It was today reported that one in four students fail to graduate. I don’t really find this statistic surprising. What I do find remarkable is that some commentators ascribe this failure rate to the iniquity of student loans, and the consequent financial misery heaped on such young shoulders.
Hasn’t it occurred to anyone that they are failing because they are dung brained thickos, who should not be allowed near institutions of Higher Education in anything other than a cleaning capacity? Let’s face it, most of them are functionally illiterate; brought up on a staple diet of Heat and Nutz magazines, their vocabularies haven’t developed much beyond the Janet and John stage. As for numeracy, they can calculate the change out of a fiver after paying for a Big Mac and fries, but that’s about it.
The failure rate of one in four doesn’t apply across the board. The traditional universities – i.e the PROPER ones that existed before the politicians had a collective head fit – manage to produce graduation rates of 90% or upwards. The worst performers are, naturally, some of the ex polytechnics that were effectively glorified technical schools before being given university status.
The government has demanded that the traditional universities explain why they don’t recruit more students from poorer backgrounds. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that they still put some store by academic achievement and percieved aptitude. Perhaps if the government did something about shithole inner city comprehensives the situation would be different.
Why can’t the politicians get it into their fuckwit skulls that only about 10% of school leavers have the aptitude to benefit from a university education? Frankly, it’s immoral to shackle impressionable 18 year olds with £15K debts, just so that they can walk away after three years with a degree certificate which might as well have: ‘EVER GOT THE FEELING YOU’VE BEEN CHEATED?’ emblazoned across the front.
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Exactly what I've been saying for years. When I went to university in 1988, we were told that you had to be in the top 5-10% of the school leavers or else you just wouldn't cut it. Ten years on and Blair decides that 50% of 18 year olds should go through higher education. My maths is a bit rusty, but based on what we were told in 1988, 80% of those kids are doomed to failure or sub-standard, worthless higher education. What it does mean is the economy keeps ticking by introducing huge debts on a generation of people that would normally be in work, saving up instead of spending.
Fucking idiot, shitforbrain government.
Oxford should open a 'Brassneck College'. They could hand out honourary degrees to every fucktard politician who makes comments about 'encouraging cultural and social inclusivness in the higher education sector'. The universities were doing that before they stuck their noses in.
I can't think of a better time to have gone to university than in the 1970s and 1980s, it was superb. Then those fuckers saw how good a time us "poor, disadvantaged, working class background" kids had and decided to ruin it for all subsequent generations. Thus turning the UK into the thickest nation on the planet.
Still, so long as they can afford to send their kids to Oxford, Cambridge and all the other nob places, it'll be OK and the next generation of Blairs and Browns will continue to be nurtured safe from the harm and influence of the really stupid people they claim to stand for.
We've got a Cambridge graduate recently started in our office. Her grammar and spelling are *Wyndham coughs* A FUCKING DISGRACE.
The problem with the current bunch of tits is that they think they can legislate for happiness. Prizes for all does not produce happiness, it just promotes aspirations that are unrealisable.
Scotland had one of the finest education systems in the world. The people who benfited from it have utterly destroyed it for future generations. They aren't helping people up the ladder of oppurtunity. They're pulling up the drawbridge.
Wyndham! Language!
If the Oxbridge lot are semi literate there definitely is no hope left.
Well yeah, just because they're from Oxford or Cambridge is doesn't mean they're any good - just rich. Saying that though, if you've got "poor" parents, you can get some really good bursaries for Oxford, so I understand.
The nursing profession has gone the same way.When I was training you were locked in a ward for 13 hrs with a tyrannical bitch of a Sister with 30 shitfilled bedpans to clean and sterilise 10 times a day.Common sense, a smudgen of humanity and a bit of craic with the sod whose life is ending is more educational than 3 years behind a desk.Bring it on
I quite like the idea of someone with a university background preparing and serving my Big Mac.
None of that uneducated trailer trash serving me, thank you very much.
Don't worry - soon they'll have a 0% failure rate, by eliminating the term "failure" and replacing it with the much more friendly "deferred success."
I have injoyed much 'deferred' success in the fields of neuro surgery, thoretical physics, and Nobel prize winning poetry compostion.
I am glad that my achievements will soon be recognised.
'Thoretical' physics and poetry 'compostion'?
I see your major was in English then!
*thinks someones been at the beer*
Early(ish) morning typos boys.
Got to rush. My shift at Maccy d's starts in ten minutes.
Tina - me old mucker - "Well yeah, just because they're from Oxford or Cambridge is doesn't mean they're any good - just rich". That's just plainly not true, and a little bit nasty to boot. Although I can't speak for the dump in the Fens, Oxford students are still amongst the most academically able in the country, and background and class have naff all to do with it. When I was there (mid 90s), I was certainly in the minority as coming from a private school, and I only ever met one truly rich person (as opposed to the children of middle class parents sacrificing their life to pay school fees).
Garfer's right - most people don't have the mental aptitude for university, just as most people don't have the hand/eye/foot co-ordination to play football for Manchester United. But don't slag off the few who do cut it as being "rich" - no one ever (to continue my tortured analogy) dismissed Man U players as not being any good at playing football and only being there because of what their parents do.
Rant over. One love!
America's really the place for dough brain students. Coz pops drops a few billion to the uni, dung brain junior gets a shoo in. George Bush, for inst. Or, come to think of it, John Kerry. You can also get a jock scholarship if you can spell your name.
