unis do not "recap"! ffs.

no - proper unis dont

some sub standard unis that used to be called polytechnics do

Metal - a word to the wise...

I stopped debating this stuff to Dave ages ago and should have known better than post in this thread.  You just go round in circles as he has a bee in his bonnet about education and universities in general for an as yet undiscovered reason.  The specific topic doesnt matter it just ends up the same conversation - you may be better to save your time.

A number like 50% of people who go to university get a 2:1 or first is just meaningless.  You know it, I know it and everyone who actually thinks about it knows it.

From people who start uni a ton drop out because they cant do it or end up taking simpler courses.  The number of drop outs is so high that the 50% is already clearly nonsense.  Now assume he is just talking about those who complete their degree (which is substantially less than started there first degree but lets put that aside) the marking system of universities is not right or wrong but is scaled so the same %age of people get the same grade no matter the number of entrants.  Now that has issues in itself with creating a surplus of qualified applicants for a job but thats nothing to do with standards but simply the effect of 10% of a billion people being more than 10% of a million.  By the exact same logic theres a even larger number of people failing degrees and getting 3rds and 2:2s.

Each university marks their students relative to one another internally then a board of examiners from other universities comes in and review the universities top students, bottom students and the average level and uses that info to scale every member of the country against one another.  this scaling applies to all degrees be it at a poly, oxbridge or any other uni.  If youre taking the same subject (or one with same core subjects) then it should make no difference where you do it and a lot of time is spent balancing across the universities.

Now you need to be in the system or marking the system to know this.  Now consider how well do you know the university system from your experience (2nd degree right?) and what is Daves background experience with it.  You should see why you are coming at it from different angles.

Dave sees more people with high grade degrees around (more people in uni these days) and feels his degree is being devalued and gets grumpy.  Youre in the system and know that you have to achieve a good grade to get your 2:1 or 1st (regardless of the number of people you still have to get over that %age).

Neither of you are actually wrong just the logical flow from what dave sees to the explanations he comes up with dont really make sense or at least never have to me.  The issues are the number of people going to university and not the grades they got to get in.  Falling A-level grades is meaningless as a grading system as they are now a uni entry level in that you either did them or didnt.  The government wants degrees to provide transferrable skills rather than pure academic knowledge (my personal bug bear) so its just a can they go to uni or not qualification and the grades dont matter to any university apart from the current top tier who wish to maintain that position by recruiting the highest scoring students to begin with.  There are causes behind all these things but just pointing at the end result and saying oh well thats wrong seems a bit futile tbh.

And just as a vague recap...  Dave states that good unis dont recap a-level info but polys do.  Any basis for this?  Been to polys and mid stream and top flight unis?  taught at any?  marked any student papers from any?  Its simply not the case anymore.  The polys get more high scoring students by teaching obscure apprentice subjects that cant be balanced properly against the other unis - nothing more.  You see tons of people flooding out with degrees in photography, fashion design, animatronics, golf course management etc but a kid at a poly doing biology is the same as one doing it at oxbridge.  They will most likely have less of a chance of gettign the top grade because they wont have the teaching and peer pressure to do as well but the course and the qualification are equal.  The standards arent dropping just the polys teach subjects the top flight dont so can only be balanced against the other polys.  Theyre effectively exploiting the %age system so they dont have to compete against everyone but this is a very different issue from the one being described.  The problem actually goes away through commone sense because when you see a graduate with a 2:1 in media + event planning you know what it means compared to a student with a 2:1 in a subject like maths that every uni does.  To simply dismiss poly students totally in that way is not really on - dismissing people by subject might work but not by university even though were all guilty of it in joking conversation.

 

A number like 50% of people who go to university get a 2:1 or first is just meaningless. You know it, I know it and everyone who actually thinks about it knows it.

it was in response to the assumtion that 2:2 was average - 2:1 is pretty much the norm these days - & often the minimum requirement for most grad schemes

Dave sees more people with high grade degrees around (more people in uni these days) and feels his degree is being devalued and gets grumpy.  Youre in the system and know that you have to achieve a good grade to get your 2:1 or 1st (regardless of the number of people you still have to get over that %age).

sorry but you know nothing about me tbh..

my rant about polys & lower A-level standards is nothing to do with and perceved devaluation of my CV - I doubt Ill be applying for any new jobs anytime soon as Im pretty happy where I am now & Im also sure that if I was to move in the distant future then academic qualifications wouldnt really matter for me compared with experience & track record.

I also think A-levels were devalued when i did them btw  - at least the maths one was as it was the modular - if you dont get the grade first time round take it again - system. (though chemistry was still 3 hour practical, 3 hour structured questions & 3 hour written paper) - still I reckon compared to say people in the early 90s ours were worth a bit less - especially when looking back at the past papers while revising.

as for the polys - I really dont see your point there - some of these places will offer courses to people with with 2*Es etc...

the reteaching a-levels stuff came from a sunday times article published a few years back about Luton being the worst university in the UK - they quoted a maths student complaining about his course & how a lot of the students barely passed a-level so a lot of lectures consisted of re-capping basics. - IIRC Luton no longer has a proper maths dept - or has at least scaled back on it

my main gripe with this is pretty much political - I totally disagree with the new labour dream of 50% of the population going to university - If university attendance was scaled back to pre 1992 levels then kids would probably not have to have tuition fees & run up huge debt.

