You confuse two issues Melanie. The universities are short of money BECAUSE of the vast increase in student numbers; that has caused the main problem.

As for the Tories changing policy on this: you have obviously more contacts in Central Office than most,because Michael Howard said funding was a separate issue from tuition fees, and they will vote against Labour plans - a point put in print by Tim Collins in the Independent on Sunday.

So, we really need to decide if we need 144+ Universities when only a decade ago we had 44......and where all these graduates are going....Gordon Brown has tried to employ them by increasing the size of the public sector

If you have so many students and no up-front fees the State must finance their tuition until repayments flow....this will increase public spending in the meantime.....

Further, the IFS suggests that £3000 will do NOTHING for Universities and that fees of £12.000-£18.000 a year are required to fund the system....after all isn't Yale charging $36.000 a year already ?

So which jobs outside The City can pay to make such debts worthwhile ? The US has a big economy with lots of jobs at high pay....so taking an ME or EE degree there will pay rewards but not in the UK.

Europe does not reward Education and fees will make whole areas uneconomic like Medicine (Doctors and Nurses); Research, and you won't get DR DAvid Kellys in future - the two degrees he took and the special knowledge he gained to be paid just £60.000 in Central London as he approached retirement....less than a Spin Doctor.

The Universities want to push open this door. Labour came in in 1997 and abolished GRants and brought in Fees; re-elected they set about increasing Fees and making them Variable; next will come Uncapping; and a future Tory Government may decide to cut the Universities adrift so most will liquidate and Johnny will be paying back loans for a degree from a University which no longer exists.

This policy is half-baked; no wonder Blair is committed to it

Having returned to University as a mature student, I have found the academic standard, for my chosen course, to be rigorous and demanding. Exactly as it should be.

However, I have also noted a number of students opting for degree courses in what are, essentially, vocational qualifications.

It is insufficient just to say that the country needs better vocational qualifications. Of course it does, but in what subjects and to what standard?

When the 1944 Education Act was passed, industry was not consulted. The Trades Unions were, also the church. If the country, and the politicians, are serious about our children and grandchildrens' futures, the debate over education and exam standards must include industry. Unless its needs are fulfilled, increasingly, we will rely on the design and manufacture of goods to be supplied from outside the UK.

This also means that GCSE and A level standards must be meaningful. It is not the job of universities to lenghten degree courses in order to introduce remedial teaching, because basic education has failed.

As things stand,were my grandchildren about to commence their working lives, I would advise them to look elsewhere. They are 11, 9 and 7. There is not a lot of time in which to improve our educational system to such an extent that children of their age will get the benefit.

From my own discussions with University Lecturers, it is also apparent they do not believe that 50% of school leavers have the necessary aptitude, or determination, to obtain a decent degree. Yet the financial pressure is such, they are being forced to accept a lower standard, for fear of attracting Government opprobrium.

The government's latest efforts to convince its backbenchers against a revolt over university fees, amounts to robbing Peter to pay Paul.

All these different allowances, for the poor student, have to be administered somehow. This is most likely to done by, either increasing the number of 'pen pushers', sorry, Civil Servants, or by the Universities increasing their staff to deal with the complexities of more social engineering.

Funding this social engineering will either mean raising more tax, or increasing university fees for those better able to afford them.

There must come a point, where those who are marginally able to fund fees, become unable to do so. If you like, the 'new university poor'.

It's typical of this governments efforts to be all things to all people. Lacking as it does any consistent or coherent policies on anything, except getting re-elected.

Wot, no Caroline, Romulus, Frank Pulley et al!

George:

Why don't you comment on the thread that Melanie has initiated, old chap, rather than waiting with bated breath for the comments of others? Give us the benefit of your wit and wisdom. We know we can always rely on Melanie for logic. How about taking a shot yourself at this very important issue. We're all eyes, so to speak. I'm sure Caroline and Rom would be only too happy to read what you have to say about it, before commenting themselves.

Gareth aka George:

Left Alliance keeping an eye on Melanie's blog then? Whaddaya think? Come on, don't be shy.

"Left Alliance keeping an eye on Melanie's blog then?"

If this is so it should be taken as a backhanded compliment.

What can one say, other than to agree with every word? I have been agreeing with all of Melanie's written words for about 10 years now: ever since I first met her in "All Must Have Prizes".
Of course government should keep its nose out of the universities; just as it should keep its nose out of almost everything else it's involved with. I think there is a strong consensus that Labour's policy of getting 50% of our school leavers into university is quite ridiculous. The universities should be left alone to cater at a very high level for those who they consider are capable of benefitting from a higher education. Government involvement should be no more than making grants to those who are considered worthy but cannot afford the fees. This would doubtless involve "means testing" but as long as that is fairly conducted, I don't see it as a problem.
If the ridiculous volume of applicants was reduced to those who stood a reasonable chance of graduating after being subjected to meaningful examination, then there is no reason why the universities couldn't charge appropriate fees with government chipping in for those unable to afford them.
There has always been an adequate provision for further education - both vocational and academic - for those whose abilities were better suited by such institutions.
It is trite to say it but all of our social ills/problems can be laid at the feet of socialist ideology.

Profile of a new university:

In 6 years, from 1995-1996 to 2001-2002, latest figures available, all in the public domain:

Academic numbers have decreased by 7%, 650 to 607.

Academics have decreased from 42% to 37% of the total staff population.

Management numbers have increased by 66% from 83 to 138.

i.e. 1 manager to every 4-5 academics.

Administrative numbers have increased by 27% from 392 to 499.

i.e. nearly 1 administrator for every academic.

Management and administrative staff have increased from 31% to 39% of the total staff population.

F/T student numbers have decreased by 9% from 8439 to 7687.

P/T student numbers have increased by 293% from 3593 to 10541.

Attempts were made at staff cuts in 1997 and 2000, aimed at academics only.

The trends will most likely continue and you may draw your own conclusions. (Yes, "trendy" courses are much more popular than the hard maths and hard science of yore.)

All this twiddling of knobs, as though crouched in front of a crystal set, is typical of the backward looking socialist government and Tony Dim. S-o-o-o-o early 20th Century. Twiddle, twiddle, twiddle. Oooh, now we think we've got something coming through faintly ... Oops! some Labour backbenchers moved and jiggled the set! Okay, everyone be quiet while I try and get a signal again!

Dear god! Let's have something iconoclastic and bold for a change. Privatise the real universities. Let the others revert to their technical college status. If each county wishes to run a university along the lines of American state universities, fine. The fees would be cheaper, but degrees would still have to be paid for, even at less prestigious establishments.

British students in their expectation of extending childhood coddling through the age of 22 are greedy and repulsive. The taxpayers shouldn't be paying for food and lodging for people of 18 and over, and they should no longer be paying for their education, either.

They're young adults. Their future is in their own hands. If they want a career, they should be paying to win good qualifications. If they want to take a job swiping through credit cards in a petrol station in order to finance a three-year course in "media studies", that is their choice. I doubt that many would. If they're going to work to pay their way, they're going to want something that pays dividends after graduation.

Let Brits work their way through college. This winnows out the passengers. Hire students, rather than outside staff, to work in the university library, the canteen, answering phones and doing janitorial work.

It's a truism of human nature that people value what they pay for. American students apply themselves and grasp at every little shred of knowledge they can grab because they want value for their money. British students think it somehow their right to be supported by the taxpayer while cutting classes, getting drunk and getting up at 11. Unless Britain lumbers forward into the 21st Century, all the best young minds will be headed for the United States and Australia for their higher education. And how many of them will come home again?

I pray Caroline that British Universities never get the bureaucracy endemic in US institutions....it used to take 11 signatures to get an OHP in a lecture room at Harvard.......and the number of admin buildings was truly awesome, but then again the Pentagon finances Harvard University like many US institutions through defence contracts....just look at the Pentagon Procurement Lists

The Ivy League and other top universities in the US are superb, Romulus, no matter your cavils. This is why people are deserting their native shores, hungering for a taste of it.

Instead of being so defensive and huffy, European institutions ought to zap up the blinds and throw open the windows and breathe in the fresh air, rathering than mouldering away in medieval dreams. The reason the US comes up with every new technological innovation and every new way of thinking, is they are disciplined as well as clever. American college kids plough through homework, incorporate it and use it, whereas many British students hope to get by on charm - because they're lazy. And they're lazy not because they're stupid, but because someone else is paying.

I challenge the readers here to come up with one widely accepted technological innovation, or one recent successful political theory that originated in Britain. It's been US territory for decades. And it most assuredly was not timid-but-popular Tony Blair who developed the bold intention to redefine the political map of the Middle East. That daring vision goes to George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice and Co.

Socialism is cotton wool for the brain. Unless Britain can educate its young up to the best American standards, it will join dying Europe rather than going forward with the New World, plus China and India, into the 21st Century. Blair and his confreres are living in the socialist world of Beatrice and Sydney Webb of 100 years ago, before communism failed.

I doubt if you will be seeing that many British students staying in the US after completing their degrees CURRENTLY, Caroline.

According to the US Immigrationa service's website, UK citizens have been declared ineligible for the annual Green Card lottery (now accepting applications for Green Card awards in 2005.) They have not explained why, but they do emphasize their commitment to immigration "diversity." Perhaps UK citizens are not diverse enough for the Immigration service?

Why take in highly educated people who speak English as their native tongue when there are so many poorly educated non-English-speaking people the US can take in instead?

You sound ridiculous Caroline....I have experienced Ivy League US and Uk......I do not have your ignorance of technology.....

I refer to the jet engine whose technology was given...yes given to the US during WW" and the US GOvt ordered GE to develop jet engines and P&W to stick with piston engines

LCD displays developed at Birmingham University

Contact Lenses developed in Communist Czechoslovakia

Do you really want to display your ignorance Caroline ? I can see you do not have a technical education or you would know where the motor car was invented; where the tank was invented, where the television was invented, where the radio was invented, where the aircraft carrier was invented, where the Bessemer Process was developed, where the electric motor was developed, where the atom was first split, where the tape-recorder was invented, where the moving picture was developed, where photography was invented...........oh Caroline, you display your igniorance when you try to be so supercilious

Name a recent political theory from the Us that's been succesful ?

US College degrees are toilet paper Caroline...it is modular crap for credits....Britainis copying this farcical system of multiple choice nirvana.

Just which leading British University did you attend ? Which leading US one ?

The US system ONLy works at Masters level because College is Sixth Form

Who cares about Tony Blair - he is ready for the lucrative board positions US corporations will pay him as his reward....take him...we don't want him.

The jet engine? Fifty/sixty years ago - and the British film with Trevor Howard propagandising it was Britain which broke the sound barrier when all the time it was American Chuck Yeager? All the examples you cite are tiny or flawed.

What I am referring to, as you know, is the vast, tumultuous flow of technology for the last 50 years. The years that have defined the Anglosphere.

Susan - Your point was much more telling. They've disqualified graduates from Britain in their lottery? Who else have they disqualified? Any idea? People whose mother tongue is English as opposed to Urdu?

I really think the US is headed down the same slope to oblivion as Britain, except ten years later. There's still time to save it. George Bush is a start, but the universities are infested with socialist fleas and I don't know how one gets rid of them. Scratching doesn't work.

Romulus - I don't mind if you think I'm ridiculous. Fine.

Get British students out of the dependency trap. The establishment is breeding socialist voters, and socialists think "the government" owes them a living - which puts the government, rather than the populace - in charge. Never good. Get British students away from dependency on the state.

Churck Yeager did not invent the jet engine - Frank Whittle did. Rolls-Royce were testing it in 1943 - look at the PRO records...Germany too was working on it....but not the US.

You have absolutely no idea about Universities in Britain....and you rabbit on about Socialism without any coherent understanding of how little socialism exists in the UK which is less socialist than the US......certainly more free market.

