More use than a degree
This article from The Times confirms what I`ve suspected for a long time: that many – but not all – degrees are exercises in futility that lead to nothing but debt and the loss of three years` potential earnings.
A GROUP of academic whistle-blowers have warned that British higher education is being blighted by watered-down degrees, rampant plagiarism and systematic pressure from university authorities to inflate the grades of weak undergraduates.
The complaints by the academics — working at universities including Oxford, Sussex, Birmingham, Cardiff and new institutions such as Central Lancashire and Manchester Metropolitan — have been presented in a 500-page dossier to an MPs’ inquiry.
One reports a student begging “please don’t dumb down any further”, while another says students are more interested in sending text messages in class than paying attention.
Nothing new there: the swine remembers many`s the time when his fellow students were taking naps in class – the lecturers didn`t seem too bothered, so everything ticked along in relative silence (save the odd snore here and there!) Sending texts and making calls is just damn rude, though!
Those who have given evidence include Sue Evans, an economics lecturer of some 30 years’ standing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
She describes a disappointed Slovakian undergraduate saying last term: “This university is like high school in Slovakia.”
Oh deary me!
Even the much-vaunted Oxford University is not immune:
At Oxford, he said, “anyone who remains awake and is tolerably well organised can get a 2:1”. He added that there is a “dumbing to the middle” at the university in which compliance with government quality procedures is more important than “waking up minds”.
Peter Dorey, a politics academic at Cardiff, said: “They often sit in seminars with only their mobile phone in front of them on the desk . . . but no books or notepads.”
He told the inquiry: “Many of them are semi-literate,” adding that he was starting to feel “as if I am wasting my time with today’s students”.
With these sentiments becoming commonplace, it would appear that the government`s mantra of `education, education, education` turned out to be a load of bollocks in the end!
The only difference between a degree and a bogroll is that wiping your arse with a degree will give you the paper cuts from hell!
