Reply With QuoteSo just because one person is not as smart as another they don't deserve to get in to uni.Originally Posted by Frankie
Re: Is a degree still worthwhile?
If you take a mickey mouse degree, you cannot be shocked when no one cares about your degree, just as if you fail to educate yourself and keep up to date with current techniques after your degree, you will be useless.
Me and my partner have a degree, I had to have one for me job as did he, he has a double honors degree, Biology with specialisation in genetics, and Chemistry, he then has a masters in gene technology, a teaching degree obv as he is a teacher, if he just had a degree and a teaching degree (PGCE) he would be earning £35,000 a year, as it stands he is earning more than triple than that.
At the minute he is taking a Phd while still being a teacher, Aberystwyth uni are funding him and he has a job ready and waiting (they have recently made massive cuts, sacked 70 people and are employing 13 new staff, he is one of the 13), the uni are paying his fee's, he was offered £10,000 a year for living expenses, but instead requested it be put into the research pot. When he finishes he will be head of the genetics department, head researcher and lecturer.
We need to make university about intelligence, I know people with offers of BBB, who have achieved EDD and still been able to go to that university! It shouldn't happen, university should only reward those at the top of intelligence, we could also improve the chances of poorer students by offering more scholarships.
Some very important jobs require degrees, social work as an example, but as an ex-social worker myself, I know that we do not need a degree. The course is centered around work experience and there is virtually no time within university, so why can't we go back to the old way of being trained on the job. The older social workers I have worked with aren't inferior because they aren't university educated, the government could save a lot of money and still have quality social workers. Nursing has also gone down hill since a degree has been needed. Unless your degree leads to a direct job, such as mine and my partners, basically all a degree shows is that you can work to a deadline, well you can see if someone can do that when they are ten!
Re: Is a degree still worthwhile?
So just because one person is not as smart as another they don't deserve to get in to uni.
Re: Is a degree still worthwhile?
What do you mean 'Micky Mouse' degrees? If you are talking about foundation degrees and things like that I can tell you that I have one of these and me and some of my friends worked damn hard to get it. Plus we paid for it and yes we do expect to get a decent job out of it. Not everyone in the world is lucky enough to have the qualifications to be earning megabucks!
Re: Is a degree still worthwhile?
i agree with you there earning a degree is hard work.
Frankie what would you class as a Micky mouse degree then.
Re: Is a degree still worthwhile?
Isn't that the whole point of qualifications to make sure people have achieved a set standard in that field. If someone isn't going to be able to reach that level because they arn't smart enough then no they don't deserve to go to uni. If you've not been able to make the grade to get into the course then its unlikely they will be able to make the grade to pass the course. It just makes a mockery of the system and the people that have worked hard to get their qualifications. Just look at what happens every year when the GCSE results come out. People don't have the same respect for them as they have done in the past because of the amount of people getting A and A* etc.
Isn't the all point of the exams to separate chaff from the whey, how can you do that if everyone got top marks.
Last edited by matty; 07-02-2010 at 06:01 PM.
Re: Is a degree still worthwhile?
Of course, what do you think university is intended for, the bottom half of the population?
Re: Is a degree still worthwhile?
Excuse me? What do you mean by bottom half of the population?
Re: Is a degree still worthwhile?
My degree is certainly a mickey mouse degree and personally I think it is a disgrace that social workers need a degree to be social workers, it is completely pointless. University is for academia and something that should benefit the country, not for standard vocational learning (as there are also elite vocational degrees, such as medicine), or completely useless degree's, such as football studies which does exist!
People who want to do things like film need to be given support to go to film school, grants and loans etc, instead of taking a film degree which employers don't want, if you want to study drama go to drama school, if you don't get in you are not good enough to do it. As it stands a lot of universities are taking in more students within vocational degree schemes, media studies, outdoor adventure, aromatherapy, wine studies, happiness degree (yes this does exist!), universities are taking more students on these courses because they cost boost the universities pass rates. At Aberystwyth university a drama student pends 6 hours a week at university!
Did you a working foundation degree e.g. one supported by a company where you spend most of your time working for that company, or one where you just study to A level standards? Considering most people have A levels now, the A level style foundation degree's are worthless now.
The reason university is no longer free in England is because of polytechnics being upgraded to universities, if we had remained with separation those with the ability could attend university where as now they can't as loans and grants are simply not enough to support a student, polytechnics were also far better at handling vocational areas and producing a better quality student compared to the handling of such courses at university. Welsh fee's have now been scrapped (they are now as costly as English fee's) due to the pressure of vocational courses, which then reduces the number of people able to attend uni for a real degree because it is too expensive.
However, if you really want to you can go to the Disney University to learn to be the best Mickey mouse impersonator out there!
Re: Is a degree still worthwhile?
Those with lower academic ability.
Re: Is a degree still worthwhile?
I think that not everyone should attend to uni. Society is in the need of all the different kind of works, is as important the bus driver as the engineer who design it to have the society running. Universities should be about gaining knowledge, not about making money; and the people who should attend should be the ones with the ability to do it.
Of course in a system like the one we live the academic ability and qualifications are rewarded with more money, but in order to have people studying because they want and not only because they want to earn more money, the separation between one salary and another should be not that big. Otherwise we end up with a society where people need to have a degree in order to have financial security, and they don't care if it is a "mickey mouse degree" they just go because they have being told that having a degree is the only way to succeed in life. Or we have that saturated careers, like everyone seems to have a MBA nowadays, but not because they really want, just because they want to make money out of it, which at the end became counter-productive.
Society is in need of qualified technicians as well as professionals, postgraduates and researchers. But as not everyone has the abilities to succeed in intellectual works, neither all have the ability to be a good manual worker, or social worker, etc. Each of us are good at something, we should encourage the use of those abilities where they are needed.
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