Sorry, you can't afford a degree ...

This article captures a huge chunk of my unease about the direction of Higher Education, summed up in this quote:
"So we are being asked to increase student fees, and the proportion of overseas students, in order that undergraduates should subsidise universities' research. And the same people who want to charge unlimited undergraduate fees also want an end to rigid staff pay structures, so they can offer telephone-number salaries to 'world-class' academics to improve their research reputation. ... I am not sure I want my children to amass even bigger shedloads of debt so that universities can hire American management gurus to teach MBAs."

This relates to the issue of academics valuing research above teaching and trying to get out of teaching; particulalry galling to those of us who sense a vocation to teaching, are able to do it at degree level but because we don't have the research pedigree probably don't stand much chance; meanwhile undergrads go intellectually hungry for want of some good teaching. ... We have to do something about this. I feel. That's not to say that there isn't good teaching going on: there is. However, it isn't prized and there is a cultural disdain for it compared with research [which may amount to 'reading books I enjoy and indulging my curiosity and witing it up every so often'].

Anyway the main point of the article is that money will become the determining factor rather than ability to learn. Finance clearly has to be addressed but there is a really god point towards the end of the artcle: " in many professions that now normally require a degree - journalism, nursing, the law, pharmacy, engineering, banking and others - employers provided and paid for on-the-job training. The number of all-graduate professions increases every year. The process has transferred much of the financial burden of training from industry to the state. And a fairly small levy on pre-tax profits would pay for it." I hadn't really thought abut that before but it is true that effectivley having gradutae enty to professions transfers the charge for training from the industries or employers to either the state or to the individuals or their families. It is not unreasonable -given that education like htis benefits the whole community and the employers/industries concerned- to expect them to contribute to this 'infrastructural' cost.

As a parent who is likely to have three children in HE over the next five years, this is an issue of no small importance. As a priest hoping to go back into chaplaincy in HE at some point in the next year or two it is important to the way that we minister. To the nation it may mean the difference between a healthy nation and one that declines. I am doubly concerned because I am becoming more convinced that running an economy on credit [ie debt] is a mortgaging of our young peoples' futures in an uncertain world and creates a pressure for them to join the rat race and to forgo service to church, world or nation because it won't clear their debt fast enough. Meanwhile it also 'disincentivises' marriage and creates a 'credit habit'. I don't see it being a good way to run an education system.

EducationGuardian.co.uk | Students | Sorry, you can't afford a degree: