The title relates to humanities and social sciences which is what I have experiance of.

I graduated in 2003. My experiance of university – in kind with all of my mates who did humanities or social sciences (apart from those who went to oxbridge) is that life is pretty easy. Throughout my university career I was not required to have more then six contact hours a week, usually two of these hours were lectures and therefore not mandatory (and not registered). I was required to hand in one essay (no more then 3000 words) every six weeks. The third term of the year was fully given over to exams – the maximum I had was six. I did the barest minimum I could in terms of study outside class – I certainly didn’t read (or even open) most of the books on the reading list – I got a 2:2 – with something like 1% more effort it would have been a 2:1

When I consider that students now will have to pay up to £21,000 for a similar experiance it seems like pretty bad value. The personal and social aspects of university and how this helps you develop are of incalculable value, however you learn very little and are given a degree.

Now I know that a degree is important from an employers point of view but on the basis of the above its not worth much. If you were interviewing a grad fresh out of uni do you think that their degree has given them anything?

My point is that university (in these two subject areas) is very bad value for money (educationally). They say that a degree is indicative of having achieved a level of study, in humanities and social sciences I would say that it shows you turned up, paid fees and did very little. Shouldn’t university be made harder, shouldn’t students expect more for their (up to) £21,000 – in terms of education and intellectual rigor.

If I worked at my degree the way I work at my job I could have done it in one year, a sad indictment of our system I’d say.

Discuss: (max word limit 3000, please show your working and use the library of congress system to show your references)

humanities and social sciences

can you actually fail these degrees?

I did a computer science degree, and I agree. you get a very basic understanding of many different subjects, a lot of it out of date. When you get into the real world you struggle for a few months or more.

9k a year? no thanks, get an apprenticeship instead

By your own admission you choose not to open many books, which isn’t unusual at the age in question. If you want to pay for the opportunity not do something, then a suitable price becomes hard to quantify. I mean what price do you put on apathy? 🙂

9k a year? no thanks, get an apprenticeship instead

From where?

It’s all those engineering/maths/science degrees that are a waste of time. Don’t teach you anything about life.

I wouldnt say my Mechanical BEng was particularly easy. But it was part time, 1-day a week & I had to do a full-time job as well. The day was pretty full, & I recall the full-time students only did our classes plus another two. Was it worth £6-£9k a year…no chance. My employer picked up the tab, not sure what it cost but dont think it was over £1k a year. Thoroughly enjoyed it though.

It’s all those engineering/maths/science degrees that are a waste of time. Don’t teach you anything about life.

I suppose your bike was designed by a Social Worker then… 😉

It could be argued that we (the taxpayers) paid for you to have a nice time doing not that much. Perhaps with students knowing that they might have to pay something back, they may make more of their opportunity.

If you’d turned up more, perhaps your spelling would be better? 😉

I have between 18 and 37.5 hours of contact per week for my course. 18 hour weeks are a rarity and in reality I need to put in 40-50h hour weeks to be able to get a good grip of the content. That is over 4 years too. None of this mickey mouse 3yr nonsense.

Course fees for non-EU students doing this course are £14500/yr.

The personal and social aspects of university and how this helps you develop are of incalculable value

Isn’t that just a myth? Is there any evidence showing Uni life to give any benefit? Mates who didn’t go to Uni don’t seem to lack social skills.

I’m all for free education and learning for the sake of it (ie a degree that doesn’t automatically have a job at the end of it), it makes for a better society. Courses like these (as described by you) however make it easy for people to angry at the whole uni thing. Sounds like courses such as these could be run over a year or two, did you really need 3 years at uni for this degree?

Mind you, you need a degree to work in a call centre now, that should be scrapped, how does a degree in chemistry or spanish or psychology help you learn the “thankyou for holding” script?

iDave +1

If anything, the majority of the people who I know who went to ‘uni’ are about 5 – 6 years behind the rest of us on the ‘being a responsible grown up’ curve.

I don’t think it teaches you much about real life, rather it shelters you from it for 3 / 4 years.

Obviously that’s not the case with everyone, guess you get out of it what you put in to it. personally I think Universities are far too easy to get into now and devalues the whole system somewhat

DONK – I think that the degree for a call centre job just goes to show how things have been devalued

I got a 2:2

lol doesn’t this then prove you wrong to some degree

it’s a bit like me saying “commuting by bike is just too dangerous” before admitting that I’m doing it blindfolded, in a spacesuit, with the brakes disconnected

You get out what you put in I’d have thought.

But, yes there do seem to be some degrees that are a little ‘mickey mouse’.
Some of the girls in my halls during my first year were studying social anthropology and had 2hrs of lectures/week.

That year I did a foundation year to get me onto a mech eng course & even that was around about 18-20hrs not including practicals.
My degree was nearer 24hrs/week not including practicals & time spent in computer rooms scratching my head.

The issue I had with my degree was that it didn’t give you enough practical, hands on experience of stuff. You come out knowing equations to calculate this, that and the other but miss out on the simple practical stuff that would make you look a little less wet behind the ears!
It was annoying that during the uni interview stage you get shown gas turbines & engine test beds, wind tunnels, machine shops etc. and then when you actually get to uni you never get to use them as they are mainly for research/phd stuff.

