Employers need employees with the right abilities to do the job. Is education fitting the nation’s workforce with the right abilities? When we compete on the world stage, how do we develop the right skills to grow the economy?
Posted by: Lord Montague | 20.08.2008 03:28pm
"These people" are thinking that they will do well in a degree that they can be passionate about- these are fields of learning that they will never again have time to explore as fully, and it will keep cultural learning going, which would otherwise be extinguished, creating a world full of Epsilons who know nothing but how tdo practical work. A poor society indeed.
The "faux degrees" you mention are not at all that, they are the heir and successor courses to the practical qualifications like City and Guilds and HNDs that people long, long ago gained at technical or technology colleges, striving bravely to keep learning while working, often into the small hours after a day of grinding work, and seeking the help of teachers to guide them and qualify them at long last. To knock this, now that the courses have achieved degree status, is to disrespect those who struggled part time for so long and who are at last honoured by their children's rights to do this in more reasonable conditions.
Your views set us back a good few decades.Thankfully, forward looking companies welcome graduates from all disciplines, and recognise the value of diversity of back ground in management training scheme entrants.
Maybe your next contribution will be about the wisdom of sending kids up chimneys and preventing s from reading?
Posted by: Kimberley Hopkinson | 29.08.2008 04:05pm
I believe it's 'horses for course'. Some people are great academically, others are better at practical hands-on stuff. We just need to see the value in both.
Posted by: Jonathan Cuffe | 29.08.2008 06:40am
As an employer I'm in the middle, I support Lating and the classics and will happily give someone a job if they have an a-level in either latin or greek, it shows more than mere erudite learning, a desire for the best from an early age, which is why I don't support "these people" - the idea that they work long and hard to get a piece of paper is their own families fault, I agree that some people do come from bad places and deserve a chance, fine. But the majority are learning later in life because they wouldn't do it when the rest of us did, slowing many of us down in the process so I don't accept them, simply because I'm not funded to help people 20 years behind where they should be.
Also: I don't accept GCSE's or A-levlels in media, drama, IT (because you shouldn't have to prove you know it nowadays), art, sports science and so on. Its not just the faux vocational degrees, its also the faux qualifications before that - and it is those, by pretending to be worth something, that keep the majority as epsilons
Posted by: Kimberley Hopkinson | 27.08.2008 08:17am
That's funny. And are you really a Lord?
The first guy sounds pretty bitter. But I work in IT too, and it's true - people who did not do a course in it are often better than those that did.
The technology industry moves so fast. How can a degree course keep up compared to learning on the job?