Never went to University myself. Still know enough about history to get a bad feeling when societies turn to anti-intellectualism/anti-academia.
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Where did I say University?
There is a need for Universities though, in addition to other educational facilities.
Regarding my second paragraph.
You were able to denigrate educational psychology yesterday.
Suit yourself.
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Wouldnât they need a passport for that?
Did you manage to carve out a successful career then?
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Yes, wasnât âplaneâ sailing, but I âsawâ to it that I did
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Who has ever claimed someone would need to go university, let alone Oxford, to learn a vocational skill.
I think it is the wrong way to look at university education, especially undergraduate, as specific job preparation. Some degrees are obviously far more aligned with a specific career path, but even in those the education should be much more generalized than that. I say that as a 15 year academic who came to see that there isnât time to prepare students with a meaningful breadth of specific job related skills and give them the foundational understanding behind those job skills. In most industries the job skills change far more quickly than the foundational knowledge so you provide a better service by focusing on the knowledge than on the skills.
But in saying that I do think there needs to be far more of a conversation on the appropriateness of debt that people take on to get these qualifications (and the related experience). This is not a viable policy direction but it does raise the interesting idea that the more liberal arts educations are the ones more in need of subsidizing. If a student goes into engineering and comes out with debt there is least a strong likelihood of a well paying job at the end of it. Far less so with a history degree. That means if you dont do anything to make them more financially accessible, and we make sure students understand the perils of student debt without a clear career path that can pay for it, we leave these fields to students from families who can afford the fees. That narrowness of demographic will result in a narrowed perspective on the scholarship that is undertaken in those fields, which is bad for the field and for society.
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Response #2
With the growing capability of AI and recent focus on tech like ChatGPT there is a pretty good argument to be had that its expertise in the social sciences and arts that will be needed to fill the gaps that this tech cannot. The Goldblum mantra from Jurrasic Park is relevent because if we just leave it up to scientists and engineers we will continue to only have the dicussion of what we can do, not what we should do. For that latter we need people with a grounding in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
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What would be interesting is the statistics for students who go through university taking advantage of the free tuition, take the obligatory âgap yearâ that only post graduates feel the need to do, then end up in mundane jobs that never required a degree in the first place.
It was a far better idea to regard higher education as an investment in the nation and pay for it out of general taxation. The flip side of that is also that those wanting to do apprenticeships and technical skills should be better funded as well. I suspect that far too many are pushed towards an academic route simply because thatâs regarded as the only route to wealth and happiness.
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80%?
Even if they do, arenât they exercising their freedom of choice?
The right are always banging on about individual freedom⌠except for when it doesnât suit them.
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Probably not that high, but Iâd say quite a lot.
Does little Joe Bloggs from Wakefield have a similar opportunity to free tuition fees for free training to become a chippie, sparky, brickie or plumber?
I doubt it.
Maybe the peoples party will help with that when they get in power?
Of all the people I expected to jump on this and turn it into a right versus left issue, you were quite far down the list.
2080?
Theyâll be replaced by people whoâve managed to shake their lefty liberal university education through experience of the real world.
Lol. Trends are changing- thereâs loads of research online to show that people arenât becoming more conservative with age and, if anything, the opposite is happening.
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Thereâs also loads of research that proves that the earthâs flat.
None actually. Not one.
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so many situations has humanity found itself in, where that logic applies.
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