Yes, you're right about Oxford/Cambridge and being rich and stuff. I do recall reading that the majority of UK students were from state schools. Whether they come from your standard comprehensive and 6th form college is possibly a different matter. I had a look at Cambridge and felt dreadfully out of place there so I didn't bother applying. How different things may have been...
Anybody remember the Young Ones university challenge? "Daddy's got a Porche!".
Look at you with 16 comments
Errrm, I mean 17 comments
DAMN! EIGHTEEN comments!!!
GRrrrrrrr.
Eleven of those are my comments. Come to think of it, this makes it twelve!
Comments shouldn't matter, but they do - so much! Otherwise, particularly for this sort of post, it just seems like you're having a debate with yourself and you can feel a bit of a twat.
I wish there wasn't such a bad stigma placed here on non-university educations, lets face it, not everyone can be a rocket scientist, nor should they be expected to. I doubt my daughter would fit into the extended acadmeic plan that the world seems to have set out for her, that said, I wish I could go back to university, would ahve majored in something I gave a shit about instead of computers.
the idea of college/university for EVERYONE is just as bad here in the good ol' US of A. i teach in an inner city high school that proudly boasts about the fact that we send about 80% of our graduating students on to higher education. what we never mention is that about 25% of the students who go on to college/university drop out in their very first year because they can't cut it. another 25% will never graduate. and likewise, it isn't the students themselves who are blamed. no, the universities aren't doing enough to help these poor vulnerable young people. public school teachers aren't adequately preparing them for college. sorry - there is no way i can prepare a student who has demonstrated no academic potential, who reads at a 6th grade level and does math at a 4th grade level, for university.
we need to stop with the "college is for everybody" mentality.
Garfer, I have been meaning to comment for the last couple of days, when I came across a pertinent clipping in my collection, published in the Times Higher Education Supplement, 8th October 2004, written by Gary Day: “Those of us concerned about the university being swamped by working-class people, who seek counselling when they are asked to write an essay, need to speak out against social inclusion (…) Others try to score cheap points by asking: ‘If you’re against social inclusion, does that mean you are for social exclusion?’ They are rather taken aback when I answer ‘Yes’.
Three quarters of the universities in this country have been created since 1945, that dreadful year when the Labour Government established the National Health Service and declared that it would take care of the British people ‘from the cradle to the grave’. The commitment to ‘lifelong learning’ stems from that pernicious philosophy that prevented individuals from taking responsibility for their own lives. When before they were quite happy to saw off their own gangrenous limbs, they now expected a surgeon to do it for them, with the aid of an anaesthetic, too.
It is the same with education. When I was an undergraduate, I was given a reading list and instructed to show up for the examination three years later. Now, the burger-munching multitude pester one constantly about the difficulties they’re having with The Critique of Pure Reason and could I please explain what is meant by ‘synthetic a priori knowledge’? Perhaps, if they didn’t subsist on a diet of infected cow, they might work it out, though in truth I doubt it.
(…)
If you will permit me a little wordplay, you could say that by giving degrees we undo ‘degree’. And then, as the Bard said: ‘hark what discord follows’. Marvellous stuff. Shakespeare, I mean. Not me. His immortal words are a reminder that the widening-participation agenda is a form of social engineering. This is contrary to the historic function of the university, which is to perpetuate an elite whose members have served this country well, some since the Norman Conquest. It is a sad state of affairs when, instead of passing on culture to those who appreciate it, we have to teach the distracted multitude what skills will fit them for the new ‘knowledge economy’.
What happened to the idea that knowledge should be valued for its own sake? It is hard to imagine a greater pleasure than to sit in one’s study, fingertips pressed together, contemplating the Greek optative or Alexander’s Sum of Theology. The instrumental view of knowledge has created a society in which the masses worship consumer goods instead of their betters. Indeed, they imagine they are our equals. The only people they admire are so-called celebrities, who have, unfortunately, eclipsed intellectuals in public esteem. When the yahoos knew nothing, they deferred to people such as us.
Of course, they still know nothing. If after years of literacy, they still can’t spell whatever words they tattoo on themselves, then what on earth do they hope to achieve at university? Indeed, many who come to my classes often say they haven’t learnt a thing. The point is not that they are ignorant, but that they don’t know that they are ignorant. Consequently, they fail to recognise us as their superiors.
Friends tell me that I may be exaggerating the problem. They reassure me that those who have most benefited from university expansion are from the middle class – its philistine wing, admittedly, but something may yet be done for them.
The really good news, they say, is that the class divide in higher education has actually widened under new Labour. And I should take heart, they continue, from the fact that those of low estate who do entertain the idea of going to university do not do so for very long. They feel excluded from the best places by the cost and by the intimidating air of culture. It is a relief to know we are doing something right. And if all else fails, they tell me, there are top-up fees. Now that is one ‘Keep Out’ sign that really works”.
I wasn't proposing that we 'keep the oiks out' on the basis of social class. Dumbing down is as much a middle class phenomenen these days.
The grammar schools were the greatest factor in class mobility that this country has ever seen. Mixed ability, comprehensive schools have proved an unmitigated disaster.
How universities are expected to transform the semi educated into graduate material in three years frankly escapes me.
Indeed, Garfer. I am sure that Gary Day's article was conceived as a piece of satire. Although the Times is not exactly famed for its left-wing leanings I do not believe for one second that he actually endorsed the sentiments he was voicing, although as a piece it cuts as close to the bone as it is possible to reach without exposing the marrow.
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