"Nationally, of 313,375 students who began degree courses in 2002 and should have graduated last summer, 22.6% - 71,000 - failed to do so, as did 22.1% the previous year. Although some of these undergraduates moved to other universities or switched courses, 14.4% dropped out completely.
"And research has found that those who leave university early are much more likely to suffer from problems such as depression, low-self-esteem and unemployment later in life.
"The ones most likely to fall in this trap? White males from traditionally working-class backgrounds. Precisely the people, in fact, who Tony Blair insisted would be helped by his plan to open up the universities to allcomers."
The above is from an article by Tom Rawstorne in today's Daily Mail.
Rawstorne also says that more 'soft subjects' are being taken. He used search engine to find courses. He found:
962 media studies courses
545 public relations
457 human rights
206 computer games
179 ethnicity
which he compares with only
144 automotive engineering
142 aerospace engineering
He adds "drop-out rates are highes among those who enter university with the lowest grades (the rate for Derby University, for instances, is 27% - Cambridge, by contrast, is just 1%"
The education chapter of The Welfare State We're In makes the point that the government's belief that sending more and more people to university will improve economic performance is flawed. These figures add support to this view. The extra people being sent to university are, disproportionately, those who are less well qualified to be there, less likely to be doing a 'hard' course and more likely to drop out. The economic advantage of them going through the three years (or starting to do so but not actually making it that far)is likely to be much smaller than sending the brighter teenagers to university. In fact there is likely to be a net economic cost in sending these people to university.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Education
Comments (5)
TrackBack (2)
Comments
how is computer games a soft course? unless they are playing them. Making computer games is a complex process requiring many skills, and it is a growing industry. Seems just as sensible as automotive engineering to me.
Posted by: jb at March 17, 2006 09:32 AM
The debate over soft or hard is a bit of a side issue. I would be happy if students studied what they wished and accepted the future consequencies, such as poor job opportunities from bad study choices. However, if my taxes are being used to fund "soft" courses then maybe it's not this simple.
As to the main issues presented by James, how can anyone be in the least surprised that we are seeing the inevitable outcome of collectivist dogma in education. Dumbing down, prizes for all, and equality of outcome must eventually interface with the real world of competition and dog eat dog.
Until the socialists manage to destroy business, the professions, and industry, and are thus able to create a balanced fairytale system of state sponsored mickey mouse jobs for mickey mouse graduates the failings of current education will always be exposed after students graduate.
Posted by: John East at March 19, 2006 01:52 PM
I have to agree about computer games. These tend to be some of the hardest computer science courses: lots and lots of real programming and hard maths with numbers.
Posted by: Anonymous at March 20, 2006 01:37 PM
Hmm - Media courses - I'll take that with a pinch of salt. Recently completed a 'media' course in Digital Television - a field in which Britain leads the world. Many complex engineering (multiplexing), Management and social issues were addressed - Should gambling be allowed, for example? Pornography?
Media is important because it enables entertainment, education and influence - it is the new expression of the old British Empire - a global influence machine with Britain near the top.
If you're going to air predjucies, dont make them so simple minded.
Posted by: A Grad at April 6, 2006 01:47 AM
Warning: file(http://63.247.138.2/~bartholo/randomquotes.dump) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No route to host in /home/bartholo/public_html/archives/2006/03/the_rate_of_dro.php on line 318
Warning: implode() [function.implode]: Bad arguments. in /home/bartholo/public_html/archives/2006/03/the_rate_of_dro.php on line 318
While I agree with the main point, I find the categorisation of subjects into 'soft' and 'hard' weakens the argument. The subjects seem to be placed in these categories not based on their difficulty or their worth, but rather on each journalist's personal opinion of what a proper subject is. A computer game course, for example, teaches one how to program computers to create complex mathematical models of our world; not something which is particuarly easy or a useless skill in the job market.
There are problems with individual courses, in that they are being dumbed down under growing pressure to let more people in, and there is an imbalance in types of subjects; but this is an issue with how courses are run, not on the subjects themselves.
Posted by: Alan Pritt at March 17, 2006 07:38 AM