Money and education

[texaslawchick]

The Pembroke College Foundation of North America in support of a small college at Oxford University gets 100 of my charitable contributions to higher education. In part, this is because I consider Pembroke to have been the best education that I received from the five institutions of learning that hound me for money every year. (St. John's School

Comments

[thatrachie]

Well we are moving from a system where only the academic minority go to university to a system which encourages everyone to go to university. So the old funding model no longer fits. University fees used to be entirely state-funded (my year was the last to benefit from these grants) and people have never really got to grips with the whole 'college fund' principle that is such a familiar concept in the US.

Personally, I think that having university education for all devalues a university degree. We grade everything in absolutes, rather than on the old percentage-based system* and that makes it very difficult to differentiate between the adequate, the able and the amazing.

I speak as someone who was certain that they would go to university and get a degree until I was actually at university and dropped out. Nobody at work even notices or remembers that I don't have a degree (the last Chief Executive was incredulous when I told him that I did not have one!)

* Grades for 'O' Levels (taken at 16 and now replaced by GCSEs) and 'A' Levels (taken at 18) used to be given out based on the performance of the cohort for the year, e.g. only the top 5% got an A grade and it was your bad luck if everyone was precociously clever that year.

[thatrachie]

Plus a big problem with encouraging everyone to get a degree is that it is simply not appropriate for many people. Far better to give them the opportunity to learn more vocational skills or take on an apprenticeship in a particular trade.

My boss regularly receives the CVs of people with sports and leisure degrees (or those about to graduate in related subjects) and we just don't know what to do with them, because what we actually want are junior admin staff who will learn and grow within the organisation, but all these graduate hopefuls have too much student debt to be able to take on a junior role.

And I don't disagree that people should have ambition and that 'anything is possible', but the fact is that in life not everyone can be the CEO. Nobody wants to be the junior admin but the CEO cannot run the company without them!

Higher education is one of my pet topics - apologies!!