But my misgivings with the system aren't based on whether the top students can get access to the top tier education. I have more misgivings in the UK (cannot speak for the US) with kids getting degrees on a large scale which are, essentially, worthless in a work place, other than in a teaching capacity.

The truth is, the majority of jobs are semi-skilled jobs. Things that require spreadsheets, number crunching, administration, bookkeeping, etc. technician level qualifications and so on and as such I'd rather that the education system placed some more emphasis on an intermediate level qualification for intermediate level students than sold them debt for low worth degrees, as is the current trend. Whenever I hear someone in the UK say something like, "I'm going to University next year to study European Society", or "I'm going to school next year to study Open Source Intelligence", or any variant (Gender Studies, or Media Studies, etc.) it pretty much equates to, "there's another person taking on minimum $25k-45k* debt and graduating with low employment prospects."

There are a lot of jobs which require some training, but not a degree-level education for and by proxy, the majority of kids studying less employable fields of education will end up in these jobs. I don't think high levels of debt should be a requirement for a semi-skilled job which doesn't require a college education. The fact that there is no cap on how many people can take these less valuable degrees (in terms of actual employment) means everyone in that medium-range bracket suffers as a result of burdening themselves with increased levels of debt.

*$45000 is, in fact, the upper rate of a 3 year bachelor's degree in the UK in terms of tuition alone. If a student decided to travel to, for instance University College London from Liverpool, to study gender studies they could expect to accrue $45,000 debt in tuition alone, before living costs. In all actuality they may have as high as $60-70k debt. Maybe even more if they are not careful with their spending.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2013 12:27AM by istirith.