A degree of ignorance?

What can you get for £25,000 these days? Well, if you're off to university this September, that amount should more or less cover your term-time fees and expenses for the three years if you're careful.

If the end result is a degree in a recognized subject from a well-known university then it's probably worth the money, but a glance through what's on offer for candidates in clearing shows plenty of the sort of thing that might raise the eyebrows of a prospective employer.

Tony Blair's intention of getting vast numbers into university may have been an attempt to match the increasingly well-qualified workforces of the tiger economies but the sad reality is something rather different.

Without the school system to back it up, the result has been a vast increase in degrees of doubtful academic merit attracting candidates struggling with the demands of A-level. According to a report published in February of this year,

Some four-in-10 newly-admitted students had grades no better than two Es at A-level... [and] ...an increasing number of applicants were being given places despite lacking “the intellectual attributes needed for higher education”.

These will be the students most likely to drop out before the end of the course - England's record in that department already being a decidedly unenviable one - and be left with massive debts and nothing to show for it. Even if payment is deferred until they are earning a reasonable amount, the debt remains as a financial and psychological burden.

'50% to university' belongs in the same category as 'all must have prizes' - it produces a system that ultimately breaks down under the strain, harming the very people it was meant to benefit.

Hanging on the telephone

It's front page news today - the chaos caused by a crashing computer at UCAS and 135,000-odd applicants chasing 45,000 places in clearing*.

With £18,000 at stake in increased tuition fees, it was a no-holds-barred race for those who didn't get the expected grades, the Urchin among them. In the Tavern, as in thousands of other households, every computer was pressed into service, leaving no time for such trivial pursuits as blogging.

The same applied to telephones; if I had 10p for every time a redial button was hit across the nation yesterday, I'd be paying the Urchin's fees up front and heading off to the Seychelles for a month to get over the strain.

It's the perfect modern example of the Tragedy of the Commons. That's what UCAS didn't consider; there may be 135,000 applicants for clearing, but a substantial proportion of these will have press-ganged the laptops and mobiles of all their nearest and dearest into the effort, on the basis that every additional computer and phone increases your chances of logging on or getting through successfully.

With most households in possession of several telephones and computers, the result was jammed switchboards at every university with places still on offer. Whether you secured a place was largely down to  luck - getting through at the precise moment that a line became free. The end result is that many of those who narrowly missed the top grades will have lost out to those with inferior results.

There's a sort of January sales atmosphere about the whole business; desperate candidates grabbing any course they can to beat the rush and universities accepting on a first-come first-served basis rather than selecting students on their potential suitability for the course.

It will be interesting to see what the drop-out rate is over the next year.

Update: The Urchin, I am infinitely relieved to say, has secured a place at a reputable northern university.


*UCAS allows applicants to hold only two offers; those who fail to meet the requirements of either must log in to receive their Clearing number before scanning the lists of available places online. Having found a suitable course, they must then phone the admissions tutor on the number supplied by UCAS to apply for a place.

Wielding the Knife and Fork

It's no secret that cuts for Universities were in the offing, but the grim reality presents itself this morning in a Sunday Times article headed 'Tuition fees will rise to £10,000'.

As usual, the headline grossly over-simplifies (there are proposals to remove the fees cap and increase the costs of student loans) but what it boils down to in effect, for us at least, is the prospect of the Urchin leaving university with far higher debts than his older brother.

Since both have chosen similar degree courses and are likely to aim for the same kind of employment, where does this leave us as parents? Can we really stand by and see one of our children lumbered with a lifelong debt while the other one clears his within a few years?

And, even if we could help reduce the Urchin's debt, would it be it fair to his older brother to do so?

It looks as if Browne's Fork* is going to be accompanied by a wooden spoon stirring up sibling rivalry of epic proportions.

*Remember Henry VII and Morton's Fork? Browne's Fork goes like this: 'if you went to a state school, you have paid nothing so far for your education so it's reasonable to ask you to meet the full costs' or 'if you went to a fee-paying school, you obviously have enough money to meet your tuition fees in full'.

Get Gordon Brown out of my sitting room!

There he was on the screen, grimacing away in front of a field of waving corn (prosperity? a subliminal fertility symbol?) while the adoring multitudes howled with delight at every opportunity.

He was pronouncing what you might call New Labour's Beatitudes, listing the achievements of the past thirteen years, claiming credit for anything that could possibly be construed as positive - Olympics, black women peers, the number of teachers... the list went on and on, while the crowd prostrated themselves to touch the hem of his garment.

I see from the news that I must have been watching Brown addressing 'a morale-boosting rally of 300 activists in Manchester' - which raises the question of exactly whose morale was being boosted. By the time I switched on, Brown was grinning manically, which is not a sight you want to be greeted with after a hard day at work.

The reason for this particular self-satisfied smile? 'Under Labour, there are more students at university than ever before and I'm happy to say the majority of them are women'. Cue: whoops and squeals of delight at a level suggesting the entire audience had just won the lottery.

Exactly why is this a cause for rejoicing? I'm all for equality in educational opportunity, but why is this inequality a source of jubilation? the only reason I can think of is a sort of double negative; women lacking education is BAD, so more women than men in university must be GOOD.

So where does this leave my son? Finding a university place is hard enough already: he'll be set impossible targets because his school is above average for GCSE's - and it's not comprehensive and we don't live in a deprived area, so there are quotas operating against him as well. With application forms now asking about parents' qualifications, he'd be better off being adopted by wolves - or possibly urban foxes.

The slogan 'A Future Fair for All' has a distinctly hollow ring to it, in this household at least.

Cameron's University Challenge

Here at the Tavern, we've been considering a political bombshell dropped this week by one of the Offspring currently at University.

Instead of returning to the parental spawning grounds to vote, this wise child has registered in his place of study. This means that a vote has effectively been transferred from a party stronghold to a teetering marginal, by virtue of a term-time election.

And when I say teetering, I mean just that - their present incumbent was elected with a majority of fewer than 500 votes, whereas our sitting MP can, on past showing, expect to secure nearly 50% of the votes cast.

It appears the registration process, facilitated - some might say orchestrated - by campus activists, has been aimed at persuading the 7,500 undergraduates to cast their vote where it will do 'most good' - some will travel home or vote by post while others vote at university.

If the old adage about being a socialist at twenty holds true, a term-time election means a large* unpredictable population of Lib Dem or Labour voters able to select which of two constituencies will have their vote. Combine this with the LibDem's pledge to scrap tuition fees and the student loans fiasco on Labour's watch and things get very interesting indeed.

So if you've tried all the BBC's other interactive toys, why not play 'Spot the University Town' among the target seats and dead certs - bearing in mind that, at the latest count, there are 109 universities in the UK.

*The total number of UK students at British universities is estimated at 2 million.