Just try bus a US radio station, airline, or even try to run a British ship carrying coastal freight; imagine trying to buy into the US Post Office ? Imagine trying to take over a Us telephone company; or broadcast outlet....poor Rupert Murdoch had to become a US Citizen before he was allowed to........

Cast the mote from your eye Caroline

BTW Just what is this 'dependency trap' - it costs £2800 pa to live at Trinity College Oxford, and then the tuition fees, and food costs....with no tax deductions........and in the Us with Scholarships for 'minorities' if you are Black Hispanic and Female you hit the jackpot !

JUst who issues those Federal Loans, and VA Loans, and who allows tax deductions for College loans......all subsidies.

The US spends a high proportion of tax dollars subsidising education at Colleges and Universities

Funny how Tip O'Neill rigged the ballot in favour of Ireland, now the US excludes Britain but includes Northern Ireland with Ireland........must be some political measure here....but Germany is still in the lottery

Well, that puts Britain in its place, along with China

Eligibility to apply for this Program is determined by a person’s place of birth not citizenship or residence. Persons born in any one of the following 15 excluded countries cannot participate in the Program for the year 2005. The excluded countries are: the United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland)

Melanie,
I believe your concern may well be misplaced. There are two conflicting financial pressures which are coming into play.

1) The provision of enormous student loans from the public purse.
2) The unwillingness of sensible students to allow themselves to be saddled with lifetime debt repayments, when they cannot see well enough paid jobs at the end of 3-4years.

Point 1) will ensure that the PSBR levels will either increase or there will be big tax increases.( or both)

Point 2) ensures that there are going to be a lot of unemployed acedemics.

Speaking for myself, I would not have considered going to university under the terms proposed. I could have still have made a very good income by using my wits within the commercial world. Remarkably few CEOs of growth companies have degrees.

This year, I understand that 65% of all IT graduates will be unemployed! The rest are seeing starting salaries as low as £0! Borrow money?

My own recent experience in high tech industries has indicated that the academic calibre of the average engineering graduate is now in the bottom quartile of the norm of 50 years ago. I shudder to think what the standard is in "Sociology". I think the bright ones have gone into Law, Financial services or emigrated.

We do still have some outstanding original thinking graduates from financially poor backgrounds, but these are now going to be lost unless Scholarships become available.

I fail to understand why the educators who set examination standards do not generate their own version of A levels and tell the government to get lost. It may take a few years to get worthwhile penetration of the schools, but it must be worth it. It's called "competition" ( another "dirty" word, like "achievement"?)

You commented on the Conservatives. I understand that Michael Howard published the aims of the party in the Times. What a waste of money. The elector who can put them into power reads the Sun. Tony Bliar understands this, but until the Conservatives do, they are unelectable!
Please keep writing.

Until c. 1975 it was not a requirement that Lawyers or Accountants have a degree; they had an apprenticeship system known as Articles.

Seemks silly to have huge educational debt and then become a lowly paid lawyer...although for women it is supposed to have the highest ROI of any degree.

Did anyone hear/see the Andrew Oswald research at the University of Warwick (Radio 4 a while ago...the programme at 3 or 4.30pm) ? He showed that British graduates are the most unhappy in Europe, that Architects are the most despairing; and that the levels of job dissatisfaction were enormous

Education is not necessarily a pointer to being happy at work. Most dissatisfied are people with bachelor degrees according to the British Household Panel Survey, less so for people with masters and doctors qualifications. Andrew Oswald said: "It is my guess that it is disillusioned high aspirations" that produces the problem with first degree graduates. It was suggested in one of the break-out groups that politicians who think there can never be too many graduates should pay more attention to this problem.

http://www.esrc.ac.uk/newsociety/whosecareer.html

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/oswald/jobsatisfaction2003.pdf

Many university graduates are currently unhappy inBritain, for instance.Seventh, London and surrounding areas have the lowest jobsatisfaction. This is partly because of the commuting, which we knowhas bad effects on people’s mental health.So, what should you do if you want to be happy? Work for a charity or be self-employed. Become old. Don’t get over-qualified. Find a place where the boss does not control the pace ofwork. Avoid the capital. Be a woman.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/1682832.stm

Top of the happiness league are people who studied medicine or agriculture.

And the most miserable are those who studied architecture

No, Romulus, Texan Chuck Yeager didn't invent the jet engine. He was the first pilot to break the sound barrier. Britain made a movie with Trevor Howard breaking the sound barrier, because by that time, Britain had stopped being in the forefront of innovation and daring.

Britain's problem is, they think small. Instead of coming up with new ideas and exploring new paths, they fidget around with the old ideas, expecting a little fiddling around to breathe life into them - if they could just tweak it right. If it isn't working, throw it out for heaven's sake and start with a new sheet of paper.

Germany makes incremental change as engineers do and still provides every automotive status symbol in the US. There is not a single US producer with a luxury brand or capable of withstanding Japanese and European competition....what is it now Caroline, 40% market share to non-US groups ?

You can continue to buy on credit so long as China continues to buy your bonds...Communist China now holds the welfare of US consumers in its hands as they collect your IOUs.

But just for interest's sake - the largest single foreign investor in the US is Great Britain; the largest single foreign investor in Great Britain is the USA......

I don't care if Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, or if you have been watching Trevor Howard.......I do know that the US only put a man in space with a Saturn V rocket because it had a former SS-Sturmbannfuehrer designing the rockets....the Soviets also had his compatriots building their's.

Still, I tire of this exercise in phallic supremacy...your's is obviously the biggest and the best Caroline !

Caroline, I don't know why UK citizens have been excluded from the Green Card lottery for this go around. Perhaps because they have reached their alloted "share" in prior lotteries? It's not necessarily a language thing because Republic of Ireland citizens are allowed to enter, and others that have been excluded include the Russians.

Rom, Tip O'Neill's been gone for a very long time, and you are being paranoid about his influence on immigration policy.

Personally I think that UK citizens should be given a priority to work and live in the US always, simply in recognition of the fact that the UK is our best ally and has been for nearly 100 years.

Eleven years ago I was living in Bermuda and planning my retirement. I wanted very much to retire to the US but the US consul in Bermuda informed me that there was no Green Card allocation for UK citizens at that time. Seems like we have been "banned" for some time!

Henry, that's a disgrace! But why would you ever want to leave a paradise like Bermuda?

Far to expensive to live there as a retiree, Susan. Expats like me were never allowed to own property so we were at the mercy of landlords. A reasonable two bedroom cottage/apartment rents today for about US$3500 per month.
In any case, I love the USA and most of what it stands for.

Romulus - pissing contests are an adolescent boy thing. I'm neither.

I didn't include the Germans in my condemnation of the tininess of British thinking. I haven't travelled so far down the EU route as to confuse the two countries.

Susan - seems the "liberals" (read thought fascists) have hijacked American immigration policy as they have British immigration policy. In Britain, it's so hijacked we don't have one any more.

If we want to co-exist comfortably with India and China, two immense powers full of intelligent, diligent and ambitious people, we need to strengthen, not weaken, the anglosphere. Oh! Maybe that's the plan!

Given the speed and raw energy with which both countries (ancient civilisations, both of them, so they have plenty to build on) are surging ahead, I would say the world will have changed within as short a span as 20 years. We will have Americans and Brits wanting to immigrate to India.

The third major power should be the Anglosphere, but not if we continue, as Tony Blair desires, to let it dribble away onto the wet dishcloth of socialist Europe and allow in the ragtag of the world, instead of only the best.

Henry, I suspected that probably money was the problem for you. I honeymooned in Bermuda 8 1/2 years ago and I was shocked at the price of food. We probably spent $1,000 on restaurant meals alone over two weeks of vacation there.

Caroline, I know three British couples who've been living here for donkey's years -- I wonder how they got in then? Maybe on an H1B visa (where a company gets a visa and residency papers for a foreign worker through "sponsorship")? One of our friends, an Englishman who's been living here for 25 years and has American children, has finally decided to apply for citizenship.

I agree that citizens of the Anglosphere should be allowed to live and work freely in each other's countries.

I just had a horrible thought -- maybe the UK government has asked the US NOT to include UK citizens in the Green Card lottery? -- because they are afraid of losing too much tax base? Socialists really hate it when the productive, law-abiding people start to withdraw from their giant Ponzi schemes.

Melanie mentions the possibility of the Russell Group universities opting out of state control and financing themselves by taking in more postgraduates and foreign students. Well, I am a PhD student who is also a British citizen, and I am in fact outnumbered in my subject area (theology) by non-British students. This is because there aren't enough British students applying, because it's almost impossible to get grants to study PhDs in the humanities. The truth is that humanities departments need foreign students to balance their books. But also, a lot of humanities subjects have been taught in such an obscure, fashionable 'postmodernist' way in the last few years that most clever students (if they aren't conceited) don't really feel enthusiastic about opting for postgraduate study in the first place. (If everything about the past, or about great literature and art, is always 'deconstructed' and 'critiqued' as 'traditional' (bad), Christian (terrible, apparently) or patriarchal (dreadful!), it can never be appreciated as anything except a purported instrument of 'power', and so you feel as if you haven't learnt anything at all (except bits of social theory). This isn't exactly a recipe for enthusing students to do research in the humanities for a few years.
Plus, university lecturers get paid badly so why would a bright young British person want to become one given that it would take years for them to be able to afford a house. If a British student were to become a postgraduate in the humanities today, they would very likely end up in so much debt it wouldn't be worth it. The result is an alarming deficit of people competent in intellectual subjects and therefore able to challenge the corrupting philosophies so prevalent in government and public life.

"Rom, Tip O'Neill's been gone for a very long time, and you are being paranoid about his influence on immigration policy. "

Actually O'Neill removed any limit on the Irish, all the others have a quota within the lottery. It is an affront that the ONLY part of the UK to be included in the lottery is Northern Ireland......this is because like Hitler over Sudetenland - Ireland hankers after taking British territory into its 'ethnosphere' and the US State Dept seems to concur.

I wonder how many foreign students pay their own way....as opposed to their governments paying their fees ? I know some rich kids draft-dodge by coming to the UK to study where they get free health care....students in the US must pay for it......and a crack at a residence visa.

Susan...your idea is exactly the reason Cecil Rhodes created his Scholarships....to create International Guardians of World Peace under the British Empire

Romulus, what decade are you living in? The US has not had a military draft for a generation now. No need for rich kids to draft-dodge. People do like to study abroad you know, and having Oxbridge on your resume still cuts a lot of ice in the US.

Really, have you flipped your lid?

M says it's almost impossible to get grants in his field. Maybe this means no one values his field enough to offer grants. The market should prevail. If his studies are needed, they will get funded. I don't mean this to be cold and cruel, but socialism is destructive to mind and spirit and anything that doesn't attract capital to pursue should be pursued privately, although reduced circumstances may be part of the deal.

Susan - your horrible thought is awful! And credible! It's not the tax deal, though - or at least, not largely. They can't allow too many smart people to find jobs (and visas and eventual citizenship) overseas, because the net departure of bright people would mean they would be left with the dregs. (Actually, this is already being documented.) The vulgar, matey, crude, why-work society? (which still knows how to demand its "rights", despite lack of contributions) and low level illegal immigrants. Not enought to support the socialist dream of equality for all, if those who are smarter choose not to be equal with the dregs. And go overseas. For good.

I believe your horrible thought could be an arrow which has found its mark. Thanks for pointing an alert to this.

M - I didn't mean to be disrespectful of what you are doing. It's just that I believe that the market will deliver what we need. I didn't mean to imply in any way that the market doesn't need what you are able to offer; just that perhaps public funding is a dead end street and you have a chain around your ankle for life. Private enterprise is always the first to spot what could be valuable!

Caroline, there was an interesting editorial in the Wall Street Journal last year, in which the writer proposed that the best way the US could punish France for its duplicity would be to simply uncap Green Card quotas for French citizens and let all come who want to. . .first on the planes would be their beleagured and highly productive Jewish population.

I think it is valuable to support the humanities even if they don't show a net "profit" ratio for our society. I think M's point is that the reason no one wants to fund humanities studies nowadays is because it's all become just po-mo, West-hating crap, and therefore society doesn't see any value in it. I certainly don't.

I'm not interested in paying for my kid or anyone else's kid to learn how "Pride and Predudice" is really just an instrument of oppression to keep one-eyed 19th Century lesbian woolcarders in their place, or whatever.

"Romulus, what decade are you living in? The US has not had a military draft for a generation now. No need for rich kids to draft-dodge. People do like to study abroad you know, and having Oxbridge on your resume still cuts a lot of ice in the US.

Really, have you flipped your lid?"

You have flipped your lid Susan, I never mentioned the USA. There are other countries on the face of the planet with a military draft, esp. in Asia where there are some quite rich people.

I am living in 2004 and I know that the US contains only 6% global population, I am referring to the other 94%

"M - I didn't mean to be disrespectful of what you are doing. It's just that I believe that the market will deliver what we need. I didn't mean to imply in any way that the market doesn't need what you are able to offer; just that perhaps public funding is a dead end street and you have a chain around your ankle for life. Private enterprise is always the first to spot what could be valuable!"

So why does the US Government have a shortage of Arabic translators ? Why do so few people in the US study postgraduate engineering, and why is it Indians and Koreans who do.......is that because the Us prefers to buy technological products from Taiwan, Korea and China, or Japan ?

If you studied Economics you would learn about 'market failure'.......none of the US technological advances came from the market, they came from monopoly business or government sponsorship......the US pumps tax dollars into most technologies, just as @Small Govt' George Bush is doing right now.......in the USA "Socialism comes through the Defence Appropriations"
- I suggest you ask your Senator to get you a copy of the Pentagon Procurement List it is great reading

Well, glad that clears it up then Rom. The context of your post made it sound like you were referring to American citizens, that's all.

Rom, you are confusing me with Caroline again. Caroline doesn't have a Senator; she has an MP.

Poor Caroline, an MP......what use is he, loyal to party and slavishly obeyed the Whips........

Just how US Citizens could get into the US after Oct 26 beats me, I mean no country on earth will have biometric passports by then......so the US Citizens will need a waiver....still they will have lots of empty planes, and hotels to stay in since Johnny Foreigner will not be able to get in - he will still be queueuing from 7am in Grosvenor Square waiting for some apparatchik to sell him/her a $100 Visa........should reduce hotel prices in Florida around Election Time.

Mea culpa....I posted the above not Susan....

Did anyone see the film 'Falling Down'....that was a displaced technical specialist dumped by the people he had trained for.....and when MIT graduates in nuclear engineering are going to Wall Street to develop computer models for hedge-fund trading, it is fair to ask if this is the ideal use of such talent.

We have engineers going to work in finance to develop programs to trade huge blocks of corporate ownership for marginal spreads at huge volume.......is this a proper use of graduates.

In Germany, Korea, Japan, USA, Britain fewer and fewer study engineering and enter finance......the rewards are disproportionate and as fees increase the only way to pay down loans is to go for the big money up front.

Henry Royce and W. O. Bentley, the former poor, the latter middle class, both apprenticed in rail-engineering works and became practical engineers.......that is not necessarily the path today, but I can still have a great discussion with former apprentices who can strip and rebuild aero and car engines with pride; why is their know-how 'low-grade' because they did not go to University; and just how many engineering graduates could strip a 23-litre Merlin engine and rebuild it ?

Is the only knowledge worth having to be imparted in a lecture-theatre ? Doesn't this produce administrators rather than doers ?

The system we had in 1980 did not seem so bad...Sandwich Courses, Block/Day Release, University, Polytechnic, Technical College, CAT......why did John Major destroy it all and let Labour destroy the Pension System then impose huge debt burdens on students ?

In Germany the SPD has decided to create a Stanford !!! It is a gimmick. The politicians interfere in German Univerisities on staffing, courses, and have made them mediocre as Labour will do here.......German students are not 'selected' by Universities but 'allocated' under numerus clausus; they have no real identification with their institutions, no alumni associations, and know few of their contemporaries.....the Anglo-Saxons built the best universities.......Labour is trying to turn Britain's into mass-educational degree mills with anonymity and mediocrity....just look at Germany !

Rom - D'accord. Brits were definitely better educated in the 70s because the choice of secondary/tertiary education was suited to a wide variety of personal and society's needs. John Major was an absolute disaster for Britain in so many ways. By his inability to make a decision, squandered all that the Tories under Mrs Thatcher had built up, and lost all the momentum and sense of purpose. It was Major's monumental weakness of character which allowed Blair to slither in to office.

I really cannot see the necessity for point scoring between Romulus, Caroline and Susan. To coin a phrase, Education is too important ot be considered by Teachers.

The fact is that as far back as 1868, Mathew Arnold the poet and schools inspector, in a report to the then government, said that the British education system is behind that of its competitors. That's ok then, nothing's changed. Phew! what a relief, I thought we might be in for a revolution in education.

The real issue is what is to be done. Both the US and UK systems have advantages and disadvantages. As far as the British system is concerned, basic education weak and this is reflected in the amount of remedial courses created at universities.Small wonder they are financially strapped.

The apprenticeship system was abandoned by Harold Wilson's Labour government. It needs to be reinvigorated. But, what gets lost sight of, is that increasing the numbers with degrees, assumes there is industrial capacity that requires a degree for the post.

My own experience of industry, suggests this is not so. In my view, few jobs need degrees, and those that do, want rigour, not rubbish.

John Richmond, I've no idea about Romulus, but I have strong doubts that Susan is a teacher and I most assuredly have never harboured one nanosecond's desire to be one myself. So I'm not sure I get the point of your first paragraph.

