I once had a look through the UCAS website - on a very bored day. I discovered there you could do a degree in the Spice Girls (music, media and management), Golf Green Management, and Beer Making.

The problem I find is that with so many people getting degrees nowadays most jobs expect you to have a degree before they will take you on (my mother's company expects their filing temps to have a degree!). And they expect you to have done more than just your degree - I got my job based on the work I'd done over last summer, my XTV work, and the convention organising I'd done for Sci-fi.



I drink to drown my sorrows. Unfortunately they've learnt how to swim.

Dave: Sorry. I wasn't meaning 'you' personally. It's a very difficult subject.

For what it's worth, my take is that the skills which 16-18 year olds have now are totally different to when we were 16-18. They're better at some things, worse at others.

The problem which we have in the UK is that we have the paradoxical dichotomy that it's both more and less important to have a degree now than 5-10 years ago.
More important for the reasons Jo just mentioned. Many companies now expect people to have a degree to do a job which, frankly, does not need one.
Less important because having a degree doesn't guarantee anything. Again, as Jo says, she got her job because of her extra-curricular activities.

The important thing - especially for our younger Fforumites - which agrees with what Dave says, is that people tend to find their niche in life. Everyone on the fforum seems pretty intelligent to me. Some have degrees, some don't. However, I don't think anyone round here would be shallow enough to judge anyone on that criterion.

Dave R...I agree that the educational system (anywhere, not just the UK) can fail a child. I think it all depends on what's the most effective way that individual learns. Some kids just are not made for mainstream schooling. I know for myself, I was completely bored with most of my classes. Usually I knew or understood more than my teachers...not their fault, they passed the tests for teacher licensing.

Unfortunately, in the US, public schools are massively underfunded and always have to address the the squeaky wheel in each classroom, which takes time away from the other children and always caters to the lowest common denominator. It leaves a lot of the more advanced children out.

Just as I was finishing high school, our state developed an Advanced Placement (AP) program where kids with good grades who were ahead of the curve could take college classes. The rub was that you had to have GREAT grades to get in there, you couldn't just test for it. And since I kinda slacked off cuz I was bored, my grades didn't qualify me for those classes. That pissed me off! Oh well!

In my current state, we have public magnate schools that address this problem to a point. They actually take test scores combined with grades to asses entrance. The Magnate schools have much more academically challenging courses and tend to keep only the top students. If a child isn't cutting it, they leave the school and go back to the old school to open a place for another deserving kid. The only problem is that there aren't enough of these schools yet, but I applaud them for trying! Oh, and there are also a few schools (not in my county) that have vocational schools attached. I think this is a great thing! Practical skills for those kids who don't have the skills necessary for University.

All I know is that I would have greatly benefitted by going to one of those magnate type schools or taking AP classes. I think it would have helped my motivation issues because I would have been interested in what was going on.

When we have kids, we think we'll probably send them to private schools if they have the aptitude. For instance, my one young brother-in-law is extremely smart and really could be taking college level courses right now, so one of these upper schools would really benefit him, whereas, his younger brother struggles and has definite motivation problems and would be much better off in a vocational school that could teach him to use his best talents of creativity, people skills and working with his hands.

I think the education systems really try, it's just trying to find funding to address it all that puts a monkey wrench (spanner!) in the works.

The thing about 'in my day we didn't have calculators' is that the correct response is 'well no bloody wonder you weren't allowed to use them in examinations, muppet'.

I agree with Rob that the nature of exams has changed so that people are now tested on different skills. For example, O-Level French was largely based on being able to recall the past nominative third participle (or somesuch nonsense) rather than any actual ability to (for example) tell the doctor you were about to die. I'm exagerating slightly, but not much. While a sound grasp of grammar is still required (even if you don't have to know the fancy names) there's an emphasis on having the language as a skill. For most of my GCSES I had to work from an O-Level textbook, and it placed far more emphasis on getting everything 'correct' than it did on being able to say something useful. How often *do* you need to be able to say that your house once had a blue door but then there was a big storm and you had to get it repainted?



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Or even "Bring a towel, please; then fetch the Vicar"?



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

Surely a monkey wrench is a monkey wrench. a spanner is something entirely different... (or have I got that wrong - I thought a monkey wrench was one of those adjustable thingummies in a sort of F-shape)



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

The phrases are interchangable, even if the tools may not be. In the US a spanner is called a wrench. And for some reason the type of wrench thown into the works is apparently more specific in our version of the cliche.



Post Edited (06-26-03 23:16)

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"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith

thank you Magda, well put! LOL

As our beloved leader used to say (before he found out how expensive it was) 'education, education, education'. I haven't got a degree (I keep toying with the notion of doing one on the Open Uni, just to prove to myself I could have got one if I'd tried). Having a degree (or any other sort of qualification) does not automatically make one a better person. It might mean you worked hard and showed ability. It might mean you fluked it on a mickey mouse course. Who can say. I've worked with several allegedly educated people who couldn't find their backside in a sack using both hands and a torch.

What is important is that people are educated appropriately, and I agree that this current mania for putting as many people as possible through uni is being done for dubious and political reasons; not that I begrudge anyone an education, but I feel that many people would be better off, and society would be better off in consequence, with more practical and less academic courses. The corollary of that is the such vocational qualifications need to be given the same status and respect as academic degrees do; a good sparks is to be prized above rubies, and there is a serious shortage of engineers.

Still, as many people with Philosophy degrees say, 'you want fries with that?'



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Philosophy-far too intriuging for me.

And PSD I will call you what you like. Or, if you're annoying me I'll call you what I like. That should give you some sort of barometer as to my mood. :)



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There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

I'm sure I passed my Higher French purely because I could use a dictionary well. No idea about the grammar, and the oral part, IIRC, you could pretty much memorise and chant out.

Many jobs these days have psychometric tests and aptitude tests and team-work tests and all that - a degree is just what you need to even be considered for an interview :o(

I fluked a (very bad) degree from a semi-decent university. At least, I thought it was semi-decent till they gave me a degree!



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Do something pretty while you can...