please empty your brain below
Like you, I got a grant to go to university, and in those days only the top, what, 5% in the country went. So a degree meant something then, even if we were only using it as a good excuse to leave home, and then not to make any real decisions as to what we wanted to do for another three years. Nowadays degrees seem to be two-a-penny and have lost their value.
I was thinking about this very thing the other day, after I'd been talking to a bright 11 year old who asked me what a well-paying career would be, as she intended to work towards it. I'm sure that the idea that careers paid so differently in terms of salary never entered my head when I was 11, and I certainly had no idea what my parents earned then (mind you, although she knew the figures she said, "My dad earns £150,000, plus benefits, is that a lot?")
I am convinced that those of us in our 40s and 50s now had very little idea of how much jobs paid then - because there was so much less concentration on money and materialism and how much things cost. One did things more because they were worth doing, or interesting, as you say, rather than as a means to a lucrative end.
And don't start me on 'universities' who now accept students with IQs of 80, just for the money they get. It is immoral, both form the point of view of devaluing degrees, and from that of the effect on the individual when they can't cope with the level. 25 years ago, pupils with IQs of 80 were often sent to special schools. I'm not saying that this is right, just that it shows how things change: from vocational courses (with futures) in a special school to a degree course (with no future) in just two and a half decades.
And to Blue Witch above, I'd recommend your 11 year old friend considers Pharmacy. It's not what I do, but a friend does, and despite the five years(!) in Uni (I believe, might be wrong), he appears to be extremely well paid and only actually works part-time, thus massively improving the old "work-life balance". And it allows you to emigrate, should that be a consideration for the little darling!
A potential problem with higher education is that ever-increasing tuition fees are going to put many worthy people off going to university altogether (especially as there's certainly no guarantee of getting a graduate-level job at the end). A side-effect of this would be to make degrees more valuable again over the long term, but by looking at the larger picture, it could also leave the UK uncompetitive compared to the fast-growing markets in India and China (who are churning out tens or even hundreds of thousands of graduates every year).
Whilst it was relatively free (means tested) it wasn't a straight forward deal. Less people passed than today - they (who didn't manage to pass) then changed direction towards what was available to them - those of us lucky to have passed - found the next step as tricky as it will be for the new outflow in the coming years. Back then the promise of a job ... of course didn't exist - most of us moved South ... in search of Jobs. Few of us are now left (some gone back,others left the uk for the us, nz, and oz).
Today's teenagers > students have plenty to check out and look forward to...yes the costs are scary - but to be brutal - if it worried them "that much" then they'd be better off out of it. Taking big risks is for some .. how they, including me , got here.
What has changed is that we are all now being taxed almost to extinction (thanks Gordon Brown and your stealth taxes) but the books still cannot be balanced so that there is less money to finance education. There are also many more people who have been led to believe that further education is their right and so the overall bill is much greater. The only way to finance all this education is to raise the money from those who are being educated, like it or not.
Whether or not it is all going to be worth it should be the real debate, as the first comment above says.
But I remember thinking at the time, that my friends who left school at 16 and started working, had all pretty much reached the same salary level as me coming in 5-6 years later anyway!!
My son is about to go in the sixth form, and yes, he's certainly planning on going to University in two years' time - but is it going to be worth having all of that debt to pay off? It's a fun three years but it's a high price to pay for it.
And as there are far more graduates now than back in the eighties, where are all of these graduate-level jobs? Or is it the case that employers insist on candidates having a degree for jobs which previously required only A levels or GCSEs?
TridentScan | Privacy Policy