On 10/01/2011 13:40, Graeme Wall wrote:
On 10/01/2011 13:30, d wrote:
On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 04:16:10 -0800 (PST)
wrote:
Thank you for some sanity Boltar. And, let us not forget that this is
about teenagers who believe they are entitled to an education paid for
by the labor of working taxpayers.
Education is expensive in the United States. Parents and their
offspring are finding creative ways to deal with the cost. Several
Caribbean colleges now have US students attending bachelors=92 courses.
And, let us not forget India has outstanding medical schools and very
reasonable cost.
These punks need to lose their entitlement mentality. The UK needs
students who will stand up and be adults, not underdeveloped urchins
sucking at the state mammary gland.
To be fair , I don't begrudge univeristy education being free or at least
subsidised to a large extent. Given I had a partial grant myself I'd be
a hypocrite if I said otherwise. Though I think some intellectually and
vocationally useless courses - golf management studies and similar
nonsense -
should be fully paid for by the student.
The problem is who gets to define which courses are vocationally
useless
Me?
Of course, when people /are/ studying something clearly vocational
(other than medicine and law) we can complain they are doing dumbed-down
un-academic subjects which doesn't deserve places in proper universities...
It puzzles me that understanding modern mass communications is seen as a
waste of time, but splitting hairs over details of the popular
entertainment of Elizabeth I's era is a pinnacle of academic achievement.
For instance golf management courses I would take to be a
subset of estate management which is a long established and valid
course. I would agree that the general course (estate management in this
case) should be subsidised to whatever level the government of the day
thinks is appropriate and the specialist addition (golf management)
should be for the student to fund.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Golf Course Management
exists to meet a specific industry need, and at least some people doing
it might be getting funding from industries who need people filling that
need (cf some of the railway studies courses - we can laugh about
degrees in trainspotting, but the industry seems to think it is worth
sponsoring staff to do the courses).
ISTR there were degrees offered in paper production, which I doubt many
sixth formers would pick but which some tree-bothering companies might
be willing to support.
--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK