached their limits, with the latter now in decline. As the next government grapples with this crisis, stopgap measures such as small funding injections, slight fee increases, and encouraging university mergers may provide temporary relief.
Job cuts have become a daily occurrence, with institutions such as Coventry, Goldsmith's, Kent, and Lincoln slashing staff numbers. The downsizing is primarily occurring through retirements and voluntary severance schemes, but the long-term outlook remains bleak. Experts cited in an analysis by Prospect magazine warn that without fundamental re-engineering and strategic direction, the sector risks a gradual decline, with some universities potentially facing bankruptcy. The government's focus on the "culture wars" has further divided the public from their local campuses, while the real crisis lies in the finance and organization of the sector.
The frozen tuition fees for home students, coupled with unpredictable inflation, have left universities struggling to cover costs. Attempts to offset losses by recruiting more students in cheaper-to-teach subjects and attracting international students have reached their limits, with the latter now in decline. As the next government grapples with this crisis, stopgap measures such as small funding injections, slight fee increases, and encouraging university mergers may provide temporary relief.
But they are all 'charities' (Score:2)
Any 'donations' are tax-deductible.
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Why have you written charities in scare quotes. It's not like they return dividends to the shareholders. They are not run for the profit of their owners.
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Mod parent "funny", but the sad flip side of the joke is that education has become the joke.
Or maybe that was inevitable because of the paradox? Teaching is about new things which implies change but the real goal is to prevent change.
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Teaching is about new things which implies change but the real goal is to prevent change.
Whose real goal is to prevent change? What specific change is to be prevented? I sense that you may be saying something worth considering, but damned if I can put my finger on just what your point is.
Commodity education (Score:4, Insightful)
A university education may help with your career but that's not the purpose of higher education. The problem here is that it has been fundamentally repurposed and is no longer the net benefit to society it once was. The funding cuts are the result, not the cause.
??? Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
For the record no, higher education didn't become a net negative to society. It's a net negative to our ruling class, who would very much like you to be a useful idiot thank you very much (fun media literacy fact: I used the phrase "useful idiot" because I know the audience I'm trying to convince, conservatives, would react positively to it!).
And before you pile in no, we're not giving out "useless" degrees. Degrees awarded by major stats are online and if anyone could be bothered to look into them you'd find 78% is business, law, STEM and the rest is a smattering of teachers and marketers.
And finally, tell me you don't know how wages outpace inflation w/o telling me you don't know how wages outpace inflation. Advanced education creates the productivity that keeps inflation at bay. Without it we don't have all those spiffy new inventions like the chemicals we pump into the ground to let it grow enough food to feed everyone (while still letting kids go hungry because reasons).
Be better slashdot. Be better. Son, I am disappoint.
Re:??? Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
Way to misread.
Re:I didn't misread it, (Score:5, Interesting)
their comment wouldn't have focused on "education is not a net benefit" like they did, they'd have started with and ended with "we need to improve education by teaching critical thinking and media literacy".
You're also replying to me in the third person when I am the OP.
You can't put quotation marks on that misquote, because that's not what I said. The educational system is no longer the same NET benefit that it ONCE was. It's certainly an individual benefit for a LOT of people. But when it's causing huge long term debts based on the promise of a specific type of job or pay rate, and no longer getting funding, and leaving people without a general education - it is simply not as much of a benefit.
Teaching critical thinking and media literacy are not primarily career related. A broad education is more than just knowing how to do one thing well - it's also about knowing how that one thing fits into society as a whole and by understanding the application of what you do to things that aren't your area of expertise.
Re:I didn't misread it, (Score:4, Insightful)
Out of mod points or I'd mod you up, but I agree completely.
It is also important to consider that a modern university is not the same thing as it was in the past, they have many more colleges of education and more departments than they had historically, and they are covering a much broader range of subject matter than they would have in the past.
There is an argument to be made, I think, that this is most of the problem, as many subjects taught at the university level right now would be better taught by trade schools, internships and apprenticeships. There has been a big push from the public to get more "practical" education into universities for a few decades now, but that is really the job of professional organizations and professional training places. As you mention, a university education is meant to provide a broad general education and an academic specialty, not necessarily related to someone's professional work.
Members of the professional class that need university educations are easy to spot because they have certification boards, doctors, lawyers, engineers and the like. For the rest the education is valuable at an individual level, but as you correctly point out it isn't having the net effect that it should.
I would also argue that many/most universities have become breeding grounds for anti-capitalistic rabble rousers who actively work to destroy the system they currently benefit from, and stand to benefit even more from in the future so long as they don't succeed in burning it down. History suggests that this has probably been the case for a very long time, the difference being we pressure and force everyone to go to college now instead of only the people who need it or who are fit for it.
