Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?

[coppice]

I would expect a course called "analytical methods for engineers" to be applied maths, and be puzzled if it strayed far from that.

Even the blurb did not clearly mention maths, they managed to write a few lines without actually saying what the course contents was.

How can it possibly be analytical if its not packed with maths?

[Simon]

I would expect a course called "analytical methods for engineers" to be applied maths, and be puzzled if it strayed far from that.

Even the blurb did not clearly mention maths, they managed to write a few lines without actually saying what the course contents was.

How can it possibly be analytical if its not packed with maths?

I thought it would be more practical and sure some maths but more along the lines of collecting measurements and treating them statistically and error analysis, instead if was stuff like advanced integration and differentiation. Like i said even the short blurb actually avoided the contents of the course

[Simon]

Very topically the following program just came on talking about university: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09gh5hr

they increased the fees from 3000 to 9000, I remember the government claiming that they only expected the best to increase fees, of course they all did. In the program you will hear David Cameron our last prime minister saying that with increased fees there would be more places, so yep everyone goes to uni, including those who perhaps are not suited, and who wants to fail their course? and so down comes the standards so that everyone can "pass". There is a lot of talk in that program about uni marketing and money, products, investment, debt, not much talk of the quality of the education.

I have a  friend studying at Coventry, it's £7000 a year. He came round for some help as he is doing an electrical/mechanical HNC, he showed me a mock exam he was attempting, it was all that lovely mesh/node analysis stuff, just what I had done but unlike me it was in very simple DC not AC with complex numbers. His ability to even write out the equations was poor and he lacks the math skills i had learned in my "analytical methods for engineers". the questions were very easy and the hardest one in the mock was unsurprisingly also in the actual test that had a 40% pass rate. He got 57%, when he left my house I felt he was still quite confused...

[CJay]

they increased the fees from 3000 to 9000, I remember the government claiming that they only expected the best to increase fees, of course they all did

It priced me out of obtaining a degree, I was about to sign up for an OU degree when that happened, almost immediately the OU increased their prices, making it impossible for me to study and work, it seems if I want a degree the only way to do it now is to be a benefits claimant or earn below the threshold for payments to begin, it was affordable before abnd would have been a net benefit to my employer and my career but now, on a purely financial level, it's just not feasible.

I would dearly love to get a degree but I will have to wait until I retire and then study as a silver student. Which benefits nobody as the money I'll spend will be purely an ego trip.

I have a  friend studying at Coventry, it's £7000 a year. He came round for some help as he is doing an electrical/mechanical HNC, he showed me a mock exam he was attempting, it was all that lovely mesh/node analysis stuff, just what I had done but unlike me it was in very simple DC not AC with complex numbers. His ability to even write out the equations was poor and he lacks the math skills i had learned in my "analytical methods for engineers". the questions were very easy and the hardest one in the mock was unsurprisingly also in the actual test that had a 40% pass rate. He got 57%, when he left my house I felt he was still quite confused...

I have family who went to uni, one (alright, on my ex partner's side) dropped out after two years and Student loans are still chasing me as, unknown to me, I was somehow named on her loan (yes, it's fraud, that's another story entirely), the 'degree' she was doing was 'tourism' which would seem to be an utter BS qualification and totally useless other than as a way for a university to rinse 27,000 out of students.

The value of a university education has been diluted so far by such BS courses as to make most degrees less than a doctorate pretty much worthless and yet, by some amazing coincidence, all degrees cost pretty much the same per year, regardless of how good or bad the course.

A cynical person might begin to suspect it's just a way of keeping university staff in cushy jobs.

[coppice]

I would expect a course called "analytical methods for engineers" to be applied maths, and be puzzled if it strayed far from that.

Even the blurb did not clearly mention maths, they managed to write a few lines without actually saying what the course contents was.

How can it possibly be analytical if its not packed with maths?

I thought it would be more practical and sure some maths but more along the lines of collecting measurements and treating them statistically and error analysis, instead if was stuff like advanced integration and differentiation. Like i said even the short blurb actually avoided the contents of the course

Its sounds like you are confusing "analytical methods" with "methods of analysis". They aren't the same thing at all.

[bd139]

they increased the fees from 3000 to 9000, I remember the government claiming that they only expected the best to increase fees, of course they all did

It priced me out of obtaining a degree, I was about to sign up for an OU degree when that happened, almost immediately the OU increased their prices, making it impossible for me to study and work, it seems if I want a degree the only way to do it now is to be a benefits claimant or earn below the threshold for payments to begin, it was affordable before abnd would have been a net benefit to my employer and my career but now, on a purely financial level, it's just not feasible.

I would dearly love to get a degree but I will have to wait until I retire and then study as a silver student. Which benefits nobody as the money I'll spend will be purely an ego trip.

I have a  friend studying at Coventry, it's £7000 a year. He came round for some help as he is doing an electrical/mechanical HNC, he showed me a mock exam he was attempting, it was all that lovely mesh/node analysis stuff, just what I had done but unlike me it was in very simple DC not AC with complex numbers. His ability to even write out the equations was poor and he lacks the math skills i had learned in my "analytical methods for engineers". the questions were very easy and the hardest one in the mock was unsurprisingly also in the actual test that had a 40% pass rate. He got 57%, when he left my house I felt he was still quite confused...

I have family who went to uni, one (alright, on my ex partner's side) dropped out after two years and Student loans are still chasing me as, unknown to me, I was somehow named on her loan (yes, it's fraud, that's another story entirely), the 'degree' she was doing was 'tourism' which would seem to be an utter BS qualification and totally useless other than as a way for a university to rinse 27,000 out of students.

The value of a university education has been diluted so far by such BS courses as to make most degrees less than a doctorate pretty much worthless and yet, by some amazing coincidence, all degrees cost pretty much the same per year, regardless of how good or bad the course.

A cynical person might begin to suspect it's just a way of keeping university staff in cushy jobs.

Don't even mention SLC. I had 17 years of trouble with those turd blossoms. Had to small claims them to get 6 months of overpayments back they had docked from my PAYE due to being too damn stupid to send the right notifications out and handle it properly. They didn't even reply to the claim and it was awarded. Then a cheque turned up with the wrong value on it. It was out by £18 but I decided it wasn't worth arguing and cashed it.

One comment popped into my head yesterday that my tutor said to me at university: "education is a privilege" which says it all.

[Simon]

As mentioned on the Radio 4 program people are taking degrees as a gateway to a good job, so basically we are living in the elitist society some politicians strive for where you have, have and have not's, never mind the "not have paid for what they had".

[CJay]

As mentioned on the Radio 4 program people are taking degrees as a gateway to a good job, so basically we are living in the elitist society some politicians strive for where you have, have and have not's, never mind the "not have paid for what they had".

Even a degree doesn't guarantee you a good job, all that's happened is that the goalposts have moved and a degree has become the entry level qualification instead of A levels or GCSEs, there are companies that won't hire anyone without a degree which is why the proliferation of BS degrees like tourism etc.

[Simon]

As mentioned on the Radio 4 program people are taking degrees as a gateway to a good job, so basically we are living in the elitist society some politicians strive for where you have, have and have not's, never mind the "not have paid for what they had".

Even a degree doesn't guarantee you a good job, all that's happened is that the goalposts have moved and a degree has become the entry level qualification instead of A levels or GCSEs, there are companies that won't hire anyone without a degree which is why the proliferation of BS degrees like tourism etc.

Yep which is why i setup my own company, no customer asks me what my degree is, just how much!

[cdev]

they increased the fees from 3000 to 9000, I remember the government claiming that they only expected the best to increase fees, of course they all did

It priced me out of obtaining a degree, I was about to sign up for an OU degree when that happened, almost immediately the OU increased their prices, making it impossible for me to study and work, it seems if I want a degree the only way to do it now is to be a benefits claimant or earn below the threshold for payments to begin, it was affordable before abnd would have been a net benefit to my employer and my career but now, on a purely financial level, it's just not feasible.

I would dearly love to get a degree but I will have to wait until I retire and then study as a silver student. Which benefits nobody as the money I'll spend will be purely an ego trip.

I have a  friend studying at Coventry, it's £7000 a year. He came round for some help as he is doing an electrical/mechanical HNC, he showed me a mock exam he was attempting, it was all that lovely mesh/node analysis stuff, just what I had done but unlike me it was in very simple DC not AC with complex numbers. His ability to even write out the equations was poor and he lacks the math skills i had learned in my "analytical methods for engineers". the questions were very easy and the hardest one in the mock was unsurprisingly also in the actual test that had a 40% pass rate. He got 57%, when he left my house I felt he was still quite confused...

I have family who went to uni, one (alright, on my ex partner's side) dropped out after two years and Student loans are still chasing me as, unknown to me, I was somehow named on her loan (yes, it's fraud, that's another story entirely), the 'degree' she was doing was 'tourism' which would seem to be an utter BS qualification and totally useless other than as a way for a university to rinse 27,000 out of students.

The value of a university education has been diluted so far by such BS courses as to make most degrees less than a doctorate pretty much worthless and yet, by some amazing coincidence, all degrees cost pretty much the same per year, regardless of how good or bad the course.

A cynical person might begin to suspect it's just a way of keeping university staff in cushy jobs.

Don't even mention SLC. I had 17 years of trouble with those turd blossoms. Had to small claims them to get 6 months of overpayments back they had docked from my PAYE due to being too damn stupid to send the right notifications out and handle it properly. They didn't even reply to the claim and it was awarded. Then a cheque turned up with the wrong value on it. It was out by £18 but I decided it wasn't worth arguing and cashed it.

One comment popped into my head yesterday that my tutor said to me at university: "education is a privilege" which says it all.

There has to be a better way to do this.

The cutbacks in public higher education hurt everybody, and create an impossible situation for people.

The consensus in technology is that lifelong learning is the new normal and we really need to be giving people the tools to think scientifically and solve problems creatively on their own.  Some alternative way of cooperative learning that leaves these dysfunctional government and commercial entities out of the picture entirely.

You know, the organizations that accredit institutions of higher learning might be receptive to discussing something like that.

They feel embattled too.

[Simon]

Its sounds like you are confusing "analytical methods" with "methods of analysis". They aren't the same thing at all.

and I'm sure I am not the only student that does not understand the jargon until he has studied it, the course titles are made to make it look easy, the first step of the marketing ploy and then a stupid video about how fun my study of mess and nodal analysis is going to be like it's an invitation to go clubbing....

[tggzzz]

The consensus in technology is that lifelong learning is the new normal and we really need to be giving people the tools to think scientifically and solve problems creatively on their own. 

From personal suspicion, then belief, then experience, that has been the case for the past 50 years. I see no reason why it would have been different before, and no reason why it will be different in the future.

It was famously described 150 years ago as "The Red Queen's Race" by Lewis Carroll:

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12/12-h/12-h.htm#link2HCH0002

[Simon]

Degrees really could hold value but they don't because the system has been hijacked. But there is a new system based on financial ability to "enter the club"

[tggzzz]

But there is a new system based on financial ability to "enter the club"

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

[cdev]

This may be more problematic, as it creates a new kind of guest work/worker who is both high skill and low pay, working for developing country temping firms, as a subcontractor in the developed countries.  So developed country firms wont have a shot in hell of being the low bidders and therefore getting the jobs. The guest workers will receive very low pay and in many cases will displace other recent immigrants who made good pay and sent money back home, so everybody loses except the multinational corporations.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080817110126/https://www.afsc.org/trade-matters/issues/Missingfromthedebate.pdf

[CJay]

And therein lies another problem that contributes to the degradation of the value of a degree.

It's become a numbers game for the politicians, 'my country has more graduates than yours' (paraphrasing for brevity but I have heard essentially that argument being spouted by politicians)

There is, at some levels of the political landscape, a touchingly naive belief that all degrees are born equal (and yes, they are if all you want to be able to say is 'x% of our citizens have a degree') so the headlong rush to make a degree entry level and something every school person should aspire to and obtain, what they failed to realise is that setting that as the gold standard just encourages a degree at any level of ability.

Unfortunately where you set a KPI as the number of successes and reward accordingly it encourages the lowering of standards and creates 'degree mills' where it becomes almost possible to fail to obtain a qualification unless you just don't bother to turn up.

[Simon]

Oh yes all degrees are the same, except the one "you" happen to hold, "oh i went to oxford you know". You can see more snobbery in the film "micromen" about the making of the UK computer industry. Chris curries company only takes off because his business partner has a degree and the bank manager is happy to lend to someone that went to a "good college"

[Galenbo]

How free from corruption are educational systems in your country? Can a graduate degree in a field or multiple degrees be trusted to be a good enough indication of somebody's skill that it can truly be called an objective measure of their skills?...

My scientific education learnt me the skill to ask these questions:

-How free from corruption are...    How to quantify freeness from coruption, where is what going to be measured by who?
-educational systems in...    Which educational systems of the 5000+ that exist in my small country ?
-Can a graduate degree in a... be trusted...  Yes it can. Everything can. the human decides what to trust.
-a good enough indication...    Define: good enough, define indication.
-it can truly be called...   Everything can truly be called, in the definition of "truly" of the last 15 years.
-an objective measure...  which objective measure, by which interpretation of which standard?

...looks like there are only dramatic, religious and political answers to your emotional collection of questions.

[CJay]

Oh yes all degrees are the same, except the one "you" happen to hold, "oh i went to oxford you know". You can see more snobbery in the film "micromen" about the making of the UK computer industry. Chris curries company only takes off because his business partner has a degree and the bank manager is happy to lend to someone that went to a "good college"

That wasn't quite what I meant, sadly the redbricks still command more respect than the concrete unis and that's distinctly unfair because it still gives an unfair advantage to those who can afford to study there.

I was actually, against all my better nature, suggesting, cynically, that some of the graduates from other countries that I've worked with had somewhat less than a thorough education and that perhaps their degrees were more a product of the amount of money spent than any innate ability on their part.

I'm a fairly well balanced cynic though, I have a chip on both shoulders as a result of a few bad decisions made when I was a teenager which lead to my turning down the opportunity of a free university education (possibly due to circumstances, probably more due to my bad judgement)

[tggzzz]

How free from corruption are educational systems in your country? Can a graduate degree in a field or multiple degrees be trusted to be a good enough indication of somebody's skill that it can truly be called an objective measure of their skills?...

My scientific education learnt me the skill to ask these questions:

-How free from corruption are...    How to quantify freeness from coruption, where is what going to be measured by who?
-educational systems in...    Which educational systems of the 5000+ that exist in my small country ?
-Can a graduate degree in a... be trusted...  Yes it can. Everything can. the human decides what to trust.
-a good enough indication...    Define: good enough, define indication.
-it can truly be called...   Everything can truly be called, in the definition of "truly" of the last 15 years.
-an objective measure...  which objective measure, by which interpretation of which standard?

...looks like there are only dramatic, religious and political answers to your emotional collection of questions.

Good questions, and a good observation.

One similar technique is very useful with statements from salesman and politicians. You take the core statement and invert it. If the inversion is nonsense then the original contained no information or was "motherhood and apple pie". Example: "the UK is an excellent place to do business" vs "the UK is a terrible place to do business".

[tggzzz]

Oh yes all degrees are the same, except the one "you" happen to hold, "oh i went to oxford you know". You can see more snobbery in the film "micromen" about the making of the UK computer industry. Chris curries company only takes off because his business partner has a degree and the bank manager is happy to lend to someone that went to a "good college"

Firstly, I'll bet I know which branch of which bank that refers to, and what happened when the bank manager was replaced Secondly, that was 35 years ago; things might have changed since then.

What you probably don't understand about Cambridge is that it was (and probably is) a very small community where there is far less than 6 degrees of freedom between people. That means someone can easily find out someone else's reputation merely by asking an acquaintance, probably an acquaintance from their college.

Finally, is it so surprising that people "feel comfortable" with and can easily assess others from a similar background? That happens in all walks of life, not just at "the upper echelons", whatever that might mean.

[bd139]

Bank managers are now software. When you walk into a bank and talk to a business manager, they are merely meat puppets for an algorithm. You can't trust a human to make rational evidence based decisions.

Really it goes like this:

Business manager: "Oh John went to Cambridge and is the son of Lord Bejesus. I met his father and his uncle at the lodge and we had a good private party. Give him £50k for his startup."

DENIED - he has 2 criminal records, Lord Bejesus has £10 mil in high risk investments with private army 'Academi', HMRC are after his balls for breakfast and he lives in a house paid for by his uncle who is in jail for sexual assaulting a minor at a party. You've got to be insane to give him a penny, but you can give him a 34.9% credit card because the interest offsets the risk and it'll have a small enough balance that we can write off the whole amount worst case. Ho ho ho.

[Simon]

Oh yes all degrees are the same, except the one "you" happen to hold, "oh i went to oxford you know". You can see more snobbery in the film "micromen" about the making of the UK computer industry. Chris curries company only takes off because his business partner has a degree and the bank manager is happy to lend to someone that went to a "good college"

Firstly, I'll bet I know which branch of which bank that refers to, and what happened when the bank manager was replaced Secondly, that was 35 years ago; things might have changed since then.

What you probably don't understand about Cambridge is that it was (and probably is) a very small community where there is far less than 6 degrees of freedom between people. That means someone can easily find out someone else's reputation merely by asking an acquaintance, probably an acquaintance from their college.

Well I don't know if you have seen the film but the situation portrayed was that the name of the college (which could be seen from the managers window - yes I'm sure it was a mix of caricature, comedy and exaggeration) was enough to assert the mans ability to take on the debt and be a safe borrower with no actual analysis of the business plan, his partners face talls the rest of the unspoken interaction as he is the main man but does not have the "acceptable" background for the bank manager.

Finally, is it so surprising that people "feel comfortable" with and can easily assess others from a similar background? That happens in all walks of life, not just at "the upper echelons", whatever that might mean.

Yes and no. So you would only lend money to someone like you because you feel uncomfortable with anyone else because they are different? A recent stint selling raffle tickets in a high end supermarket bares out what I already know. In business being so closed minded means one of two things: A) your an idiot and won't go very far because you have limited yourself and your market at the outset, B) indeed the business while "open to all" is actually a place of discrimination accessible only to those in a certain category. Of course things have changed somewhat but attitudes do change very slowly. The degree earner of 40 years ago can be todays employer of others and not fully up to date with reality

[Simon]

If you want a classic example of degrees not being the be all end all take a look at this collection of toffs: https://www.powervault.co.uk/about-us/team/ I have just purchased one of their units and it's going right back as it's a poor joke. I think they know more about extracting grants and tax breaks than actual project design. Of course all of the actual "engineers" have only just joined the company, I wonder who's been doing the design work so far.

[CJay]

If you want a classic example of degrees not being the be all end all take a look at this collection of toffs:

Yeah, that looks very much like a business trap for venture capitalists and indeed, google returns a bunch of information about venture capital investment and tons of marketing bullshit.

Interestingly hardly any of the technical staff joined until this year and the longest serving tech person only joined September last year as far as I can see.

Yet the company has been in existence since 2014 and raising almost a million pounds in funding.

The 'incubator' organisatin that helped them get going seems to retain an interest so I suspect with a little digging it would show that the main investors in that organisation are a bunch of venture capitalists backed by some hedge fund or yet another investment scheme, they look to be building a portfolio of tech companies that raise funding via crowdsourcing, 'angels' or venture capitalists, so it's all smoke and mirrors when it comes to finance.