Quote from flymike91 :

either you honestly don't believe that someone else is being forced to help pay for your education or are you just being difficult for the sake of it. I suspect the latter.

Also the answer to the virgin atlantic puzzle was "Richard Branson" who dropped out of formal schooling at 16 adn hsa dysxalie

edit; you guys are quick that was for 5haz

Do you think Richard Branson runs the whole show single handed, do you think he flies the planes, drives the trains and makes the records? He employs professionals to make the money for him, and has done for a very long time. The simple, black and white way in which you lot look at things makes me laugh, it also probrably goes some way towards explaining why you're a bunch of ignorant nobodies.

You clearly don't understand the concept of tax, everyone has to make a contribution, this is not a case of a few people having to pay for everyone else, at some point everyone pays their dues and everybody benefits, even students. But when you've been fed right wing bullshit most of your life and not been smart enough to ever question what you're told its not suprising that you think you're being singled out and victimised.

Quote from 5haz :

Again you fail to understand that educated professionals benefit everyone.

And your point is? Free markets benefit everyone through higher productivity, lower prices, and more efficient processes.

Universities won't disappear without state support. That's scare-mongering. They'll have to become more diverse and adaptive. That's all. Yes fees will rise, but guess what? TOUGH! You'll be able to pay it off when you're wealthy enough. Students really don't know how lucky they are in this country, they really don't.

Quote from Intrepid :

And your point is? Free markets benefit everyone through higher productivity, lower prices, and more efficient processes.

Universities won't disappear without state support. That's scare-mongering. They'll have to become more diverse and adaptive. That's all. Yes fees will rise, but guess what? TOUGH! You'll be able to pay it off when you're wealthy enough. Students really don't know how lucky they are in this country, they really don't.

Of course, because when picking the countries most promising, hard working and intelligent people its always best to discourage the poor, because wealth directly correlates to intelligence, of course!

One day you might need some serious help off the state or even another person, and I hope the reply is 'tough'.

Quote from 5haz :

Do you think Richard Branson runs the whole show single handed, do you think he flies the planes, drives the trains and makes the records? He employs professionals to make the money for him, and has done for a very long time. The simple, black and white way in which you lot look at things makes me laugh, it also probrably goes some way towards explaining why you're a bunch of ignorant nobodies.

And guess what? If Branson wanted top professionals he would invest in teaching those who require it. It means students do courses that have a real sustainable value and demand. If you want to do a course in arts then spend your own money! We either adopt a more scholarship/apprenticeship and diverse based system or there will be no education system left. yes the student will pay more... but so what! If you're spending your own money you generally make wiser decisions.

We, as a nation, can't afford it any more... we never could. it's really that simple. Someone like Becky isn't some Tory nut job complaining about taxation. She is a staunch NHS supporter. If someone like Becky can see the craziness of the current situation, anyone can.

Quote from Intrepid :

And guess what? If Branson wanted top professionals he would invest in teaching those who require it. It means students do courses that have a real sustainable value and demand. If you want to do a course in arts then spend your own money! We either adopt a more scholarship/apprenticeship and diverse based system or there will be no education system left. yes the student will pay more... but so what! If you're spending your own money you generally make wiser decisions.

We, as a nation, can't afford it any more... we never could. it's really that simple. Someone like Becky isn't some Tory nut job complaining about taxation. She is a staunch NHS supporter. If someone like Becky can see the craziness of the current situation, anyone can.

The case of an Art degree can't be used to discredit the entire system. We can't afford to keep funding at current levels, but we can't afford to cut it entirely either. Again you completely fail to think in anything other than black and white. This is what getting all your knowledge from the media and google does to you.

Quote from 5haz :

One day you might need some serious help off the state or even another person, and I hope the reply is 'tough'.

Again 5Haz look at the maths.

Someone on a minimum wage will at least pay around £250,000 of tax in their lifetime. To say then one day they might have to rely upon the state is kinda stating the obvious.Have you never heard of Stockholm syndrome?

Quote from 5haz :

The case of an Art degree can't be used to discredit the entire system. We can't afford to keep funding at current levels, but we can't afford to cut it entirely either. Again you completely fail to think in anything other than black and white.

4.1 Trillion Pounds of National Debt.

How 5Haz, can we afford anything?

Quote from Intrepid :

Again 5Haz look at the maths.

Someone on a minimum wage will at least pay around £250,000 of tax in their lifetime. To say then one day they might have to rely upon the state is kinda stating the obvious. It almost like a case of Stockholm syndrome.

The majority of people will still need state assistance even if taxes are dropped, £250,000 is a big scary number but when you spread it out over a life time its still not enough to live off should everything be privatised.

Quote from Intrepid :

4.1 Trillion Pounds of National Debt.

How 5Haz, can we afford anything?

We can afford to cut lots of things before education, seeing as its a more valuable investment. I'm not in denial about the defecit, just theres better ways of reducing it.

I say execution of idiots would be a good idea at this point.

Quote from 5haz :

The majority of people will still need state assistance even if taxes are dropped, £250,000 is a big scary number but when you spread it out over a life time its still not enough to live off should everything be privatised.

£250,000 is someone on a minimum wage. Most people will be paying much much more over a lifetime.

Either the state privatises most of it's assets and dramatically lowers taxes and just get''s itself out of the way of the ordinary productive person, or the country goes bankrupt and we're finished. Christ it will be hard for a lot of people, no one is denying that, but it's the route we have to take.

This whole idea that the state can pay for this, pay for that, do this, do that... for the 'benefit' of the nation has failed, quite spectacularly. Labour knew the only way they could fund these schemes was by getting in bed with the bankers and unleashing the inherent dangers of a fiat currency. And look how that has turned out. The social experiment has failed.

I don't expect people to digest this kind of thing. The public's appetite for cuts of the scale of what i am suggesting won't be what is required. Tough times ahead.

Quote from 5haz :

We can afford to cut lots of things before education, seeing as its a more valuable investment. I'm not in denial about the defecit, just theres better ways of reducing it.

I am not talking about the deficit. I am talking about the overall debt burden.

Quote from Intrepid :

£250,000 is someone on a minimum wage. Most people will be paying much much more over a lifetime.

Either the state privatises most of it's assets and dramatically lowers taxes and just get''s itself out of the way of the ordinary productive person, or the country goes bankrupt and we're finished.

This whole idea that the state can pay for this, pay for that, do this, do that... for the 'benefit' of the nation has failed, quite spectacularly. Labour knew the only way they could fund these schemes was by getting in bed with the bankers and unleashing the inherent dangers of a fiat currency. And look how that has turned out. The social experiment has failed.

I don't expect people to digest this kind of thing. The public's appetite for cuts of the scale of what i am suggesting won't be what is required. Tough times ahead.

The state can at least help if it can't fund everything, what you're proposing is every man for themselves. Which can't work when there are few people who can actually help themselves completely.

Quote from Intrepid :

I am not talking about the deficit. I am talking about the overall debt burden.

The defecit causes the debt, so its relevant.

I am being spoken about in this thread quite a lot, and it's had the effect that my position - by virtue of those arguing against me - has mostly been determined by those other people by their process of 3rd personing my perspective.

Unfortunately my positition has been grossly missunderstood, most notably by 5haz and Jakg who have consistently demonstrated such a poor grasp both of my position and of the subject at hand that it's no wonder they are fighting to get a university education - they need another 4 years of study just to cope with putting the latest XBox games onto the correct shelf at PC World for living.

I have not said education is a bad idea, I said it's nothing without experience and that students would be much wiser if they got some of that experience BEFORE university. And I have not said that education should be paid for up front by students. Intrepid spoke using my name to emphasise that point and that's not the case. Intrepid is a hardline conservative, I am a hardline liberal. We do not share this viewpoint, we just happen to be something of a coalition on this particular issue...

I think the students have a very generous settlement package and I think they should be very happy with it. The settlement package that they have - pay nothing back until you earn £21k, and the debt written off after so many years - is extremely forgiving!

If somebody wants to get themselves a university education - for whatever reason - and they believe that that deal is unfair in todays world then they are clearly to thick to get a degree, and a little bit of hard reality would serve them well.

I do think that we have far too many degree students in this country. This is because A levels have been reduced to such a meeningless standard now. I had a look at what is being taught in schools a few years ago, and it saddened me - the stuff exam students were expected to know I mostly covered in the 1st and 2nd year of senior school.

It's not the kids fault, the system has let them down because of a political need to show improvement... The way to do that is to dumb things down, "Our kids are 80% better educated now" based upon A levels issued rather than that piece of paper being worth what it's printed on.

For a university education to have any value at all we have to have a lot less places than we do now. University must not be the "norm". It should be for the top 3-5%.

If you're not in that top 3-5% then you're too thick.

Because the reality is there just aren't that many professional jobs.

We also need a long hard look at the degree courses people are doing, how is it possible to get a degree for so many industries which do not require degrees to work in.

