Its my own personal opinion that yes, to many people are going to university. The governments target was 50% of young people going to university, which is frankly ridiculous.
There are two possible ways to achieve this 50%, and i'm sure you can guess which one has been employed.
1. A huge proportion of the population suddenly becomes more intelligent.
2. Inflate grades by making tests easier at A level, introduce mickey mouse subjects, establish universities which accept basically anyone, create degrees for useless subjects or professions which do not need a degree - Yes golf course management, i'm looking at you!
First of all, the issue of making tests easier. Now people can disagree with this all they want, but at least in the subjects I did - Chemistry, Biology, Geography, Physics. The tests have gotten steadily easier. I know this because I was given some older tests for practice, and they were substantially harder than the tests I actually took. Futhermore the syllabus keeps reducing the amount of content present in the A level. I know this because older books had information on stuff we simply don't learn anymore.
Next the issue of Mickey mouse subjects. Now call me an elitist but some things just shouldn't be viable to use for university entry. I had a friend who did a B-tech in buisiness, and it was ridiculously easy. Thats from his own admission and from what I saw of the work they got given.
Now we have the problem of the institutions that accept anything and anyone. There are many universities in the UK that accept E candidates, which is fucking ridiculous. Yes an E is technically a pass, but it really means you haven't learn't anything at all. University should be a priveledge, not a right.
Now a golf course management degree, well that speaks for itself.
- So why is this a bad thing? well i'll tell you.
University is expensive, the more people you have going the more money is needed, some of which comes in the form of top up fees. Instead of cripping graduates with a extra 10k debt (average over 3 year degree for top up fees) reduce the amount of young people entering the system. This would remove the need for top up fees as the state contribution to universities would be sufficient once more for the reduced amount of graduates.
The system is over-burdened as it is. This year an estimated 80,000 students failed to get a university place, with the next year estimated at 200,000. Universities can also not accomodate the increased demand, with students at exeter having to share rooms because of the volumes of undergrads. Here in Birmingham 50 undergrads were allocated places in an older halls of residence as despite the university building a brand new 800 person hall, they simply didn't have enough beds available. One good example of the system not being able to cope was the student loans company. For some reason it was all amalgamated into the same area ( I suppose for money saving), which meant one place was dealing with ALL the student loans, instead of using the local system that had worked fine for many years. This resulted in many students not recieving their loans on time, and in some cases not recieving them at all.
With the government set to remove the cap on top up fees and the freezing of student loans/grants the problems are only set to get worse if the trend of more undergrads continues, discuss.
And here is a little article to read - http://news.bbc.co.u...ion/8556231.stm
Edited by Ion Cannon!, 14 March 2010 - 00:39.