Hmmm well I studied business and worked pretty hard a lot of the time for my 2.2 – had some lazy times as well. For my Manufacturing MSc I worked very hard – weeks were either 5 days of 9-5:30 seminars and lectures or assignments that were meant to take 30 to 40 hours of work. Then there was the project that was 1/2 the course. Overall I’d say I did 50 weeks of full time work in 12 months – Gov’t paid for it though and got a nice grant too so that was nice….

You get out what you put in, firstly out in lots of effort at GCSE/ A level and you can go to a better quality uni with higher expected earnings and job prospects.

Secondly if you slack off and get a desmond then employers know that, the degree wont help your employment much and it wont have been worth while.

A 2:1 shows employers you have studied hard but your not quite the geeky acedemic type and your worth their attention ( 2:1 from middle of knowwhere poly maybe not so much)

A First shows employers you are acedemically gifted and/or prepared to work hard therefore you will do well ( if you can get rid of the geek image they my have!)

If you want to get value out of university get into a good one, do a sensible (traditional) course and put in the effort to do at least acceptably. Otherwise it is just a nice life experiance which although it has value is not worth £9000

My philosiophy here is slightly tainted by the fact that it will become tempting not to go for a top level uni if the fees are graduated but it would probably still say that a more expensive redbrick degree would have higher prospects but whether that matters depends on what you want to do with it.

Most people I know who did humanities and social sciences struggled to get a job after graduating (12 years ago).
While I don’t necessarily agree with the tuition fees, they might reinforce the idea of doing a worthwhile degree. And ensure that humanities and social sciences become tougher as their students demand better value for money.

I think the new fees may discourage people from certain career paths. I mean, why bother studying for engineering when you will most likely earn less than if you studied for a financial qualification, but had to pay more in fees?

I do think many degrees could be shorter and more intensive though.

Just to note, the ‘I’ referred to in the original post isn’t actually me – but it is based on things observed while at uni – just to provoke comment

Oh, and one problem with charging people lots of money is that you get a feeling of entitlement – i.e. ‘I paid for this degree, therefore I should pass it’.

When you get people paying £27k for a degree only to get a 3rd, expect to see a lot more lawsuits.

This is very much the case in the US.

My computer science degree has proved to be very useful in my career as, even though it didn’t teach me about the things I actually use day to day (and there is no way it could, given how fast IT has moved since I finished uni) it did give me a fundemental understanding of the principles involced.

One think I liked about the uni I went to was that it was possible (in fact encouraged) to take subjects diverse from your core ones. That meant as well as Computer Science and Chemistry (which were my core subjects) I also did a semester or two in each of the following:
– Physics
– Management Science
– Business Studies
– Philosphy
– Psychology

Even though my university education didn’t give me any practical experience in the workplace it did give me a broad grounding in areas that have proved very useful in my career. Even if I had paid £27K in fees for that I’d have seen it as good value.

My point is that university (in these two subject areas) is very bad value for money (educationally). They say that a degree is indicative of having achieved a level of study, in humanities and social sciences I would say that it shows you turned up, paid fees and did very little. Shouldn’t university be made harder, shouldn’t students expect more for their (up to) £21,000 – in terms of education and intellectual rigor.

Exactly the reason the government is virtually removing all funding for these subjects!

While I don’t necessarily agree with the tuition fees, they might reinforce the idea of doing a worthwhile degree

Whats a worthwhile degree? One where you get paid a lot of money at the end of it or one where you actually learn stuff? (whether that stuff is job orientated or not) Yes i may price out the mickey mouse stuff but you’ll also endup with the best degree courses going to people with all the wonga but not the brain cells. A better way of doing it might be to actually have someone look into the courses and shoot the lame ones (or is this done already? if so it sounds like it needs reform)

I did a bit of training in IT stuff for a big US company at one point. I’d delivery advanced training courses, train-the-trainer, wrote courseware etc.

I know nothing about other fields, but I’m sure I could deliver a computing degree in 6 weeks (which probably exceeds the amount of time I turned up for mine).

It wouldn’t be as fun as a 3 year sex, drugs and countdown fuelled orgy for sure. I can’t see fire extinguishers featuring either. But it would be a good bit cheaper. £6K all-in.

I suspect if clever and talented people took the money that a university course cost, and instead invested the time and effort into a startup business there would be more millionaires.

poppa – Member
I think the new fees may discourage people from certain career paths. I mean, why bother studying for engineering when you will most likely earn less than if you studied for a financial qualification, but had to pay more in fees?

I do think many degrees could be shorter and more intensive though.

About half the people on my course are doing the engineering degree to get into finance and we have about as many presentations from investment banks as we do actual engineering companies. I’d imagine that doing a finance degree would not allow you to get a job at RR designing aero engines however. I don’t think people are put off of doing engineering by the fees the new intake this year for my course was oversubscribed by about 50 people many of who are overseas students paying £20,000+ a year on fees alone to do the course.

Iain

My computer science degree has proved to be very useful in my career as, even though it didn’t teach me about the things I actually use day to day (and there is no way it could, given how fast IT has moved since I finished uni) it did give me a fundemental understanding of the principles involced.

Yep +1 for that. Folk that stumble into software engineering without a degree are easy to spot as they generally have absolutely no idea about the fundamentals (computer architecture, theory, algorithms, etc).

It’s not the skills I use every day in my job, but it is the solid foundation that those skills are based on.

Yep +1 for that. Folk that stumble into software engineering without a degree are easy to spot as they generally have absolutely no idea about the fundamentals (computer architecture, theory, algorithms, etc).

Like Bill Gates?

Th truth is the best guys have no use for degrees. Many do them because they feel they have to of course, but learn absolutely nothing.

Like Bill Gates?

Not many Bill Gates out their though, so idiotic to use them as a benchmark for an industry as a whole…

I know nothing about other fields, but I’m sure I could deliver a computing degree in 6 weeks

Bollocks you could! (are we still allowed to say bollocks?)

You might be able to teach some folk the basics of programming in 6 weeks – like those awful “Teach Yourself x in 24 hours” SAMS books, but you wouldn’t come close to scratching degree level stuff (from a decent uni).

Not many Bill Gates out their though, so idiotic to use them as a benchmark for an industry as a whole…

I’d guess half the people I know were beyond degree level before they did their degrees. Admittedly software is a funny world.

I mean, why bother studying for engineering when you will most likely earn less than if you studied for a financial qualification

Check out where most Process Engineers work…………..

Then look at where accountants end up………..

IIRC a higher proportion of process engineers end up in finance than accountants!

I don’t think it teaches you much about real life, rather it shelters you from it for 3 / 4 years.

Any why shouldn’t it? Just because it doesn’t involve 9-5 paid work in an office cubicle, nice car, nice house, nice wife and nice 2.4 children? Doesn’t make it any less the ‘real world’. Everyone I know from my course benifited form it, even if it just convinced them that engineering/chemistry wasn’t for them so they used their new netweork of contacts to get jobs doing other stuff (infact he out earns most of us doing clever IT stuff in London!).

Bollocks you could! (are we still allowed to say bollocks?)

You might be able to teach some folk the basics of programming in 6 weeks – like those awful “Teach Yourself x in 24 hours” SAMS books, but you wouldn’t come close to scratching degree level stuff (from a decent uni).
No problem at all. You’d need motivated people of course. Not asleep, absent, drunk, high… you know, the normal student approach.

Which is of course where my cunning plan falls down.

Uni isn’t about learning. Never was.

Like Bill Gates?

If you know your history then you know Bill Gates saw a startling business opportunity and took it (by buying up QDOS, tweaking it and reselling it to IBM).

Not everyone has such huge opportunities or is shrewd enough to grasp them when they do. He is a gifted business man, but no computer genius.

I’d guess half the people I know were beyond degree level before they did their degrees.

Back when I did my degree there wasn’t much out there other than dabling with Spectrums and the like. I’d built a few computers from components and done some programming and the like before I went to uni, however my degree course massively expanded my horizons.

Ok programming directly in assembler (or even in binary!) isn’t something I’ve ever used, however it did teach me a lot about how computers actually worked and that has proved useful.

Uni at the age when most are aged 18-21 does teach you about life in so much as you get to mix with a large number of people for the first time from different parts of the country/world and different social backgrounds. This can only be a good thing.

Well I did an proper science degree and never had less that 45 hours a week contact by thje time you add in all the lab sessions

5thElefant – Member
Like Bill Gates?

Th truth is the best guys have no use for degrees. Many do them because they feel they have to of course, but learn absolutely nothing.

I’ve read that he was vastly better at being a business man than a programmer/software engineer.

When I consider that students now will have to pay up to £21,000 for a similar experiance it seems like pretty bad value. The personal and social aspects of university and how this helps you develop are of incalculable value, however you learn very little and are given a degree.

My degree was 4 years, so that’d be up to £36k + living costs! 😯

I got a 2:2 – with something like 1% more effort it would have been a 2:1

Lots of people say that – “I’d have got a 2:1 if I’d bothered to work”, “A 2:1 would be easy to get, but I didn’t work hard enough”.

Personally I think it’s rubbish. If you’d been a completely different person who was either cleverer, or more hard working, you might have got a different degree grade. Realistically, a 2:2 a lot of the time shows that people turned up and did a minimum of work. If you want a really worthwhile time at university, you needed to work harder. If you don’t want to do the work, why bother going to university?

Yep +1 for that. Folk that stumble into software engineering without a degree are easy to spot as they generally have absolutely no idea about the fundamentals (computer architecture, theory, algorithms, etc).

Yes, they are fine, until you have to optimise a database query, or write something involving nested loops.

Or broadcast something over a network. If you work in anything using multiple machines & message passing, the number of times people will set up an broadcast that takes n^2 time in the number of machines, rather than the classic O(1) time grid broadcast algorithm is shocking.

(oops, nerd rant alert, sorry)