The University Debate – scrap the 50% and Pic ‘n’ Mix

  The Government’s plan to have 50% of under 30-year-olds go onto higher education should be scrapped.

Today the BBC reported that, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters (ARG), the aim to have 50% of the population educated to a degree level is unrealistic and should be scrapped.

 The report also says that the plan to increase the amount of people going on to study a degree had caused “damage to the university experience” and has “driven down standards within universities”.

 Aiming to have such a high amount of people in higher education is going to drive standards down and make the experience worse. If you encourage large amounts of people to do something, not everyone is going to be happy with all the options; this means you have to create more options.

 Thinking-up degrees to appease the ever-increasing population of education ‘abusers’ is going to drive the overall standards of a degree down. If the Government is creating Degrees and, almost selling them like a product, then the quality of the education is going to decrease.

 The Birmingham Post, this week, reported that Universities in the region are offering courses in ‘Celebrity Journalism’ and ‘Geaography with mountaineering and Fashion Accesories’ which gives students the chance to create bags, shoes and belts which are suitable for, yes, mountaineering.

 Is it right that a course such as, Celebrity Journalism, has an outcome with degree status, when degrees are supposed to be about expanding your mind?

 Arguably, Celebrity Journalism is expanding the mind and challenging the ethics of the [media] industry but, when education is about to have serious budget cuts should we still have the option to have a degree in how to make jewelery, when they could be learnt as an apprentice?

 Can a degree end up being a mixture of different things? Celebrity Journalism could be covered on a conventional Journalism degree but, as a module. What if you didn’t want to study journalism though, what if you wanted to look at celebrities, something in philosophy and then something to do with maths.

 ‘Pic and Mix’ degrees might have more value, they could create validity, once again, and also bring the degree back up to what it once was – an expansion of the mind and not just a ‘life experience’.