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many/most universities have become breeding grounds for anti-capitalistic rabble rousers who actively work to destroy the system they currently benefit from, and stand to benefit even more from in the future so long as they don't succeed in burning it down.
Anti-complacency is probably a more accurate term. Which isn't ideal or directly useful, but better than blindly cheering for something that doesn't work for everyone. No point trying to work on the solution when nobody even agrees there is a problem yet.
Here are the UK statistics (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/25... [hesa.ac.uk]
Re:??? Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
You are seriously going to argue that advanced education is not a net benefit to society? JFC I know /. is low hanging fruit but come on man.... is this the level we've sunk too?
Here in the UK the percentage of school leavers going to university is just over 50%. It's led to a significant shortage of people doing apprenticeships in building trades, vehicle mechanics etc causing serious problems with things like house building in a nation that's suffering a serious shortage of homes. It's also meant lots of people leaving university with no graduate positions to go to and either facing unemployment or taking low and unskilled minimum wage work because their degrees didn't give them any skills or qualifications that are needed for the semi-skilled and skilled jobs that are screaming out for workers. It's at a point where I earn more driving 44 tonne semi-trucks in the UK than I can earn with a BEng.
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LOL talking about the mouse while ignoring the elephant in the room. It's okay man this is an American site, you can mention the B word without Farage deporting your arse. Maybe you'd have more skilled labourers if you didn't close the doors to a massive number of them with Brexit. Maybe you'd have more tech options for students if you didn't force other countries to close the doors to them with Brexit. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to transition the UK economy into a services economy, providing financial, bu
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This is how I feel when non-USians comment on internal US politics and why you'll never see me saying anything about the insides of any democracy but my own. Americans don't know shit about other places any more than they understand the US; and saying dumb shit only pisses off the natives who do know what's going on.
I apologize on behalf of my fellow dumb ass American.
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Perhaps for us unenlightened ones you could give links to some of your "authoritative sources from the UK and the EU".
Here are some sources I found:
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-de... [obr.uk]
https://www.london.gov.uk/new-... [london.gov.uk]
https://www.theguardian.com/ed... [theguardian.com]
https://migrationobservatory.o... [ox.ac.uk]
Brexit isn't the only cause, but is at the very least a co
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IIUC, in the 19th century British universities were mainly places where youth of the upper class could mingle and get to know each other. As academic learning became more economically significant, the incentives changed, but the universities barely did. Now...the folks going to the university are not just the upper classes, and academics is more important.
The economics have changed. The incentives have changed. And the students rebel against harsh discipline (even by the upperclassmen).
This implies that
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Wasn't there a bit of push back when the Tories suggested more students should go into apprenticeships instead of universities? Ie, the optics seemed like the party favored by the elites was reminding the working class about working class.
I find a contrast of "places where youth of the upper class" to America. American colleges and universities, in the early days, were mostly founded as seminaries. A bit later more colleges were intentionally for the purposes of agriculture or mining or teacher training.
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In addition, with places for 50% of the population, there is less competition for valuable HE places,
and a corresponding lack of pressure for students to take full advantage of those rare HE places.
There are many aspects to how 'university for all' has devalued the degree.
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In addition to what rsilvergun said, the reason for declining apprenticeships and trades is because nobody wants to pay for it. Companies want to take on skilled people and put them to work immediately, not train them up.
If the jobs and paid learning was there, they could take graduates and give them the practical skills they need.
The same applies to graduate level jobs. Employers actually want people with specific skills in their business, not a general education in the subject, and are unwilling to train
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In the US the days of training are dead because the days of long term employment loyalty are dead because pensions are dead so there's no incentive to stay in one place for life for employees anymore.
Replacing pensions based on longevity with 401k (and some match money at many places) was the trigger for this series of bad events that got us to this point.
Pensions are expensive to the bottom line so they're not coming back to the private sector. I see no other solution to get employees to stick around and
Re:??? Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
You have a problem with trade workers because the pay is shit and brexit forced the people who were working to leave. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/a... [nbcnews.com]
The pay WAS shit due to lots of Eastern Europeans who came here willing to work for less. However in 2020 when FOM ended the wages rocketed up as employers in sectors that relied heavily on cheap EU labour realised that the only people they could now hire were those already here. As a lorry driver I personally got a 34% wage rise in 2020 as employers in my sector tried to retain the drivers they had at a time when demands on the logistics sector were increasing considerably.
