Editorial Bitchslap

Issue #1250 [Nov 29th 2002]

Dear Will,

While your editorial probably wasn’t aimed at me, the point about “vocational” degrees is that they purport to be vocational when they are not. Take a (hopefully) hypothetical degree in fruit picking. Will it ensure you get a job picking fruit? No. Fruit pickers already provide on the job training, they will not have had significant input into the degree course, and they will probably be looking for people to meet physical rather than academic requirements.

Similarly, UK universities now churn out so many people with media studies degrees that there is no correlation at all between obtaining such a degree and getting a job in the media, or even a job at all. On the other hand you do acquire around £20,000 of debt. Yet the government persuades people to take up such degrees on the basis that you will get a better job, and earn more money.

The government should certainly not be subsidising such degrees, not because it’s a waste of public money but because it’s a waste of the private money that the main victims of this “egalitarian” fraud pay. This is not intellectual fascism, physics and other such courses at universities like IC are truly vocational: At IC you are not so much taught about physics, you are taught to be a physicist. The value of the degree to employers (either the government or the city) is not your ability to real off streams of equations, but your ability to solve mathematical and physical problems. A non lab-based physics course would be as big a fraud as the media study for precisely the same reasons.

What the government most certainly should subsidise are real vocational qualifications (like apprenticeships) in partnership with businesses. The students on such courses would have a far more valuable qualification at the end, they would be more employable and as they are earning while learning they won’t be saddled with £20K of debt.

Seb Tallents, Physics UG 3

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But...

So where do you draw the line? If you want to study physics you should get funding from the government because it wil give you the chance of a well paid job? How about something like English? Do you say don't fund it because it doesn't train you for anything particularly attractive to employers? How about Drama? Don't fund it because it's not going increase your chances of getting a well paid job at the end of it? 1. Not everyone chooses to go to university because they believe that doing so will lead them to a well-paid job. Many people choose to study at University level because they are passionate about a subject, and/ or for self-improvement. 2. We're not all passionate about the same things, your passion may lie in physics, but who are you to tell somebody that something they are passionate about is useless to study at University when it's something like Media Studies, if they believe that doing so is going to give them personal fulfillment and give them a better chance of suceeding in the field they have chosen (see next point). 3. Yes, studying physics does make you attractive to employers for your ability to solve mathematical and physical problems, but for plenty of other jobs a creative flair is needed, and through studying something like Media Studies you can develop your potential and reach a certain level of skill and knowledge making you just as attractive to employers. Not everyone who studies Media Studies wants to be a journalist and I think you underestimate the career paths that studying something like this could lead to. Sorry but I have to agree with Will on this one!

Violet Peachy

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