As Jakg pointed out, my job as a software developer is - according to him, non academic. Apparently I don't need any theory to do my job. So I had a look online and the very first degree that I found happened to involve I.T. It uses the word internet and everything.

[code=Northampton Prospectus]Media Production and Business ... Systems BA (Hons) (P3GM)[/code]
Is that a business course, a media course, or an I.T. course? It can't make up it's mind because it's so damned general - what of any value can be learned from a course that doesn't even know what it is meant to be teaching?

That was literally the first search result, and I could go on...

We need to get rid of all the green card courses and reduce prospectii to only those professions which require a degree: law, medicine & engineering.

Oh and to answer the earlier question by 5haz I think it was, on how do nVidia make their chips... Well firstly we dont have much of a silicon industry in the UK - but it so happens that one of my first jobs when I was about 19 was working in R&D. I didn't design chips, I was young and inexperienced, but I worked in the same division as guys that did... albeit they where based in other countries because as I said we dont have much of a silicon industry here. So theoretically, if we had a silicon industry, I could have learned from my peers and moved across. So yes, it's possible.

Personally I was never that interested in electronics and hardware, but in my previous job I worked next to a guy that was, he developed custom firmware and hardware solutions for sports telemetry equipment. I could have learned from him - if I had been interested, which I wasn't.

Oh, sorry did you think that the only way to get a job was to get through a job interview already knowing how to do the job?

5haz you got a long road ahead if you continue to think that all you need is Qualifications to nail a decent job, at the end of the day, qualifications or not, the employer still has to give you a chance.

Quote from BlueFlame :

5haz you got a long road ahead if you continue to think that all you need is Qualifications to nail a decent job, at the end of the day, qualifications or not, the employer still has to give you a chance.

I don't, but then there are people who think all you need is experience, how do you get experience if you have nothing to start with?

Quote from 5haz :

I don't, but then there are people who think all you need is experience, how do you get experience if you have nothing to start with?

Without stopping to think:

volunteer / learn off your own back / get an apprenticeship / get a related job / transfer from another department.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Unfortunately my positition has been grossly missunderstood, most notably by 5haz and Jakg who have consistently demonstrated such a poor grasp both of my position and of the subject at hand that it's no wonder they are fighting to get a university education - they need another 4 years of study just to cope with putting the latest XBox games onto the correct shelf at PC World for living.

Essentially your position is that because you think you're better than a handful of graduates you've met that you can use this as an example of every student. You're making very bold statements about something you have no experience of and apparently its me that the ignorant one?

Fine, carry on being cynicool and completely close minded to things you know nothing about, its amazing you know so much about what goes on in higher education despite admitting to dropping out early.

I'm doing this so I don't have to stack Xbox games on shelves, the subject and subsequent career I have chosen requires as much education as it does hands on experience, hence why I took a degree. Its also one which is in demand and is of significant benefit to everyone in a wide range of not too obvious ways.

I suppose I could stay back in my home town spending benefits on alcohol and terrorising the local folk, don't shoot me down just because I'm doing something with my life. At least in this case the taxpayer might get something in return.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Without stopping to think:

volunteer / learn off your own back / get an apprenticeship / get a related job / transfer from another department.

You might be able to do that in IT, again every subject and line of employment is different, some are based on hands on experience, some are based more on theoretical knowledge and research skills. Your attemps to tar every one with the same brush are quite frustrating.

oh and on pensions...

The state pension is NOT adequate to get by. If your mortgage is paid off and you have another meens of income it can tip the ballance, but people living entirely off state pension are below the breadline.

Private pensions crashed a few years back, the state pension is inadequate.

Personally I have not planned for my old age, I honestly didn't expect to live as long as I have - and now that i'm healthy it is something I am starting to think about and wondering just what i'm going to do, the most logical thing seems to be bricks and mortar - but as I never really settled I havnt even started buying my own home yet, I still rent.

So it's something of a sore point, and to say that you'll be paying for me in my old age is something or a sore point - you do realise that pensions is in an even bigger mess than education right? And has been for a decade.

Quote from 5haz :

Essentially your position is that because you think you're better than a handful of graduates you've met that you can use this as an example of every student. You're making very bold statements about something you have no experience of and apparently its me that the ignorant one?

I've met a lot of graduates and post graduates. Many share my views more or less, some share your own views - and from my experience those tend not to be the hardest workers or highest achievers, infact...