And despite what you claim Brexit didn't force the people who were working to leave. You should stop believing the bullshit from your American media. Anyone who was already here the right to apply for settled status and then to remain, the government even going as far as to release a mobile phone application so they could apply. The truck drivers who left went because there was a shortage of 400,000 drivers in the EU and they could now earn the same money back home so coupled with the pandemic a few thousand out of the 10,000s of them here decided to return home.
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No it didn't you moron - there was an opportunity to register and stay but very few foreign drivers did as they could now go back to the European mainland and get good jobs now they had truck driving experience in the UK.
Hauliers who made out very well with cheap European drivers got it in the neck when the suddenly found themselves at the other end of the shitty stick after years of underpaying.
When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s long distance lorry driving was a good well-paying job especially if you
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67? No one but dumb asses retires at 67. Anyone who bothered to save for retirement quits at 62 or at worst 65. If you need the extra few dollars you'd get at 67, assuming you're even still capable of working that long then you're super fucked anyway and the extra few bucks won't make a huge difference. You're working that long because you need to to avoid starving.
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The shortages are reported by politicians that want to import a new electorate for themselves and/or dilute the representation of actual citizens by inflating the population of certain very blue states with non-voters.
No, the shortages are being experienced by employers and by the general public. If you want to get a plumber, an electrician, a joiner, a roofer, someone to fit a kitchen or a new bathroom then good luck. We had to wait more than a year to get someone able to do our bathroom because they're all fully booked and that was just an 8ftx8ft room. You can be waiting weeks to get your car repaired or serviced.
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MBA's and Lawyers ... yea the planet needs more of those
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My love of education is a major factor in my disgust for "higher education". My very first class in college dedicated the whole time to having us form groups to solve a remedial algebra problem, the kind where you thought students wouldn't be admitted without having mastered previously. Oh, and there's a high school student there to get college credit too.
No, I went there for "higher" education and found out that it was really just an expensive tool for driving class division.
Then later in the workforce, it
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You are seriously going to argue that advanced education is not a net benefit to society?
No. You are making a straw-man argument.
Education is important to society, but not everyone needs to go to university.
Let the university system downsize to where it serves those who benefit from it. Build OTHER EDUCTION OPTIONS for those who don't need a university education.
The world needs doctors. It also needs engineers... and technicians... and plumbers... and builders... and artists... and mechanics... and shopkeepers... etc.
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I think the picture on higher education is complciated. There's no question that universities' mission is critical to the functioning of our society. They're not just ther to supply the economy with workers with technical skills like engineers and doctors. Universities are the only level of education in our society which tries to teach critical thinking and research skills like checking original sources.
But just because the mission of universities is critical to the functioning of our society doesn't mean t
Re: ??? Seriously? (Score:2)
Christ we've turned into a bunch of mean, bitter old coots.
Who is 'we'? You got a turd in your pocket?
For the record no, higher education didn't become a net negative to society. It's a net negative to our ruling class, who would very much like you to be a useful idiot thank you very much (fun media literacy fact: I used the phrase "useful idiot" because I know the audience I'm trying to convince, conservatives, would react positively to it!).
Who is the "ruling class" exactly? Every time I ask this nobody ever seems to give a concrete example. Though when you see the world in terms of Marxian classes, then I think the 'bitter old coot' description is quite apt.
Regardless, as you probably haven't noticed, higher education has gotten a lot more expensive, and it's not for the purpose of advancing education, rather it's more for the purpose of making universities more closely resemble Animal House by addin
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If I had a 6 digit UID, I probably wouldn't be using it as an alt. This is an unhealthy level of paranoia.
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Kids, this person is a moron. Education is power. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Republican politicians from Ivy League universities like Harvard telling people they don’t need an education?
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I think you need a university education because you have a serious reading comprehension problem.
Re: Commodity education (Score:3)
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Can you please cite all these hordes of Ivy League Republicans telling people they don't need an education?
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The repurpose is often just funding. Ie, universities in US mostly get the profits from 1) football, or 2) research arms. A few elite universities do 3) exhorbitant tuition targeted at the wealthy. It does lead to a problem when universities become accustomed to a certain level of funding but then there's a revenue shortfall with the football or research :-) The actual education sometimes seems like it's a side job.
Football seems pretty solid, anyone visiting a state in the southeast knows that it's pri
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A university education may help with your career but that's not the purpose of higher education. The problem here is that it has been fundamentally repurposed and is no longer the net benefit to society it once was. The funding cuts are the result, not the cause.
Thank you. I've been saying, literally for decades now, that higher 'education' is devolving into mere job training. Any endeavour which doesn't either serve short-term economic growth, or promise to provide huge economic gains in the long term, is viewed as frivolous.
