Spending review?

[Grapple Convoy]

Student life has become a doss. It needs to be hard work, people need to learn the real value of studying again.

Depends where you go. A Russell Group university, like the one I went to, from my experience I got triple the amount of coursework and exams that my counterparts in the rebranded polytechnic in the same town. I compared notes with ex-colleagues who I'd studied with for A-levels, but had gone to the 'other' university in the town, and they had far more free time than I did. TBH I didn't have any social life during term-time...

[Grapple Convoy]

Also out of all my friends and family that have been to college or university only two of them are in a job related to their qualifications. Neither of them on decent money either unfortunately.

Oh, and lack of success gaining graduate employment, generally speaking, is down to 1.) the saturation of the jobs market with graduates, meaning fiercer competition for a finite amount of graduate jobs, 2.) postgraduate education being a requirement for certain career paths (e.g. psychology), which unfortunately isn't publicly funded for the most part. Then problem 3.) due to the large amount of people in the jobs market with Bachelors degrees, some employers now only want Masters level qualifications instead... But only a select few can get funding for, or afford to self-fund, postgraduate education.

[InvisibleKid]

I'm one of those saps that got a 'Videogame Technology' Bsc. and I have to say that I completely agree with what the general feel of this thread is.

I got the degree to get into videogame development to find my degree was worthless as it spent too much time working on irrelevant technologies teaching me things that I'd never use and not showing me the 'proper' way of doing things.

It's a cyclical problem. Today's technology industries move so quickly that the latest tech doesn't make it into universities in time. You only end up with lecturers who couldn't make it in the real industry (I had one lecturer who asked me if I wrote my PS2 demo in OpenGL - he was the head of the course :-/) - I know this isn't true of all courses but it certainly was mine.

I would've been better off fighting for an apprenticeship scheme somewhere, whilst teaching myself to code in my spare time and working at the local Sainsbury's.

I completely agree that we have to have a more product rather than service based economy but also we need to not lose sight of things like the arts in the pursuit of financial prosperity - the arts and language courses contribute to a lot of our culture.

A solution off the top of my head is perhaps to cap the amount of places available for particular courses? Do we need 1m media studies students per year (<-- made-up figure) - probably not. The government, as has already been said, need to minimalise the useless courses, maximise on the courses that we need in the country (electrical engineering, computing, medicine, structural engineering etc.) and make others more competitive (history, art, media etc.).

I guess what made me think this was the comment before about how a student feel their 'right' to going to university was being affected - but they don't have a 'right' and in fact university is a place for people to excel at something that they love and want to work on, not for people to go to because that's where they go after high school.

</end rant>

[Grapple Convoy]

I would've been better off fighting for an apprenticeship scheme somewhere, whilst teaching myself to code in my spare time and working at the local Sainsbury's.

No, you'd have been better off doing some research before you chose your degree course, and studied a straightforward computer science degree, preferably at a Russell Group university.

I completely agree that we have to have a more product rather than service based economy but also we need to not lose sight of things like the arts in the pursuit of financial prosperity - the arts and language courses contribute to a lot of our culture.

Agree. Arts are good for the economy (think how much money films, pop music and videogames make!), it's economic suicide to cut back at them.

[Ouenben]

New Wallpaper me thinks!

[NW2013]

Bust some student heads guys.

[unitone]

New Wallpaper me thinks!

oh god that one policeman holding his shield the wrong way up! why do i find it so irritating?

[SharkSkin-Man]

It's on the other arm (he's left handed I presume).

[egparadigm]

Very nice photo. Perfect juxtaposition.

[Lyris]

Here's the British Tourist Board's new publicity image!