Your point about worthless degrees merits some thought, though. What application all the tens of thousands of graduates holding degrees in media studies think their piece of paper is going to have is beyond imagination. Similarly, there's a college or university or something in Wales offering degrees in surfing. Again, how stupid would you have to be to imagine any employer was going to find this of even minimal interest in a job applicant?

Yet, other than Barbra Streisand and similar intuitive mental giants who didn't even need to finish high school in order to instruct the world, most Americans do have degrees. Even someone intent on going into his dad's plumbing business or someone whose life revolves around repairing car engines is, in the US, likely to have a degree. And the mental discipline required to finish the course and get the degree no doubt serves them well once they're occupied in their chosen career path.

But your plumbers and office workers are likely to have degrees in standard, not whacko, subjects - in other words, subjects which have required them to think about problems and prepare papers. And their grade average is what gets them employment.

So, if the British government is intent on keeping young people out of the job market and off the unemployment register for three or four years, perhaps they should be encouraging universities to offer core degrees that teach people mental discipline, to think problems through and prepare solutions and be evaluated on that basis. Then a potential employer would have a yardstick for judging.

In Britain, a degree has always been viewed as so exclusive a thing that the hordes now "studying" - if that is not too strong a word - for pointless and easy degrees think they're going to sail into glamourous and highly paid employment as a TV producer or a merchant banker or similar. But the prestige is now devalued to the point that graduates with pointless degrees write huffy letters to the newspapers complaining that they can't find employment. They have been led to believe they won't need to take entry level positions if they have this formerly prestigious thing called a degree. It's a class thing.

Once the egalitarian American usage is adopted, of employers requiring degrees as proof of ability to stick with a task and think problems through then the worthless passports will fall by the wayside.

Meanwhile, those of a practical bent, who attend polytechnics, will never lack for employment.

John Richmond should not assume everyone is a teacher, being better-educated than most businessmen hardly means I should 'teach' them, still few of them would be capable of learning !

As for 1868 you might reflect that Prussia introduced compulsory state education long before Great Britain; that was what was meant....and the Lords Committee reporting in 1870 commented on German Technical Education which is why Britain created Technical Colleges........post-1944 all technical education was swamped by expansion of liberal arts. You may genuflect and see it all as one big story, but each chapter is different.

Actually Margare Thatcher abolished apprenticeships together with the training levy......cf Kenneth Baker MP

The fact is that Education everywhere is being used by politicians as their new touchstone to create jobs.......it is a bit like giving all your savings to an uncle so he can make you all rich at the roulette wheel.

If we send everyone to University, one might turn out to be another Honda (who did not go btw) and build a new car business......or a Robert Bosch.......it is asinine as only politicians can be.

Now that call-centres cannot rescue their economic disaster, it is Education which will spawn thousands of new Unilevers and Daimlers......hi-tech firms do not emply that many people.

It is pure gimmick....Comprehensive Schools were supposed to make the country great with grammar school education for all and push Britain pack to a major economic power......and now comprehensive universities are the answer.........

Caroline, are there anf Polytechnics left ?

Don't know if they still have polytechnics.

"Comprehensive universities" - good phrase!

In the US a degree in a sensible subject tells an employer what he needs to know, initially, about a candidate. That person is disciplined; can postpone pleasure in order to complete a task (study for exams and write papers); has the stick-to-it-iveness to complete the course; can accept authority. This is a good yardstick. what is more, he has probably had to work part time to pay for his education.

A toy degree in Britain means none of those things. The kid will have been supported by the taxpayer, so doesn't necessarily have any motivation other than delaying adult responsibility for three years. As everything's in "modules", they don't necessarily have to pass exams or write papers. As it's a toy course, the teacher doesn't have any great mental commitment to it.

If we are to widen university attendance, and why not? - then we must adopt the pragmatic American approach. Even a minor degree from a junior college in the US is looked upon as proof that someone was motivated and disciplined - especially as many people who, through their circumstances, attended a two-year junior college (still no mean achievement when you consider they had to work their way through) are motivated to go on and get a more serious degree later - or over several years. It's democratic and practical, like America.

"In a press conference launching the CSSP campaign yesterday, Carly Fiorina, HP's CEO, said: "There is no job that is America's God-given right any more. We have to compete for jobs as a nation. Our competitiveness as a nation is not inevitable. It will not just happen."

Speaking at the same conference, Intel CEO Craig Barrett said the annual US bill for agricultural subsidies - $30bn - represented an investment "in the industries of the 19th century". By contrast, the annual federal investment in science is just $5bn, he noted. "

www.theregister.co.uk

So how does loading students with educational debt make matters more competitive when governments in India and Malaysia use public money to turn out graduates ?

Ohhh! If only Caroline were a teacher. We might then produce a few more children through our education system with insight, common sense, literary ability and an a mature sense of humour. But unfortunately, if Caroline were to suddenly get a yen for it, she wouldn't last five minutes in the bureacratic pc world of leftist social engineering. Goodbye Mr Chips! Indeed.

Here's another thought: how would you like Melanie to be the Principal of your child's school? What a blissful thought!

Yes Frank, but unfortunately what we are likely to get is a real mess. Did you read Dr Wendy Piat of IPPR today ? Labour now transfers its special advisers to the IPPR (she drew up this scheme at No 10) and now at the 'independent think-tank' says how super it is........just like Dr Heaven Crawley (!) at IPPR tells us how we need unrestricted immigration......she used to be at the Home Office.......

We had a Labour Party protesting about dentists leaving the NHS......now few are staying. They want to get BUPA to run private GP Clinics...but the shortage is of GPs not clinics.

Then Wendy Piat says "we cannot have the cleaner subsidising the Consultant with her taxes" !!!!

a) Cleaners do not pay taxes, they receive them as Working Families Tax Credit

b) Progressive Income Tax means doctors pay more than cleaners

c) The cleaner "subsidises" the Consultant by paying his salary in the NHS.....I suppose the cleaner would rather pay privately and see him in Harley Street !

So, if 65% entrants to Medical School are today women, maybe the thought of juggling £45-80k in debt, finding a £40k deposit for a house in London, buying a car, saving for a pension, and just possibly thinking about a family, might tell her that Medivine is a waste of time.