We seem to have forgotten that the economy is simply a means to several valuable ends. Instead it is viewed as an ultimate good - a desirable thing in its own right, independent of both the advantages it confers and the damage it causes. Educa
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A university education may help with your career but that's not the purpose of higher education. The problem here is that it has been fundamentally repurposed and is no longer the net benefit to society it once was. The funding cuts are the result, not the cause.
Speaking of purpose, a four-year degree isn’t usually a necessity for the job itself. Because of that, the cost of a university education should be on those who demand it. Employers.
I will advise anyone to take no more than two years and then find an employer who will sponsor the rest. If they want you educated enough, they can pay for it. Otherwise OJT can and will suffice for the overwhelming majority of jobs.
Sorry, but that’s the hard truth. And don’t point at scholarships. They
Re:Commodity education (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of a degree is not for a career. I do have a technical related degree from a liberal arts style school so I may be biased on that.
And before you say anything, actually read what liberal arts means. It means a broad based education that touches on all areas of thought and knowledge. Not just an understanding of one technical area, but an understanding of the world as a whole and how your own work fits in that whole.
This is why a lot of highly skilled programmers are terrible at understanding use cases. And UI design.
A lack of higher education and proper critical thinking skills makes people very bad at detecting propaganda and partial truths. That's a societal and voting problem, not an employer problem.
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Degrees in most of the UK are three years. They are only four years in Scotland. It because Scotland does a one year higher rather than two year A level to finish your education.
Theory vs Practice (Score:3, Insightful)
actually read what liberal arts means. It means a broad based education that touches on all areas of thought and knowledge. Not just an understanding of one technical area, but an understanding of the world as a whole
That might be the theory but it is oh so far from the practice. Just look at the current student protesters on campuses around North America. Do any of them sound like they have "an understanding of the world as a whole"? Note, I'm not asking whether or not you agree with them just whether they sould at all like the picture you are trying to paint of students who have a broad and balanced understanding of the whole world because to me they sound narrow minded, focused on one side alone with zero knowledge
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Your own knee-jerk reaction about the protests doesn't even seem to be very nuanced. While here are certainly some anti-semitic people involving themselves in these protests, there are some very real concerns with Israel that are prompting these protests. Blindly supporting either side of this conflict would be a mistake.
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Your own knee-jerk reaction about the protests doesn't even seem to be very nuanced.
How is it a "knee-jerk reaction" when it is based on evidence and observation? By all means you can have a different opinion to me but you can hardly claim mine is a position without some reasoned thought behind it. I'm not in any way arguing that there are not valid concerns about the actions of both sides - indeed I never even said which side I favour only that the protestors were not balanced. When you hear people refusing to acknowledge the horrendous atrocities that started the whole conflict were tru
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Over Education (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem here is that it has been fundamentally repurposed and is no longer the net benefit to society it once was.
I'd state it more as the benefit has remained roughly the same but the costs of higher education have skyrocketed without any increase in net benefit. The problem started when the UK government masively increased the scope of higher education in a misguided attempt to increase the number of those getting university degrees from 25% of the population to 50%.
This necessitated calling a lot of polytechnics universities despite nothing really changing academically and pumping up enrolment everywhere. The huge increase in cost was supposed to be paid for by the higher earnings of university graduates but of course what happened was that graduates just started earning less because the number of jobs did not magically increase despite the surging numbers of graduates. Instead, jobs that never used to require a degree suddenly started requiring one.
The problem could be solved by increasing academic standards at schools and reducing the number of unviersity places back to the original ~25% level and use polytechnics and tradeschools to provide the qualifications that they used to. It would be much cheaper for both the government and students and people would get the education they need to succeed without wasting time and money on a degree that many largely do not need and in some cases really struggle to get. Perhaps a crisis like this might create the conditions to allow this to happen although it would take an intelligent, driven politician to effect useful meaningful change like this and you don't see any like that today...probably as a result of the damaged education system.
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The problem could be solved by increasing academic standards at schools and reducing the number of unviersity places back to the original ~25% level
At least in the US, the bar is too low in primary school - which is the main reason so many people would benefit from secondary education. It's amazing how little depth of understanding is taught in US high school. You might learn the sequence of events for historical wars and political division, for example, but never the motivations of the people on both sides and the historical context. And usually, it just paints a rosy picture of the "good guy" and glosses over any nuance. It's propaganda to breed
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It isn't propaganda. It is much simpler than that. The "teachers" don't know either.
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Right, because education isn't valued in itself, only as a means to an end.
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Workers have seized the means of production at universities?
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Maybe you would have learned basic psychology and how gender dysphoria actually affects someone. Engineers are great at solving problems but not great at understanding which problems need solving.
Re: Commodity education (Score:2)
Engineers are great at solving problems but not great at understanding which problems need solving.
That would make for one shitty engineer if they can't do that for their particular field. If they don't understand that a particular problem needs to be solved, then they're not going to know enough about the subject matter to be able to solve it anyways.
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Your "logic":
"He thinks crime is bad, therefore he must be a criminal".
Re: Commodity education (Score:2)
I don't personally have any problems with degrees that have no market value, the only thing I don't like is when students getting them receive Pell grants or student loans. It's just a waste of taxpayer money. Those degree programs should just be regarded as exactly what they are: Personal interest and/or recreational. And I'm not just talking about gender studies or african studies, I'm talking about any degree program whose faculty can't demonstrate a high confidence of gainful employment of the students
Maybe? (Score:3)
Partly, and Oxbridge have 21B in assets (Score:2)
If the whole sector is losing 3B a year, then Oxford and Cambridge could bail the sector out without stressing. They have 21B in assets
However there are too many universities, too many admins and so the sector needs a clearout anyway. Especially Oxford Brookes. Let the 25% go bust and see what the effect on national income are . Nothing at a rough guess.
The UK funding model (Score:5, Interesting)
Introduced after 2010, the system loans undergraduates £9,500 or so as fees which are to be paid back by an extra charge on their income tax. The new system injected a lot of new money into the sector, with the result there was a building boom, but subsequently this figure for fees has not increased. With inflation it is now proving inadequate. Note that foreign students are charged far more - which has kept the sector alive despite the funding freeze.
This has been in the context of a massive rise in the proportion of the age cohort going to university - something like 50%. This has had a number of effects. One has been to devalue having a degree - employers need to pay less of a premium to get someone with a degree. Another is that employers use having a degree as a way to eliminate applications - so it is often necessary to have a degree to get considered. This has led to an 'arms race' - with more and more staying on to do a Masters, a one year course in the UK, to impress prospective employers.
The hard question is: how many graduates do we need. The data here points to a massive proportion of graduates in non-graduate roles by the standards of the government statistical office - of the order of 30%
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employm... [ons.gov.uk]
Yet despite this employers claim there is a skills shortage and demand the right to allow migrants to fill roles
https://www.pwc.co.uk/press-ro... [pwc.co.uk]
Personally I would like to see a 25% cut in undergraduate numbers overall, with STEM protected and areas such as performing arts subject to massive cuts; we churn out vast numbers of actors and musicians who never make a career in those fields. Unfortunately such suggestions are condemned as 'Philistine' by the fans of culture whose approval the establishment crave... Certainly there is no serious discussion of this mess in the current general election campaign.
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The problem is you can't select the ones who will go on to make really valuable contributions to the arts, or to any other sector, at age 18. You can make sure they are educated to the level needed to complete the course, but you can't know which of them will go on to greatness, which will make some profound discovery or advancement. The accuracy of your guesses will be low.
So either you accept that your entire country is going to have less exceptional and important contributors, or you offer education to e
I don't know about the UK (Score:2)
I know the UK has a similar program to the American H-1B visa program, which is our high skill visa program, and given the history of the UK economy mirroring all the bad decisions of the American economy I'm going to go out on the limb here and say that those companies aren't demanding degrees because there's a flood of college-educated Brits
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Good. About time. (Score:4, Insightful)
This phrase is a problem: "key contributor to the country's economy" - tertiary education shouldn't be a key contributor to the country's economy any more than secondary or primary education. The obsession with making money out of higher education is an infection that is rightly being excised. The key performance indicator for universities should be whether they are educating UK students well or not. It can be argued that foreign students bring diversity, so having some can make sense, but once universities become a product to be sold to the world, with billions of pounds of revenue, then you have to stop and ask how we got to this point. What I see is a much needed shake out.
Re:Good. About time. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you may be parsing that incorrectly. I don't think they are talking about universities as a financial contributor to GDP. $61bn is fuck all, much less "key contributor". Rather the role universities play in the economy is generally huge and you attribute virtually all high tech, medicine, and engineering portions of the economy to it. Universities are absolutely key contributors to a country's economy.
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You don't see a benefit to having well-educated people in positions of power in other countries having a beneficial view of the UK as a benefit to the UK? It is _vastly_ cheaper to the UK to have foreign students come here, get educated, and go home, than it is to deal with the effects of not doing so.
