"... the Gove option will mean that a lot of bright working or lower-middle class kids will look at a potential £60,000 debt and they won't bother - unless they're at Oxbridge or doing a course with a pretty much guaranteed career at the end of it. Outside this small subset of courses, university will be restricted to those whose parents can subsidise them - i.e. the very rich.
That's not all bad - I can see cultural studies departments being disbanded across England and Wales. Economic forces will cut away swathes of courses and institutions, correcting the insane growth of the last 25 years.
But at that kind of cost the idea of education as a good in itself will wither away. Who's going to do archaeology without a private income ?"
And lo, it comes to pass (pay link):
"Nearly one in five degree courses has been scrapped since the trebling of maximum tuition fees to £9,000 as universities concentrate on popular subjects and drop courses that have too few applicants or cost too much to run. Officials figures show a cull of more than 2,600 in the number of courses available to applicants planning to start their degrees in 2013. More than 5,200 courses had already been removed for students beginning this year, the first to face the higher fees.
Some of the courses have been dumped by universities even after prospectuses went online earlier this year, and in some cases after applications had begun. The scrapped courses range from archeology at Birmingham to languages at Salford and London Metropolitan. The number of courses listed by UCAS has fallen from 43,360 to 35,501 in two years"
In all respects (you can read this one) ...
"Students beginning university next year will be only the second cohort to pay at the higher rate of tuition fees, which were increased to a maximum of £9,000 per annum last year – almost treble the previous limit. The fees increase led to a sharp drop in applications last year, but hopes that this was a temporary dip will have been hit by today's figures, which show an even greater proportional fall at this stage compared with last year among British school leavers.
In total 145,000 applications were received for all courses at UK universities by November 19 this year. This compares with more than 180,000 at the same stage in 2010, the year before the introduction of the new fees regime."
I think the new fees have also concentrated some people's minds when it comes to the value of a degree, which was sold to prospective students as "Graduates earn £15K more then non-grads ! You know it makes sense !". Alas, those figures, while true, failed to point out that those figures were based on the relative scarcity back of graduates back in the day, compared to a world where maybe 40% of their age cohort would be grads. It also failed to point out that in a few-graduates world, those grads were likely to be at the top of the intelligence range - and maybe that's why they were high earners. In a many-grads world, average grad intelligence will be lower.
But even for bright people the jobs market is tough. I know people with 2-1s from Russell Group uni's who are working in call centres at £6 an hour.
UPDATE - obviously, the solution to all these woes is to bring in more graduates from overseas.
13 comments:
I was surprised to read about Salford (my uni) dropping languages (my course). I headed straight over to the website, though, and all appears well. I wonder exactly which courses were shelved at Salford?
On immigration, it seems to me that, given all the extra space for students now that the indigenous have started to steer clear, now is the perfect time to start shipping in more rich African and Asian students. The government appears to be planning for a highly ethnically-stratified society where poor whites compete with Eastern Europeans, Turks, poor sub-continentals and assorted Africans, whilst select Sri Lankans, Indians, select Nigerians and Ghanaians, and, of course, elite whites get the plumb jobs.
I largely agree with your take on the motivations for mass immigration (i.e. cheap labour for the 'right', diversity for the 'left'), but there has to be some deliberate overriding policy at work here, pulling the strings.
All the best, Laban!
'Poor whites', now that is a downgrade.
Shlomo: "The government appears to be planning for a highly ethnically-stratified society where poor whites compete with Eastern Europeans,"
Whadya mean 'planning'?
That is the reality *now*. As someone who has gone from a £50,000 pa job to working in a call center at £8per hour, I take a daily note of the number of folk at the bus stop in the morning that might be indigenous. It's usually about 30% the rest being Asian or speaking some form of non English language, 'course, they could be Scottish.
I wrote to the secretary of state for education back when fees were being considered during the Blair years. I pointed out that young women going to university would leave with £30,000 debts at age 22. As a result this would mean that they would not seem very attractive as a possible partner to young men. It would also mean they and their educated partners would between them have debts of £60,000 to pay off before they could buy their first home together.
I was not quite correct. Most young women going to uni now are picking exactly those courses where there is no prospect of EVER getting a well paid job. Film, TV are particualrly popular. Some other wierd celeb inspired courses and courses that don't usually need degree educated people (degrees in modern dance for instance). As a result they leave university unable to get a job other than the cash till at John Lewis. This means they cannot ever pay off the debt which they know full well will be written off eventually.
This is the "law of unintended consequences" which the left wing fall for every time. We now have a university system that deliberately educates women in worthless subjects at the expense of (primarily) male taxpayers. You might as well go the whole hog and have a "Degree in Partygoing & Gold-digging".
"I largely agree with your take on the motivations for mass immigration (i.e. cheap labour for the 'right', diversity for the 'left'),"
Once again the "law of unintended consequences". We now have a population of South Asians that is doubling every decade. By 2050 it will likely have overtaken the indigenous population. By 2030 it will be growing at such a fast rate (1 million p.a.) that the UK economy won't be able to absorb the numbers and the economy will have collapsed, South Asian style. By 2080 the South Asian population will have spread throughout Europe in search of income and will have taken over the whole of the EU - the EU believe the same nonsense as the UK ruling class so they won't organise any resistance to it until it's far too late.
Nothing can stop that now. I was reading today about the plans of the UK government to improve teaching of British history. Why not? By 2040 British history will have ended so it will probably be taught to Australians rather like Roman history is taught in school today. The history of these islands will be supplanted by Islamic colonial history. The liberal-left will cease to exist. Nothing can stop this now. There aren't enough Brits left that still believe in a single unifying idea that would inspire them to stand and fight. They will just gradually drift away when they find they can't get a job in the UK anymore. The working class will leave first and the middle class will cling on a bit longer because they will find they have more to lose until their houses aren't worth anything anymore (rather like the whites in South Africa who are now trapped there). The upper classes have already effectively left the country, apart from royalty and Charlie boy is already making a ludicrous play to be the head of Islam in the UK. The underclass will probably put up a bit of a fight because they can't afford to go anywhere else.
Look at what happened in Bradford and London - this is gradually what will happen in the whole of the UK only the only places to go will be overseas.
There aren't enough Brits left that still believe in a single unifying idea that would inspire them to stand and fight.
Ive tried to point out to people that if the left cannot get to grips with social cohesion, socialism in one country amongst one ethnic group (yeah, I know thats 'national socialism')then how on earth is this supposed to work with a myriad of different groups?
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