You forget i've been in employment two decades thus far, i've led a varied and interesting life, and have met a lot of people from all different walks of life and worked alongside more than a handful of graduates.

I can't help that I excel, I can't help being intelligent. It seems to me that it is the intelligent people who do well regardless of their education. Again, this is based upon my experiences, and is not the view of somebody who has none.

You've accused me again of tarring you all with the same brush, at no point have I done that. You didn't accuse me for a 3rd/4th time of taking sound bytes out of the press as part of your own generalisation attacks - but just because I didn't highlight and rebuke this earlier does not make it true. I'm not generalising all students at all, infact i've been very clear about the distinction between professions which require a degree and those which do not.

Quote :

Fine, carry on being cynicool and completely close minded to things you know nothing about, its amazing you know so much about what goes on in higher education despite admitting to dropping out early. I can only laugh at your attempts to discredit people for daring to learn.

When I left school I did an I.T. apprenticeship, I then went to live in London and worked in photography. After that I decided - being as clueless as you are right now - that I should get an education...

So I went to college studying I.T. It quickly became apparent to me that I was so far ahead of the lecturers that I wasnt going to learn anything, after scoring straight merits and distinctions in every class/module/project I left just before the first year was up and took a job offer working in television.

Just when you think you have me sussed out, it turns out i'm not who you think I am .

So no, i've not been to university but I do have some experience of further education and am not completely clueless. All of my closest friends have been to university, and I socialised with many university students back in the day. I'm astute and observent of people, massively so, it's quite likely that i'm more analytical of people than you have a comprehension of given the nature of my mind, so yes I get it, from multiple angles at once.

I understand your perspective, you're going to get riddled with debts you didn't think you would get.

Boo hoo.

The bottom line is that I don't care. You are after something for nothing, but the fact is you still get a great deal. If there was a queue to get that deal on a mortgage i'd beat people in the queue up to get to the front, i'd use violence & weapons, i'd be willing to guage eyes and hack off limbs to secure that kind of deal (except that I already earn in excess of £21k, and could easily afford to start paying it back).

Quote :

You might be able to do that in IT, again every subject and line of employment is different, some are based on hands on experience, some are based more on theoretical knowledge and research skills. Your attemps to tar every one with the same brush are quite frustrating.

Imagine how much faster you would learn how to be your chosen example of brain surgeon if you had some experience of the insides of a human body. Instead of the theory of clotting blood and patient reactions imagine if you had some experience of it from some time spent as a volunteer EMT?

Or given that you do basic medical training before becoming a surgeon and before specialising - imagine if you took time out between degrees to get some field experience before studying for a speciality?

You have a unique opportunity to learn from somebody who did it better than the average here, and you're answer is to whine and bitch and want something for free.

I'm telling you plain as day that your degree will not guarantee you a better income, and that without pursuing your chosen vocation with passion it won't help at all.

I'm telling you now, there are too many degree students - which is devaluing your degree.

I'm telling you now that the deal the government has given to you is an amazing one.

And you should listen, because I was smart enough to get where I wanted to go without a degree in a profession which expects a degree - and that meens I really am as clever as I say I am.

Quote from Becky Rose :

I'm telling you now, there are too many degree students - which is devaluing your degree.

Sigh, another generalisation.

Quote from 5haz :

Sigh, another generalisation.

There are over half a million university students each year. There's only 65 million of us in total!

Do the math.

Quote from Becky Rose :

There are over half a million university students each year. There's only 65 million of us in total!

Do the math.

So you think they're evenly distributed among all subjects? Again a very simple way of looking at it.

Quote from 5haz :

I'm doing this so I don't have to stack Xbox games on shelves, the subject and subsequent career I have chosen requires as much education as it does hands on experience, hence why I took a degree. Its also one which is in demand and is of significant benefit to everyone in a wide range of not too obvious ways.

I think you'll find that was a thinly veiled dig at me.

Quote from Jakg :

I think you'll find that was a thinly veiled dig at me.

If you dish it you gotta take it , but I wouldn't have called that veiled!

Nor was it said with any real mallice.

Quote from 5haz :

So you think they're evenly distributed among all subjects? Again a very simple way of looking at it.

what are you trying to say here? Does it really matter what the distribution is? The fact is many students who have very different degrees can apply for and get the same job, the employer only cares that the prospective had enough work ethic to get through school. The company my mother works for has a top level sales executive that earned his degree in Mexican-American relations, something that has almost nothing to do with sales of DNA sequencing machines. Again it doesn't matter what degrees graduates have, there are too many of them diluting the job market.