Exploration vs tuition

Andrew Scott

The Guardian ran an article yesterday about how students don't find university value for money.  It has been like that for decades!  None of my three degrees and two half degrees were worth the time and money.  In the nineties it was as much about "the experience".  I always thought that was great.  I'd lived away from home, I'd had jobs since I was 15.  By nineteen I had, comparatively, quite a lot experience.  

The idea of lectures was always rubbish.  Read a book!  How much more convenient and better expressed.   Then find someone to ask your questions.  Pace some comics and musicians, few people with something serious worth listening to talk better or as well as they write.  

Academia was full of egos and perspectives, especially in literature. There weren't the right and wrong answers of science and, coaching my son last minute for his Highers, seeing the marking schemes, I see how wrong that is now.  You had to figure out what would appeal most to each tutor just as you still have to guess more what the examiner wants than try to give a good answers.  But you never did figure it out because the reading lists were so absurdly long and the lack of clarity and standards was disheartening. You were talked at, as with teachers and then just left.  It was less exploration, more like being mapless in a barren land. 

Thirty years on, things are no better.  Last year, I cannot describe how poor were the quality of most Scottish teacher training lectures, incorrect referencing and political brainwashing being two of the more egregious problems, not to mention the boredom. Yes, the materials were available via modern technology but that same technology was also used to check your attendance. Adults, with free choice who had jumped through many hoops and much competition to get there were penalised if they didn't turn up. 

So students are, no surprise, finally finding uni a box-ticking exercise.  Why has it taken so long? There are new elements now that are causing dissatisfaction.  One, universities in England charge steeply for tuition now.  Two, the cost squeeze on students is higher and they often have to work alongside study.  Three, advances in communication and technology mean that there are other and better ways to get the same information.  So students can do their own exploration and much more efficiently.  

The problem is, they are right, it is a box ticking exercise. The system is profoundly unfair.  You often need a degree for a decent job. There is a stranglehold, partly commercial on degrees.  There should be other ways.  The brand new medical doctor apprenticeship trials, where you are paid to learn on the job and thereby achieve your qualification, has several obvious advantages. A degree provides a minimum standard and is useful if you want to research.  But why aren't all degree professions apprenticeships - law, archaeology, social work, engineering?  Students would work, study and be paid. Their study would be directly relevant to the real world, it would be a direct and relevant exploration of the  working world, incorporating study. They would make useful connections for future work.  My worry is that any such new degrees might have the ludicrous bureaucracy, ridiculous workload and toxic culture of "it's supposed to be hard" that characterised my teacher-training.

Lastly there is finally, with technology, more awareness of this problem, more similarly-minded people finding each other, more chat and so more of a sense that this is a general problem, not something experienced by one or two isolated individuals.  As such it could be fixed.