[SIZE=6]A first class delusion: It’s every parent’s dream to send their child to university… but too many students, poor teaching, huge debts and the prospect they’ll earn LESS than non-graduates has made it a nightmare[/SIZE]
By DAVID CRAIG and HUGH OPENSHAW FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 23:08 BST, 3 August 2018 | UPDATED: 08:24 BST, 4 August 2018
Britain’s university system, once the envy of the world, has become a monster. Bloated, self-serving and impossibly expensive to run, it is causing untold misery to millions of students who sign up for a lifetime of debt, only to be sold a sub-standard and frequently useless education.
To say so out loud invites condemnation all round — from the establishment that preaches there can never be ‘too much education’, from the hundreds of thousands employed on the university gravy train and from the millions of students who have got themselves deep into debt for the sake of a degree.
But it must be said. And something has to be done to address this self- perpetuating insanity.
The figures are eye-watering. Over the past 30 years, our higher education (H.E.) network has tripled in size. In the late Eighties, around 770,000 people — just 15 per cent of school leavers — attended a university or polytechnic. Now there are more than 2.3 million H.E. students. That’s almost half of all school leavers.
Many of them arrived with a distinct lack of accurate information on the long-term benefits and drawbacks of a degree.
They’ve been told that the ‘graduate premium’ — the extra money a degree student can expect to earn over a lifetime — is £100,000. But that’s vague to the point of being downright dishonest.
What’s the point of having a degree if every other person has one, too? When the cost of a degree can be up to £60,000, can it ever make financial sense — especially when the great majority of students (nine out of ten, on some courses) will be unable to find a job that requires a university education?
Changes have to be made, and now. Unless university places are restricted, our great institutions will be reduced to nurseries for over-qualified baristas, gym trainers and call centre workers.
We can’t wait for the academics to come to their senses and start turning away undergraduates — their jobs depend on filling those places.
[B]The fact is that many graduates now see minimal or even negative returns from their degrees.
Figures from the Office of National Statistics revealed recently that a third of graduates from some of the most popular degree courses in the country — including agriculture, psychology, English and creative design — are likely to be earning substantially less than the national average salary.[/B]
Graduates with useless degrees are so numerous that one in ten childminders has a university education. So does one in six call centre staff, and one in four air cabin crew and theme park attendants.
This can create bigger problems than mere frustration and bitterness. A former intensive care nurse, Rona Johnson, told the Mail in 2009: ‘Many graduate nurses feel they are too superior to clean floors and change beds.
The cost of all these useless degrees is almost beyond calculating. Each year students borrow over £12 billion. The total debt owed by UK graduates and undergrads is thought to be £100 billion.
As a result, an entire generation will spend the first 30 years of their lives struggling with debts they cannot repay. The average debt of a British graduate is £50,000, the highest in the developed world.
Above all, Britain has to shake off the delusion that half our school leavers are better off going to university. It’s a monstrous con.