This is the most beserk policy any political party has ever come up with; and makes the Poll Tax look eminently rational

Romulus - The poll tax *was* eminently rational.

You beat me to it with the poll tax comment Caroline. It is amazing how the erstwhile municipal tax has now become almost universally accepted as having been an iniquitous tax imposed on an unwilling populace, rather than what it actually was: a fair tax, welcomed by most, that nailed the evaders and layabouts who eventually took to the streets, incited by an unholy alliance of left wing and anarchist groups and committed vast criminal damage, most of it unpunished.
Just because the government bottled out, it doesn't mean it was a bad idea.

To digress Frank. The Community Charge cost a huge amount to introduce - several billions - then to scrap cost billions more plus increasing the VAT rate from 15% to 17.5%........the nationalisation of Business Rates took away any incentives Councils could use to help local businesses; and reduced the amount of spending that local electors and councillors could influence to 8% total outlays, Whitehall having control over the rest.

The Poll Tax removed local accountability when coupled with rate-capping; and there is no point in voting locally any more.

A scheme Thatcher used to stop nutcases in London and Liverpool ebding up destrying local govt and local interest in politics; just as the tuition fees will destroy universities and lead to very dissatisfied students.........it is called the Law of Unintended Consequences

Caroline,

you are naive in thinking that the market should drive funding for intellectual research. Research has to be disinterested, not conducted for the sake of money. Spin-offs tend to happen most when people are pursuing 'pure' research. Your take on the state is simplistic, and all too typical of some of Melanie Phillips' fans. State funding is not the root of the problem. The root is the philistine, utilitarian attitude towards higher education that has gripped Right and Left for the past few years. It is obvious why both the political Right and Left hate research in the humanities, and intellectuals generally: we are capable of producing devastating criticisms of corruption in governing philosophies, and proposing radical alternatives. It isn't people working in the natural sciences or technology who do these things, you know. Perhaps you should have more respect for intellectuals, and a bit less for the idolisation of the 'free market'. it is the ideas behind the spending, not the fact that the state is doing the spending, that is the problem.
Incidentally, I am a 'she', not a 'he'.

Well 'M' I am glad we have resolved whether you are 'he' or'she'.......actually, I cannot disagree with your statement above; it seems perfectly valid.

The Humanities as they are taught today have lost all credibility in my personal view. The insistence on pushing them through the lefist ideological strainer at all points have really undermined my trust in academia at all. I trust the instructors hard sciences but I see little use for the Ivory Tower.

Personally, I think the point of the Humanities is to instruct people in their own cultural tradtions and those of other cultures as well, not "in producing devastating criticisms of corruption in governing philosophies, and proposing radical alternatives."

Criticism is valuable perhaps, but proposing radical alternatives? This is where the whole thing falls apart, as the proposals by people who have little contact with the real world have often proved quite unworkable.

That is a bit too sweeping Susan; I do not believe every course in every university goes through ideological strainers. I also know that it would be counter-productive as students with minds rebel and have their own views. I realise in the US there is greater passivity and expectation of information being fed to the student.......I have corroboration of this from staff I have talked to in US institutions recently.

I further doubt Science is taught with the same rigour as 20 years ago, and am reliably informed that MIT has debased its quality in the drive to get more students for more revenue....with the passing of the baby-boom these schools have lots of empty places and high fixed costs...they are like airlines trying to increase load-factor.

Standards fall...places should be rationed not priced; or quality suffers. I would doubt any degree today is as rigorous as one twenty years ago......and I certainly know Harvard College is not particularly demanding as even Larry Summers has complained about grade inflation, and the high proportion of top grades awarded to attract more fee-payers.......

"Harvard also grappled this week with another contentious issue: grade inflation. About half of the grades awarded in recent years to Harvard students were either A's or A-'s. And 91 percent of seniors graduated with honors last June.

For months, Mr. Summers has been talking with professors about grade inflation, urging them to curb it in their own classrooms.

On Wednesday, Harvard's dean for undergraduate education, Susan Pedersen, raised another proposal, that the university stop giving honors to students who earn only a B average. Dean Pedersen's proposal referred only to a student's overall grade-point average. It would still allow students with a B average to get honors if they do honors-caliber work in their major or concentration, including writing a thesis.

If such a policy had been in place last year, about a quarter of the students who received honors would not have. Other Ivy League universities, including Princeton and Yale, give honors only for exemplary performance in a major, and some will give honors to a maximum of a third of graduating seniors.
"

http://hcs.harvard.edu/~pslm/livingwage/02_01_nyt.html

Romulus, here is what is going on at US Humanities dept.'s: www.noindoctrination.org Read the postings of students as to how they are being "taught."

I have no interest in supporting this kind of nonsense with my tax dollars, although I am forced to do so in many cases. Just because someone teaches at the university level, it doesn't make them any better than a primary or secondary school idiot who believes that it's better to teach poor black kids to speak "Ebonics" than standard English.

With regard to your point about the hard sciences, doubtless academic standards are falling everywhere there too, but they are STILL a lot more useful than the Humanities from my point of view. I plan to steer my own child directly into the hard sciences in the hopes of sparing her the inanities of Humanities dept.'s.

If Humanities departments are suffering a lack of respect and interest it is really their own fault; they started to lose credibility the minute they saw their role as political indoctrination rather than the pursuit of knowledge and mental discipline.

Just my own personal observations, but I've noticed that those who pursue the hard sciences tend to be politically rather conservative, whilst those who pursue the humanities tend to be left-wing. Perhaps it is because hard scientists must work in the realm of logic and absolutes, where those in the humanities are free to pursue whatever flight of fancy they want to and are not at all "grounded" by the "oppressive" dictates of reason and logic.

"that those who pursue the hard sciences tend to be politically rather conservative, "

You sound like Napoleon who only allowed the School of Mines and the Polytechnic as educational institutions; or even the USSR which favoured Science and Engineering...although they too had courses in Marxism-Leninism

Whether those studying hard Science are universally right or left I cannot say, I have met a spread of affiliations, and cannot associate politics with any particular course...though I do agree peope who study Sociology or English tend to be unstructured

Not surprisingly, I agree with Susan's posts, although I'm not sure that hard science necessarily produces politically conservative thinking. I do think, however, that the Humanities almost always produce thinking that tilts way to the left. Ms M, I don't know that the taxpayer should have to fund your "radical solutions" to aspects of life you perceive - but perhaps others do not - to be problems. I may be doing you an injustice, and you are free to disabuse me of my theory, but I have a feeling that many of the "radical solutions" you have come up with involve income distribution. (Especially income redistribution to yourself, as you do not seem to be employed in the private sector.)

I find Caroline is omniscient, which is fortunate for our country. She can decide what is to be funded in a highly utilitarian manner.

Personally I like having musicians and orchestras, I think Music is a worthwhile degree course, but it is rarely lurative in the Market sense.

I think Philosophy is important, but again it is a minority subject; as is Archaeology; as is Theology.

I don't know which Market determined Fleming should discover penicillin in a hospital corridor: I am glad he did.

I don't know what the Market decided on Richard Doll's work on smoking and links to cancer; I somehow cannot imagine Imperial Tobacco or Rothmans would have sponsored this.

I wonder just how much research today cannot be published because it is commercially-sponsored; how many conclusions cannot reach the public because they give the "wrong" answer for those financing it ?

I wonder what conclusion scientists financed by Monsanto or Novartis reach on GM foods ?

Was the nuclear industry a success because all the scientists worked for the industry ? It has certainly given me as a taxpayer a huge bill for de-commissioning at BNFL and British Energy.

What is the market value of a man like Dr David Kelly ? Would the market train a man in virology to work at Porton Down ?

What does the Market say about educating a Portugues language graduate like J K Rowling ?

BTW. Is Mick Jagger richer than Paul McCartney ? Do they pay the same income tax ?

I only ask because Jagger is an LSE graduate; and in future McCartney would pay lower taxes than Jagger; and actually a lower marginal rate than a teacher or doctor

Caroline, Rom, I'm not against funding for the Humanities, just not in the current form most of them take. (Post-modern, deconstructionist, made to carry water for the mindless cultural destructiveness of the left.)If a classical liberal viewpoint of the Humanities was restored I would be all for it!

Totally OT, but sad news:

Theodore Dalrymple is retiring from his prison post and moving to rural France! I wonder if he is going to continue to write for the Torygraph and the Spectator, etc.?

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2004-01-10&id=3880&searchText=

Susan my dear, even in France they have telephones, and I think the Taiwanese can still sell notebook PCs there, so I have every expectation he can pipe his prose down the line to the computer at the Telegraph.....even from France !

What I wonder about is his work as a doctor, and a prison doctor

I know there are computers and modems in rural France Rom. I was just wondering if he was retiring from everything, not just his prison job.

OT but interesting: An article in City Journal about the battle between "progressive" reading education and tried-and-true phonics education in New York:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_01_09_04ss.html

How the "progressives" fight to hang on to their foolish and incompetent fads in the face of all evidence to the contrary!

A second rate higher education does not compensate for a third rate high school education.

In fact, the American high school graduate of fifty years ago was probably better educated than the average American college graduate today.

I remember a time when a typical fifth grade student could easily identify each of the then 48 American states by its shape and location on a map. Today he would be hard pressed to locate the Pacific Ocean.

The problem of US education is the High School where all competition is social, not academic. Then the deficiency is continued into College and the corrections effected at Masters level.

Thus the US student is carrying debt to compensate for the deficiency of the High School....and pretty soon in the UK, pupils who could begin working life with a quality A-Level exam are going to find it is confetti and they will start the paperchase piling up debt.

It is a giant fraud; having given up debasing the currency governments now debase the institutions and saddle youth with debt.

It is the most incompetent and asinine policy the Labour Party ever dreamed up

All London Hotels costing more than £100/night should face a 100% tax levy which can be put into a fund so disadvantaged children in London can stay in these hotels at no cost, and get that "Ritz Experience".

This is in effect all the Government proposals on Univrsities amount to

Some corrections to points made in what has been a stimulating discussion:

1/the 'Anglo-sphere'-many of you seem to forget that the USA was created in revolt against Britain-the US National anthem is an explicitly anti-British song, written with reference to the war of 1812, some 36 years after the American Revolution, with French help, against British imperialism. Of course the UK and the USA remain close allies, but very much on US terms, and part of the deal was that Britain should abandon her territorial empire, in return for American rescue (yes, rescue in and after WW2 (remember the Marshall Plan);

2/Ireland: the Republic of Ireland is a relaxed, cosmopolitan place that long ago abandoned any illusions that it would be a good idea to reunite with the North (who in their right mind would want to live with Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams?), indeed as part of the 1990s peace process in Northern Ireland, the Republic began to withdraw from any formal claims to the North. The republic enjoys good relations with the US just as the UK does, and its Green Card status is no threat to the UK, especially as Ireland is much smaller than the UK and is now so prosperous that it has more immigrants than emigrants;

3/Jagger:(who, incidentally, like many British people is a frequent and welcome visitor to Ireland)studied at LSE and is very proud of the fact, as he should be, but he never graduated, so strictly speaking he is an alumnus, not a graduate.

I thank you for your correction E Shaw. However, the repayment of University tuition fees is not dependent upon the student graduating with a degree, merely attending the University....and so the pointed contrast still stands.

If you prefer, a teacher could be in a higher tax bracket than Chris Gent, Richard Branson, David Beckham. It is 9% above £15.000 which means above £30.000 it is 49% tax rate.

If you estimate a doctor with £64.000 debt (conservative) paying 9% levy and starting as an SHO in London on £23.000 - you can see that buying houses, cars, etc is a pipe dream.

Still, paying to see the doctor might also become a novelty......lawyers charge high rates, and since 1965 noone's life has dependended on them