New courses are being invented all the time & the govt likes to chuck money at them when IMO they arent doing much good -Im not totally against polys (yes we did used to have a lot of banter with the shef hallam students)- I mean for vocational courses they are very useful- however we are going to have a large protion of grads in the future in fairly mundane jobs who will have had no requirement to go to university int he first place - I do think that some courses need to be rethought & others need to be scrapped or cut back - too many people doing sociology & media studies tbh...

I think it is unfair on both the kids doing both vocational quals at polys & the medics, engineers, & people doing traditional subjects etc.. at red brick institutions as the money could be better spent by getting rid of tuition fees - not introducing top up fees  & reducing student debt.

It is also unfair on the kids doing worthless courses - great someone could get a 2:2 in media studies from a poly - they will have racked up a load of debt & if they decided they wanted to carry on with a career in media then theyd probably have to go and get an entry level position & work thier way up just like any school lever - or alternatively they could get an admin job & end up like one of the characters from the office.

Im basically against the whole political push in this country towards paying kids to go to 6th form college, push more & more kids to do A-levels/further education , - lower the standards in A-levels so politicians can stand up & say how great theyve done & then chuck loads of cash at institutions to come up with more corses so that 50% of the population can get "degrees"

Just like the  80k per year plumbers we had a few years back there is a real shortage in trades these days - the way to slove this is to get more people doing apprentiships - no doubt someone in the future will invent a vocational plumbing degree where someone can get into 20k debt learning something that you can also get paid a salary to learn if youd gone the apprentice route.

As an aside my dad is a medical physicist - some "universitys" offer medical physics degrees - he has tried recruiting a few people with these degrees and found they had very little understanding of the subject - he now tends to recruit straight physics grads & they work towards a masters  then phd while working for him.

Quote from: Dave

my main gripe with this is pretty much political - I totally disagree with the new labour dream of 50% of the population going to university - If university attendance was scaled back to pre 1992 levels then kids would probably not have to have tuition fees & run up huge debt.

This is one area where I agree with dave, universities should only take in those who get the top 10% of results free, anyone else should have to pay for theirs. Far too many people with degrees are going into jobs their qualifications have nothing to do with. Some skills are transferable but even so if a person spends four or five years doing a degree and ends up doing the same job that another employee who has never done the same level of education is doing then they have wasted their time and money as well as that of the Uni.

Noone gets free courses. Except for impoverished students, and we are talking students whos combined parental income is under 14 thousand a year.

Quote

New courses are being invented all the time & the govt likes to chuck money at them when IMO they arent doing much good -Im not totally against polys (yes we did used to have a lot of banter with the shef hallam students)- I mean for vocational courses they are very useful- however we are going to have a large protion of grads in the future in fairly mundane jobs who will have had no requirement to go to university int he first place - I do think that some courses need to be rethought & others need to be scrapped or cut back - too many people doing sociology & media studies tbh...

Polys are technical colledges, as Unis are to theory they are to practical. Unfortunately it never did work properly and while they are trained to do stuff they are often nowhere near as capable as people who went straight into their job. Building contractors in particular know that brickies arent going to be up to speed.

Polys dont exist anymore, to my knowledge.

Quote

I think it is unfair on both the kids doing both vocational quals at polys & the medics, engineers, & people doing traditional subjects etc.. at red brick institutions as the money could be better spent by getting rid of tuition fees - not introducing top up fees  & reducing student debt.

They need to look at the courses available, what is required in the UK workforce and adjust peoples direction accordingly. That would mean less waste and useless qualifications.

You mean similar to NHS bursary schemes, Teaching Bursary Schemes, and the bursarys operated by various other companies for specialists in certain fields.

And after saying "only the top 10% should get free courses" your now talking about abolshing tuition fees?! Make your mind up.

my main gripe with this is pretty much political - I totally disagree with the new labour dream of 50% of the population going to university - If university attendance was scaled back to pre 1992 levels then kids would probably not have to have tuition fees & run up huge debt.

And in this we are in 100% agreement.

If youd said your argument was that too many people are going to uni and that A-level grades should go back to a final qualification again then Im totally with you.  Thats the root of all the nonsense but has been going on for so long now its become a joke.  Unless people state clearly this is the issue then theres no point in them complaining about ever rising A-level grades in the current system.

The cycle is unavoidable now too as theres so many graduates that anyone wanting a job (even relatively crappy ones is expected to have a degree so has to pick something they know they can get a good grade in).

If youd said your argument was that too many people are going to uni and that A-level grades should go back to a final qualification again then Im totally with you.  Thats the root of all the nonsense but has been going on for so long now its become a joke.  Unless people state clearly this is the issue then theres no point in them complaining about ever rising A-level grades in the current system.

Well that is my "argument"/POV - I think there are/will be too many people at uni - I also think A-levels shouldnt have to be an entry to uni & am pointing out that we need to address this by both getting standards back up in A-Levels so that they are taken more seriously by employers & also rethinking parts of our university system - atm they seem to be chucking money in areas that dont need to be expanded & then getting students to help pay towards courses that ought to be offered free.