On Wednesday 03 July 2013 22:01 Adrian wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Given that the number of students at university has exploded in the last
few decades, was it really sustainable to expect government to support
them all to the same extent?

Well, this is back to my pet peeve. We should have stuck with less students
prefereably doing solid degree courses. But all means attract the foreign
students.

Now that we are in the mess of having a lot of perfectly interesting but
effectively useless (in term sof being able to do anything much productive
with them afterwards) my take is that we should be offering grants for
engineering, science and core arts. If you want to do "film in the 1950's",
pay for it yourself.

The reason I include core arts as productive is that is what certain civil
servants, journalists and teachers may have traditionally taken,
particularly English, History, Economics or a foreign language. And by god
the newspapers would be better off with journalists holding a range of
proper degrees.

The remaining problem is: what to do with everyone else? The days of entry
level apprenticeships at the Post Office (telephones), GEC and the BBC are
gone, much for the worse. There are a *lot* of people who are smart and can
make a good career the old way without academic qualifications.

--
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