Today is day one of a 3 day report in the DT into the parlous state of the UK transport system.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002...l
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I read that too, FIF - and I was quite depressed. To think that several of my family spent large chunks of their life in uniform so that you and I might enjoy a free country...
...and these imcompetent twerps can do this to us without the help of Franz Joseph, Hitler, or Bin Laden.
It will, of course, get much worse before it gets any better.
:-(
Ian Cook
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All I can say is that the increased congestion will fatally damage the economy of the UK, we are definately heading for "Third World" country status. Nearly 600,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since his Tonyness came to power, crazy. Pay scientists and engineers to be creative not the b***** firemen £30k. The only hope for this nation is to become a knowledge based economy, but there is fat chance of that if labour introduce university top up fees. Universities need central government funding, it's an investment for everyones future in in the long run.
VD5D.
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They introduce tuition fees and say that you can get a loan and pay it off with the higher earnings you get later.
They forget to mention that you will also be paying more tax if you earn more.
Perhaps Britian would have a car manufacturing economy if we could stop our students working for foreign companies.
Now they want to charge top up fees with highest charges to lab based courses; science and engineering and lower fees for arts courses. Result, more artists and fewer engineers and mechanics. Conclusion, manufacturing and car production goes down the toilet.
Come on Tony, lets be fair, if graduates earn more, they will pay more tax, spend more money and improve the economy. Why try and dissuade people doing what we need for the future.
Ben
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Two Points:
1. As it stands, undergraduate teaching is loss making to UK universities. They would be better off if they didn't do it. Income has to be raised somehow, or they will go bust. And no, I'm not kidding.
2. Science and engineering courses are the most loss-making of all and in fact in most universities science and engineering departments are subsidised by the arts and humanities. Arts and humanities departments, in general, are profitable.
I'm an ex-academic, who couldn't stand the underfunded, cheapskate way things were going and escaped (prospective students who bring their parents to open days, then let the parents ask all the questions - pathetic). So why shouldn't you pay for your education? People borrow shed loads of money at high interest rates to pay for cars that will be scrap inside of a decade. Why not pay for education? It's just a matter of priorities.
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I was not saying that universities are underfunded, but that the gov want to charge students twice, once through fees and again through increased tax.
I went to Uni 4 1/2 years ago, and have acted as a guide while there. Parents ask the questions as the students have so much to think about, it is normally practical questions that the parents are asking; security, accomodation and facilities. The students already have a million things on their minds.
I didn't study arts or engineering student. I studied Finance and Accounting.
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2. Science and engineering courses are the most loss-making of all and in fact in most universities science and engineering departments are subsidised by the arts and humanities. Arts and humanities departments, in general, are profitable.
The trouble is that it's science and engineering we need to be encouraging rather than arts and humanities. There is much more money to be made for the economy through engineering than through social sciences for example.
A solution would be to identify areas that need more support and provide either fee-free or low-fee courses to students that stick with it. If you force all students to pay then you will lose out on potential skills.
People borrow shed loads of money at high interest rates to pay for cars that will be scrap inside of a decade. Why not pay for education? It's just a matter of priorities.
It depends what you are doing. Many people choose a fairly easy course so they can have 3 years of fun. There are a *lot* of courses where the end result isn't worth the cost, but OTOH I suppose these do (as you point out) help subsidise the more worthwhile courses.
As others have pointed out, most students become higher earners so they pay their way through tax anyway, but I certainly wouldn't have minded paying slightly more tax and having had a decent grant, and I was lucky enough to actually *get* a grant. I don't know the maths to work it out, but I suspect you wouldn't need much of a 'surcharge' on graduates to cover the cost of their education over a number of years.
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>but OTOH I suppose these do (as you point out) help subsidise >the more worthwhile courses.
Except that, of students without predetermined destinations (medicine, those with industrial sponsorship), English and History graduates have the best employment records. I'm assuming (maybe unfairly) that these are on your "less worthwhile" list. Media studies doesn't do too badly in the employment stakes, either, though few graduates from there actually go into the media.
But back to cars. Yes we need more engineers, but engineering students are often (usually?) sponsored anyway, so this will have little impact on our car manufacturing industry. Universities already sponsor the car industry (and the rest of engineering and tech business) anyway by providing research facilities and personnel at well below market rates. Meanwhile, the universities go to pieces because Brits won't pay proper taxes.
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Time will tell whether the present boom in university education will make any worthwhile contribution to society at all, or whether it will just raise the qualification levels required by employers to the extent that you will need a degree to work in a shop. Meantime, however, try and get a plumber or a gas fitter and you will find most of them are booked up three months in advance. Any garage will tell you of the trouble they have in recruiting skilled mechanics. Perhaps some of the money put into universities would be better spent in encouraging employers to take on more trade apprentices.
I think we have begun to loose sight of the purpose of education, which seems nowadays to be an end in itself.
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The trouble is that it's science and engineering we need to be encouraging rather than arts and humanities.
I'm a little unhappy about this. What we really need is a graduate population with well-trained minds. Clearly science and engineering can encourage this, but so can some subjects in arts and humanities. What I find more worrying is the current trend towards "vocational" degrees and a more spoon-fed approach to teaching; this has done little to encourage the development of flexible, creative minds.
I must declare an interest here: I have a degree in music. But that didn't stop me from qualifying as an actuary and securing a good job with a mangement consultancy. I have forgotten quite a bit about music, but some of the other things I learned (structuring arguments properly, doing research, self-discipine, working to longer-term timescales) are still with me. A university education should be about more than learning a set of facts.
Peter
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Every year the Chancellor reports that the economy grew by X percent (normally between 2 and 3) and he predicts that the same or better will happen for at least the next two or three years (i.e. as far ahead as he can "Guess").
But not an extra inch of road to transport this extra activity.
Perhaps he expects it all to be carried on bicycles.
Another step to becoming a Third World country!
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There is a lot of talk about Britains transport system becoming 'third-world'. Having visited one of these third-world countries and seen what their transport system is like, unless the local authorities suddenly dig up all the roads and leave them as soil and then remove all the railways, I fail to see how we are heading towards the standard of the 3rd world.
Incidentally the country was Gambia, with its one set of traffic lights and I think 2 or 3 proper roads.
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Damned fine article in todays part 2 by Alice Thomson
perhaps this is really Bogu....... no can't be....surely not ;-)
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002...l
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