That 'obsession with making money' (they don't, they are charities) is actually massively subsidising the cost of educating British kids. There's a reason why all of the key people behind the current culture-w
needs an injection of unlimited student loans that (Score:2)
needs an injection of unlimited student loans that the bank or the schools are not on the hook for!
And extend them all the way to post PHD / med school.
investment vehicles (Score:2)
Administrative Overhead? (Score:5, Insightful)
By weight of comparison, my experience in the private sector saw companies with 14-15% administrative overhead struggle to compete, and the stronger businesses ran at 4-5%.
I wouldn't suggest that universities could or should operate at those lowest levels, but 60+% is unreasonable to the point of incompetence.
Again, these are multiple US experiences, but I can't help but wonder if it is uniquely American.
Re:Administrative Overhead? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a faculty in an American university. And I see similar level of administrative overheads.
From what I see, the reason why overhead are so high are linked to two core issues:
1/ Universities in the US are administered as public non-profits while being operated as-if they were for profit entities. The universities need to compete with one another to hire faculty and to enroll students. Most of their budget are derived from student enrollment (either a tuition or as a state funding based on enrollment). So universities need to attract students. And it is very hard to attract student on abstract concept like quality of the instruction because it is so hard to define. But it is much easier to attract them based on how nice the dorms look, how pretty the quad is, or how many swimming pool there are. So lots of the universities budget have turned to making the campus attractive on non-educational aspects because it makes business sense.
2/ Universities are forced to abide by state rules that don't make sense. Very often states make rules that are sensible in theory but not in practice. (When they are not explicitely written to make universities life harder by state cngress who want public institution to function poorly to justify privatising them.) Ensuring compliance with these rules requires administrative support to parse and interpret these complex often non-sensical rules. But because these administrators (the ones at the low level) are not well paid they do not give a shit about how to apply the rule, they apply a stupid rule and they go home. This often create layers of processes and accountability for something that really should not need it and would be cut in a company. I give you one particular example. When university personnel is on travel, it takes extra paper work to stay at an airbnb rather than staying at a hotel. Why? Because there is a state law that airbnb are not hotel, they are private housing rental and therefore they do not fall under the guidelines of hotels, and you have to prove that it is cheaper than 3 neighboring 3-star hotels. Note that you do not need to do that if you book a hotel, you could pick the most expensive hotel in the city and they would not care. But for airbnb, you have to. Now, there is a much simpler rule which would be "as long as it is under the federal perdiem rate for housing, I'm not going to care; if it is over, you'll need approval". The state has declined to change the rule with no explanation.
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The main immediate problem has been a collapse in the number of overseas students. It's twofold COVID and an anti-imigration stance.
The longer term problem has been sending far to many children to University to do "useless" degrees. Noting that the current government has been refusing to increase the number of places in medicine for example in the same time period because apparently asset striping third world countries of their doctors, nurses and dentists is the way forward.
Waste of money (Score:5, Informative)
Oxford Brookes University (Score:2)
The changes to education that started in the 90s, made
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Curious, what's abusive about it?
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A reflection on the British school system and the abuse children suffered while being made to conform and have creativity squandered [reddit.com]
Abuse in Britain's boarding schools: why I decided to confront my demons [theguardian.com]
The British Elite Is Haunted by Childhood Demons [bloomberg.com]
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I have worked for a long time with people who grew up in the British education model
So have I! You know what with being British, getting educated here, and knowing mostly British people.
And every single one of them was ABUSED by their education model,
Either your bar for abused is astonishingly low, you have a very biased sample, or you are cherry picking examples and rounding up to the whole.
deride American education as "multiple choice"
I've literally never heard anyone say that. I can give you a critique
Re:They are STUCK (Score:5, Informative)
Certainly, citation below, you can thank me later:
Reuters is out with it’s annual list of the world’s most innovative universities.
The list is interesting in that it’s international and that it measures university outputs such as patents and original published research and impact on commerce – drivers of economic vitality.
That’s interesting on its own. But what’s remarkable is the depth and consistent domination of American universities.
The top five most innovative universities on the planet, according to Reuters, are in the United States. Eight of the top 10 are American. Overall, 46 of the top 100 fly the star spangled banner. Germany, the runner-up, had nine in the top 100. France has eight while Japan, the U.K. and South Korea each have six. America’s most identified economic adversary, China, has four. Again, there are 46 in the U.S.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/d... [forbes.com]
Re:They are STUCK (Score:5, Interesting)
The top five most innovative universities on the planet, according to Reuters, are in the United States. Eight of the top 10 are American. Overall, 46 of the top 100 fly the star spangled banner. Germany, the runner-up, had nine in the top 100. France has eight while Japan, the U.K. and South Korea each have six. Americaâ(TM)s most identified economic adversary, China, has four. Again, there are 46 in the U.S.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/d [forbes.com]... [forbes.com]
I studied scientometrics for a while. These types of rankings are a lot less meaningful that you think. Not that I know of a more meaningful way to account innovation of universities. But anyway, here is a break down.
You can find the methodology here: https://www.reuters.com/graphi... [reuters.com]
Most of the criteria used are known to be bullshit. There are 10 criteria, it is a rank aggregate where each criteria is weighted 1 except two that are correlated and that are weighted 0.5
7 of the criteria are patent related. 3 are scientific paper related. In most of the world, universities don't give a shit about patents. Because patents are typically filled by the industry and NOT by universities. In the US, university faculty are typically paid 9 month a year, whereas in other places, they are typically paid for 12. So in the US, many faculty are double employed by a local company and so when the company files a patent, the university is on it. In France, for instance, tech transfer happen when companies hire the graduated PhD who will eventually file patents.
5 of the 10 criteria are linked to what is essentially a citation count. These metrics are known to be bullshit. In a patent context, the patent lawyer will often force you to cite every single patent that is even remotely relevant to prevent the patent application from being declined. It is in no way a measure of how good a patent is. Just that the patent happens to be in a field where lots of people work.
You have a similar effect with papers. Different scientific communities have different citation cultures. In Math, you cite only a few papers that are directly relevant to the theorem you are working on. In CS, you tend to cite more papers, give context, show applications. So naturally in CS you cite more. This is also true in particular sub field of CS, where some field see average reference count (The number of papers noted in bibliography) of 8, while other fields have average reference count of 30, with some that are more like 50. So if you happen to be in a field with a culture of citing little, then you are deemed less important. And that is for a reason that is purely cultural.
The last criteria is number of paper in "web of science core", this is also a bad index. First of all, to be in WoS core you need a high citation count, refer to last paragraph for why it is bad. But then some fields naturally publish more papers than other. Just in CS, in systems topics, you are doing really good if you do 3 tier 1 paper in a year. in AI, if you don't do 8 to 10 a year, people are wondering why you are slacking so much. Once again, this difference is cultural, it has nothing to do with the importance or the impact of the field. In AI, people publish a lot. In physics, not so much. So if your university has a world leading physics group, you would rank better if you had a mid tier database group instead.
Different countries have a different publication culture. Most of the US is playing a paper counting game. So everyone publishes papers left and right. If you have one good idea you can cut into two papers, many teams choose to do that. Most of Europe is not playing that game at all. They write fewer papers with more compete experiments and analysis. So they naturally are lower in rankings.
More globally, you can't compare publication and citation counts across scientific cultures. It is not meaningful to compare across fields and across countries.
This is a bad index. You shouldn't read too much into it!
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That's all fine, but you deserve some off topic votes for this. The metrics used to judge universities have zero to do with the actual topic at hand. We're talking about universities as educators. You're talking about universities as innovators. The relevance for that list is if you are interested in becoming a career researcher or doing advanced degrees.
Here's a hint: For that list the USA universities have topped the list for many years. It's something they focus on and excel it. And being on top of that
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You will have to pardon me for feeling that you are making a distinction without merit
If a university is providing an education that does NOT lead to innovation (literary, artistic, medical, technical, scientific, etc...) then they are just using simple rote to stuff the student's head with WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN, and NOT giving them the tools to further human knowledge in any way
Perhaps it is the British educational system's focus on rote memorization and regurgitation that is it's major failing
Of course, s
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Citation provided:
Rote learning dominates British classrooms, where students are taught to regurgitate knowledge and memorise information to pass exams.
As a result, Britain’s young people are not gaining the skills they need for the future, when problem-solving and creativity will be key.
China and Japan were once the leaders in such approaches, but have now reversed this to become pioneers in teaching creativity and critical thinking. Here in the UK such skills are deprioritised, and in England are ba
It kind of depends on what you mean by innovative (Score:2)
I think American universities are better at producing products that can be sold at mass market which is what Reuters seems to think is innovative but in terms of conducting basic science and inventing things t
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Godrik is using the time-honored technique of trying to suffocate an idea by piling manure on top of it until it is dead, and it is really a waste of time to address it all
I was asked to provide some "quantification or qualification" for my point, which I did, three is not sense in allowing somebody to use that effort to drag me into a quagmire
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LOL, and you are simply moving the goal posts after being given what you asked for, I'll give you a D- for trolling and everything else is a fail
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perhaps designing ECU chips that do stupid things is an example of innovation
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Think about a university like the “University of Waterloo” in Ontario, Canada.
Were you unaware that the article we're discussing is about British universities, or were you unaware that Canada is not part of Britain?
Re:Cheaper to Teach? (Score:5, Informative)
The whole "womens/gender" studies and "basket weaving" jokes are a perfect example of basically an urban legend becoming this boogeyman everyone think is way, way bigger than it is in reality
Older dataset and for the USA but the point stands,
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
In 2014-2015, approximately 1.9 million bachelor’s degrees were awarded.
Just 1,333 degrees were in women’s studies
7,782 degrees were in the broader category of “area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies,” which women’s studies falls under. This represents about 0.4 percent of all bachelor’s degrees.
Enrollment and graduation rates for the humanities in general are trending down across the board.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/t... [wsj.com]
. The number of students majoring in liberal arts has fallen precipitously with data from the National Center for Education Statistics showing the number of graduates in the humanities declined by 29.6% from 2012 to 2020. This decline has worsened in the years since.
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To paraphrase a “Gender Studies” course I took in engineering school: “If you're a woman, you're a victim, if you're a white man, you're a serial raping abuser, and if you don't refuse to ig
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HR, PR, Art Theory, Feminist Theory, and other example, can you really claim they're intense? Have you ever taken a course in those areas?
Have I? No but that has no bearing on "intensity" a purely subjective qualification you have made up. Being an HR professional is basically being a sort of lawyer, you have a ton of legal guildines to know and follow and at a large company a huge amount of liability rests on your shoulders.
Being a PR person involves quite of a bit of work on networking, language and social skills and a thorough understand of what you are doing realtions on, soemthing most CS majors I imagine would also find "intense" just
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Everything I said about liberal studies courses was opinion, some formed from taking courses, some from knowing people who took them. Some having to sit through lecture from people who took them who I'm not friends with.
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Just as political problems are in fact an issue at universities so is the issue of schools simply becoming job training centers instead of the actual goal of college which to create well educated and well rounded people who can economically contribute to society for the rest of their lives.
Every school is scrambling to advance their STEM programs, that's what students want to study and that's going to drive what they teach. That doesn't mean humanities and other majors have to fall by the wayside. Schools
Re:Cheaper to Teach? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a woman, you're a victim, if you're a white man, you're a serial raping abuser, and if you don't refuse to ignore sex and gender, you're misogynist, racist, and homophobe.
As someone who has taken similar classes while going to college if that's what you got out of them then that says one hell of a lot more about you then it does the classes unless you had some very far out there teachers.
Also, just because a friend can't explain something to you or you know people who tell you strange things doesn't mean an entire subject is bullshit. I have many friends who can't explain major features of physics but that doesnt mean physics is bullshit.
I feel like I shouldn't have to explain that to an adult.
These programs lack academic rigor (Score:2)
Why would that not also require intense study?
Because these programs often lack academic rigor, they are NOT just another humanities department. They are manufactured safe have for some radicals and some athletes.
They are largely a byproduct of the 1960s/70s student protests in the US. The more radical protesters would occupy university property and negotiate with the administration. The creation of these "studies" programs was often one of the demands. These programs would offer a home in academia for the radicals, and allow them to recruit and tra
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That's a hilarious statement, because it essentially means liberal studies, and not all liberal studies, but certainly gender based programs, or gender based victim programs (Feminist theory or gender studies).
Quoting the actual article about what it means:
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Want to pick other programs? HR? Art Theory? PR? What progra
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Can you really state that programs like “Gender Studies” or “Feminist Theory” involve the same complexity as Computer / Electrical Engineering?
Which British universities are you referring to that offer “Gender Studies” and “Feminist Theory”?
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Many employers now see University-trained hires as lawsuits waiting to happen over perceived intersectional microaggressions
Citation for this?
and are beginning to favor autodidact polymaths with a history of accomplishment.
Citation for this?
...
All of these factors apply disproportionately to the most prestigious schools, where most of the ruling class was (poorly) trained.
Not what the article is about. The article states "Mid-ranking and mid-sized universities are in real trouble". Not "the most prestigious schools".
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Number 9.
https://www.yongeeglintondenta... [yongeeglintondental.com]!
False dichotomy (Score:2)
Someone has to pay the tuition fees. In the past it was the tax payer. Then they decided to keep up with most of the rest of Western world and raise the proportion of kids going to university. They set up a funding stream which they thought would stay off the national debt - but the low rate of payback caused the 'regulator' to decide that it does count as part of the national debt. So in a time of austerity they've not chosen to spend the money on higher fees but on other things like hospitals
Which is why