"The state of Britain's universities is a disgrace"

The state of Britain's universities is a disgrace.

Interesting article from The Guardian (UK).

• ... We are falling further and further behind. ...
  
  ... Some of our universities must break off, stick up for academic values, reassert the need for quality, and compete with the major universities in the United States. ...

 

Ken's rule: no matter how bad UK universities become (even if Oxford adds vending machines for diplomas), US universities will stay in lock-step at 30% worse.

 

The Guardian (British) says the UK's universities are a mess. The Economist (British) calls the U.S. university system the best in the world.

What's the truth?

Whatever Ken says it is!

(The author of the Guardian article notes that a university professor earns less than a London cabby. That's good, because that cabby is probably a former professor himself!)

Rich Douglas

P.S. To all you "for-profit" school haters, the author offers this:

"One or two universities, like mine, survive by operating as highly entrepreneurial profit-making organisations...."

Of course, he goes on to note that if the university WAS for-profit, they'd shut down the undergraduate programs for losing money. Of course, they charge next to nothing.

 

Very interesting.

I was considering a UK-based Master's program. However, since Ken says that the British system is based on the "common coin" concept, in that each institution provides the same basic education, I have to assume that they are all in trouble.

Guess I'll stick with an inferior U.S. RA degree instead.

The article was a nice find, Gert.


Tony

 

I am not sure whether you are merely ignorant or intentionally evil... no matter.

I think there may be an argument that some of the UK universities are falling behind the major universities in the US (in some areas at least).

However, we never (except when it serves to perpetuate your your beliefs) compare British Universities with major US Universities... we usually compare British universities with US 4th tier schools, virtual universities and non-traditional alternative schools.

Besides, I would think that Scott, Lawrie, et al provided enough of an argument to convince any reasonable person.

But these arguements strangely seem to escape our memory as soon as the thread becomes stale.

 

One fig-newton of Ken's mind stated:

"But these arguements strangely seem to escape our
memory as soon as the thread becomes stale ..."

The use of the "our memory" must indicate the collective
thoughts of "Ken, Walter, Scott, Huey, Louie, Doie, and
others yet to be used in the future ..." Right Ken ? That
is why he has defaulted to arguing with his own past posts.

Thanks for explaining your logic used in "our" posts!

Billy

 

He occasionally has a valid point, but the message gets completely lost for the messenger, misplaced in the white noise of "RA bad, Commonwealth good." So in a Radio-Moscowesque attempt to bombard the region with his message, he uses however-many identities as transmitters.

As nearly as I can tell, they're all on my Twit Filter. Occasionally, there's some "bleed-over," but on the whole I'm happy with the new Ignore feature.

 

And no one is sure from what school(s) you've received degree(s) from, since you refuse to answer my simple question.

When you dispense DL advice, particuarly such heavily slanted advice as you, it's certainly fair to know your educational background. Yet, you refuse to disclose it. I wonder why?


Bruce

 

Hmmm!

Just as a side note American Universities are not the only ones British institutions must compete with. Many Canadian, Australian and South African Institutions are very competitive and in many cases much cheaper and just as accredited.

I personally tend to go with accredited schools with lower costs.

 

This is a fair assessment. The Battle of Britain that he wages with a constant, dreary, single-tune, and tiresome onslaught of the same message is equivalent to bulletin board graffiti. It no longer matters if there is any element of truth to it. For awhile, I thought there was no thread for which he could not find some way of throwing in an irrelevant BA in 4 weeks comment. I guess even he got tired of it.

The last thread that he started, "American Accreditation," was so gratuitous considering the past few months that people just refused to re-argue the topic for the umpteenth time; instead, they rejected the topic and hurled tomatoes at him (there should be a tomato icon). People can become battle weary with new battles each day, but when you have to replay the same battle over-and-over, it is more wearisome and pointless.

I suppose his speaking in the third person referred to his various identities.

Of course, I'm ignorant and evil, so what do I know?

 

I have often wondered about how deep the level of ignorace is for regular contributors in this forum. This thread is no exception.

Has anybody actually read the article in the Guardian? I doubt it. It is a "comment" of one particular professor at the University of Warwick. Warwick is one of the UK's newer universities and was set up to be the "model" of the future of UK universities.

It is well known within the academic circles that Warwick is rather non-traditional and so are its professors. This is not a bad thing, it's just that they are rather revolutionry as compared to the old boys club at Oxford, Bristol, Durham and Cambridge.

The article talks about government FUNDING to British universities. It talks about the benefits of "pubic" universities (all UK universities) becoming "private" and charging higher tuition like Harvard and the rest....

It draws a stupid analogy to a 60-year old professor making less money than a London taxi-driver. However, it doesn't state how much money that actually is! So what? I know plumbers and contruction workers and landscapers that make more money than university professors! This is not just a British thing, it's all over the world.

I believe that the ignorance of some forum participants in pronounced. Research a little before you comment.

 

>>the benefits of "pubic" universities (all UK universities) becoming "private" and charging higher tuition like Harvard and the rest.... <<

Higher tuition or not, sign me up! (Even grandpas like to know that they're still alive!)

 

Peas in a pod.

Tossing around the i-word is futile, don't you know? If the target is ignorant, he won't believe you. If he isn't ignorant, he won't believe you. In both cases, it is completely rude and certainly is not persuasive.

But if you've run out of actual arguments on a bulletin board, you can't spit, can you?

 

The above is an irrelevant attack on the writer and his university; it says nothing about the writer's theory. From the article:

"A British student pays a mere 1,000 pounds a year to go to university."

It said "a British student" not "a Warwick student." The author implies that all the British universities are starving due to a lack of cash. Therefore it is a systemic problem, whether Oxford or Warwick.

I took that to be an alternative to going down the tubes academically and financially with the rest. He's trying to make survival an option.

Not his best argument, but what difference does it make if the universities go down the tubes, academically and financially? I do think university professors should make more than taxi drivers all over the world, however.

<insipid i-word insults deleted>

 

Interestingly, in the Off-Topic forum, there is a thread (Buy a Place at Oxford) that corroborates this academic's assertions. A journalist went to several UK institutions and was able to buy consideration for a place at the institution, including Pembroke College of Oxford University. The thread includes links to two stories about this sting operation.

In the second story is this quote:

"Some universities are constantly urged to break loose from state funding and go fully private. Most of all, it adds to calls for universities to be given the freedom to charge what courses cost. "If you get the money in through the front door you don't need it by the back door," said one academic."

 

quote
[Not his best argument, but what difference does it make if the universities go down the tubes, academically and financially? I do think university professors should make more than taxi drivers all over the world, however.
unquote

In a perfect market , rewards should be related to price paid by consumers. Postgraduate education is a business, and the products are the courses.
University professors can write down their courses,present them in an attractive way, and be rewarded by the sales volume, resulting of the quality of the product.

Why to pay high salaries to some professors, acting as former sovietic bureaucrats, without added value, reading their notes and offering a private service against a public funded salary ?

And if the market offer more reward for a taxi driver, why not ?
We are in 2002, not anymore in 1930....
If some professors feel that taxi drivers earn more than them, they can become taxi driver.
If they like teaching, they stay professors. And the many good professors are well paid, in term of money and/or self-esteem by performing well in their duty.

Education is a mean to produce added value. And not an end in itself. Knowledge are tools to produce value, and not to be "paid back" for years of schooling, often paid by public funds.


Stan

 

Hi Guys,

For those of us in the know, this article is published in a newspaper called "The Grauniad", thanks to its propensity to typos and worse.

Not that the article in question applies of course !

In fact, bringing some commercial realism into UK education would be a good thing to my way of thinking .... but then they'd have to put up with Quality Assurance reviews that most UK institutions are trying to get rid of !!! (Quality Assurance Agency)

Those are the guys with the clipboards trying to find if academe is actually doing anything useful that Prof. Oswald is complaining about !!

Sorry Prof, but continuous audit of Quality Assurance is a way of life in the "real world" ..... you'd better get used to the idea.

After all, it's no more than you expect when you buy an aero engine or whatever. Or an educational course.

Having had one daughter graduate recently from one of the UK Top 3 University Economics Departments (not Warwick, but one of the other universities mentioned in the article), I can see what was still missing in contact hours and course content over what I did in a UK "new university" sandwich Engineering & Management course 30 years ago.

Mind you, that university of mine (said to be modelled in the 1960's on MIT - at least by our Departmental Professor - I heard him say it) has gone somewhat backwards ever since (my opinion only !!).

On a personal note, I do believe people tend to value what they have to pay for. If they don't have to pay, the value is less appreciated.

So I think some financial contribution is well justified in UK education ... but then again not to the extent of denying education based on the ability to pay.

Which is more or less the way it is now.

And of course, there's already a private sector UK university if you really want the fully commercial option at:-

http://www.buckingham.ac.uk/

And which Chris Woodhead (also mention by Prof. Oswald and ex-HMI Inspector of Schools) has just joined.

All the best .....

Neil

 

You have some points regarding the market-driven economy, but the focus of the article was that the universities are taken out of the market-economy because they have artificially controlled tuition costs that are too low to maintain their former level of high quality. To maintain the former level of quality, the universities must not lose their quality teaching staff to the corp of taxi drivers.

The teaching staff and the learning environment are the value that universities add to education. Without this added value, one might as well just use a good library for education. So the value of public education is being strangled by the artificiality of the fees charged to students.

How much would taxi drivers make if suddenly they had to drop their fees to one-tenth of the current value, with revenues less than costs, and depend on the public treasury to make up for it?

 

This week's 'Economist' contains a story that, while based on the recent Oxford admissions scandal, makes many of the same points.

My opinions:

There isn't any reliable measure of the quality of undergraduate instruction, so claims that it is plummeting usually turn out to be based on questionable indicators such as professors' allegations that they are underpaid. Like so many "quality issues" in higher education, this ultimately resolves into a faculty labor issue. I'm not saying that they don't deserve more money, but I am saying that it is a different issue.

I'm not sure that I believe the figures that are routinely thrown around for money spent per undergraduate student. Is this really a measure of money spent on each undergraduate per year? Or is it simply the entire university budget divided by number of students? The latter will include a lot of post-graduate and research related activities that not only do undergraduates never see, but which may actually detract from undergraduate education. For example, you can't include salaries of research "faculty" who don't teach undergraduates in these calculations, but I'd bet that they are. If I'm right, then per-student spending figures are probably distorted upwards significantly for flagship universities that are doctoral research optimized.

That leads to my next observation, that it is misleading to compare a British per-student spending average for all universities with only top American universities. The latter are all heavily doctoral research optimized, while half the British universities are the former polytechnics that are somewhat different in nature. If you compared the per-student budgets of all American univerities with only the leading British research universities, and then corrected for respective cost of living, any British underspending would probably evaporate immediately.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics...