Disgusted at UK Uni

[tamborine]

Have heard that public school students have difficulty in getting into UK Uni's, even with top qualifications. Places are reserved for state school & overseas students as they attract extra Gov grants on top of fees?

One local student looking for a doctorate at Oxford was advised to go to Harvard.

[jadeymodel]

while ur disgusted i'm rather glad. I'm 21 and because of my social standing in society I rely on grants to get me through uni. I work har and I know life is based on a meritocracy and people rise and fall on how hard they work. Money or where you was educated have little to do with getting into uni...It's about the work you do and how you portray yourselfs in the interview. I believe some people who have had a high standing in society just do not appreciate the smaller things in life. I think uni's should be 50-50 regardless of money. some people in my class have been privately educated however I do better than them having been to a state school and worked extreemly hard to get where I am today. I'm proud of my achievements and glad of the opportunities I have had in life all because I have been funded! MONEY helps...But brains don't need money-There about work & effort! xx

[stewey]

There are too many people, not just in the UK, attempting to go to university. If they are accepted what do they study: 'romantic poetry of the First World War', 'modern history as opposed to ancient during the 1400's', 'the cyclical sex life of the African bullfrog'......Get a job! Unfortunately there're not too many out there...so let us laze studiously around the quad.

[tamborine]

jadeymodel....It should be equal opportunity for all, with the qualifications. This person is no less qualified because their parent chose to pay for education.

Am pleased you enjoy your Uni and are able to get home but to have to send your kids to USA to qualify changes the whole spectrum. They wont want to work in UK when qualified abroad - it has a huge impact on family life.

[jadeymodel]

hmmm...

again i disagree...doctors, nursesthey go to uni.
I study forensics Is this stupid? Some people can study 'rubbish' )but agian this is subjective-an opinion, not fact. Just so happens Sally Miss war poet thinks ur job sucks)but hey...If it makes them happy then why complain? Life is short! and we have freedom of choice for a reason. I wouldnt be content in the part time world...I wana make the best of myself. xx

[tamborine]

stewey....this person wants to study medicine. We cant have too many doctors?

[jadeymodel]

Tamborine yea I agree completely on equal oppertunity! I think it should be 50/50 but I completely disagree with Stewys answer...we dnt see uni as a detour from the real world for 4 years. Uni is hard work. While all my friens get cars and enjoy the fun of a full time wage I gho to uni & struggle. Its simply because I wana better myself...not settle for minimum wage by 'getting a job'.

Have ambition & reach for the stars! :)

[tamborine]

I lost your thread Jadey....wots Sally miss war? Obvious I never went to Uni - I began earning a living at 15.

[jadeymodel]

Ur friend should go to Harvard and show Oxford just what they are missing! :) You cant have too many doctors...If we all 'got a job' we'd be in trouble. Your friend must be a brainy wee thing to apply there. I hear they are very 'harsh' with who they let in. My uncle graduated from St Andrews & he's very succesful in what he does :) xx

[jadeymodel]

Sally Miss war poet was a pun played on steweys subjective opinion on students who study, pardon my launguage, but **** basically. He implied some students study gay things like 'war poetry'...I implied Miss sally the war poet may not agree on his subjective statement on how she should 'get a job'. His statement was rather vague and I was merely patronising him for such a subjective statement that could actually offend people who study poetry. Nothing wrong with it. :D xx

[stewey]

Jadey, I have an M.A . in psychology from McGill University, a B.A. in English and history from Carleton University, and diplomas in hematology, immunohematology, bacteriology from the Toronto Institute of Medical Technology, and a (lapsed) teaching certificate. Therefore, I know a little bit about studying. However, I still believe that too many young people today consider 'uni' as a way to avoid working. Obviously I'm a little older than you:)

[bednobs]

tbh T, i take what you are saying with a pinch of salt. You have "heard" about 1 persons experinces. Studying for a doctorate (as opposed to study ing to be a doctor of medicine)is post-graduate study and there are really very very few places and there is no grants or help for anybody to do this - people have to find their own funding. People who are doing doctorates already have a degree and a masters degree usually, so they have already been to uni for some years so would find it hard to say they were being held back from attending uni. As usual people "hear" one thing and don't think about what it really means

[cassa333]

Higher education should be about the ability of the candidate not their background or what school they went to.

If state schools produce fewer ABLE to pass a fair entrance exam (or however they are picked) then blame the state schools.

I read somewhere that a larger than average amount of students from state schools that got into university where less able to cope with the things they were expected to do. From basic spelling and arithmatic to self disiplin so dropped out or got overall lower grades at the end.

This is obviously not true of everyone but maybe indicates the need for improvement in state schools rather than a bumbing down of the further education system.

If we carry on we will dumb down the education system to the lowest common denominator and we will all be using text speak and forgetting basics like literacy and numeracy.

What is with this lazyness of not bothering to say you are and instead use ur or being in such a hurry you can't even be bothered to capitalise I? I receive emails from supposedly inteligent business and professional people that don't even include fullstops or capitals at the start of a name.

When our own prime minister writes, what should have been a groveling appology, with a marker pen that is only just legible then what hope does our society have?

Long term I think none.

[LaBamba]

If jadeymodel's command (and spelling) of the English language in his/her rambling posts are anything to go by then heaven help us.

This is the text-speak generation at its worst.

[jake-the-peg]

I think it's a crime that people continue to do our kids down and perpetuate this myth that the schools don't teach as well as when we we at school.

Personally I think the papers do it to make their readers feel superior.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_styl e/education/article5314718.ece

British kids are the best in Europe at maths and Science, better than in the US and only kept of the top by the far East.

And how many times do we hear older, arty types laugh at how bad they are at maths.

"I can't even do a restaurant bill - ha ha"
"Oh I don't do maths"

etc. etc.

[New Judge]

Yes, jake, the papers do make older people realise that standards in education have been eroded. However, it is the examination papers that provide the evidence, not the newspapers.

A glance at "old" and "new" papers for almost any examination in any subject at any level is all you need to confirm this. �O Level� questions in many subjects from thirty or forty years ago required the candidate to provide in-depth answers often in narrative form (which would also be marked down if the grammar, spelling or punctuation was incorrect).

Having seen last year�s GCSE efforts, with the proliferation of multi-choice box ticking options, nobody can suggest that the two are remotely comparable. I don�t know where the information comes from that allows you to arrive at the conclusion �British kids are the best in Europe at maths and Science�, but it must be different material to much that I�ve come across, or the Europeans really are in trouble.

I was interested in your comments, jadeymodel. You suggest that �forensics� which you are studying is a worthwhile pursuit. You may be interested to know (if you did not bother to find out before selecting your course) that the number of students in the UK currently reading �forensics� exceeds, by a factor of about three at the last count, the number of people that have been recruited annually to the entire forensic science industry in Western Europe. So whilst you may well consider it a worthwhile course, the chances of you gaining employment in the industry are quite slim. Perhaps Physics, Chemistry or Biology would have been a wiser option and may have broadened your appeal to prospective employers. But I don�t think the courses are so glamorous.

[jake-the-peg]

Ah NJ you've not fallen for that journalistic trick have you?

GCSE papers have questions that are designed to distinguish between A and A* students as well as those to distinguish between E and F students.

So some questions are really easy and some quite hard.

You have to look at the whole paper and not just an article in the Telegraph!

Great game - pick out some very easy questions and compare to hard questions in old papers - add rant and print!

My son's doing GCSE maths at the moment and I can assure you that questions like factorisation of quadratics, simultaneous equations and other old favorites like that still feature stongly in there!

[jake-the-peg]

And comparing foundation GCSE papers with O-level is another good trick - they're the equivilent of the old CSEs

Here's an example

http://www.mathsmadeeasy.co.uk/GCSE%20maths%20 papers/maths-higher-non-calc-2008/maths-higher -non-calc-2008.htm

Easier at the front, harder at the back

Do show workings :c)

[craft1948]

I cannot quote statistics regarding educational standards and would not know whose figures to believe anyway.
I went to a grammar school in the 1960's and left after my 'O' levels at the age of 16. The grammars in theory, and discounting private education. taught la creme de la creme but only about 50 pupils a year went to university, the majority of others actually went into nursing and the civil service. Looking at the vast numbers now going to university I can only assume that either educational standards are exceptionally high or examination standards extremely low.
During my working life I actually ran induction courses for new starters in the telecoms industry and was surprised to find that many of these university graduates (not all) seemed unable to write a quite basic letter, express themselves fluently or attempt mathematics without the aid of a calculator.........

[kira000]

Tamborine, Tyr looking at it the other way around. It used to be the case that Uni's actively discriminated against those from state schools, so that of students with identical marks, the one from the private school always used to get in. Even worse, was when uni's granted places to private school students because they had a family history of attendance there. Very Old Boys Network. The number of private school students is a tiny % of the student population, but they dominated in % terms at Uni.


Does that seem fair? No. So i think making universities be more fair in who they offer places to was a good thing, and to some extent, incentivising uni's to take more state school students, as long as they are achieving the same grades as private students, makes sense. What i wouldnt necessarily agree with, is negative discrimination, where state school students are offered places with lower grades than a private school student would have been.

At the end of the day, Uni's have to choose somehow, and just because a student gets turned down in favour of another student, isnt necesarily about class or educational background. You always here about the 6A level, grade A student moaning they got rejected for being from a comp. Maybe they turned them down for not offering anything else other than a brain. These days the competition is so high, they look for social abilities and interests too, so who is going to offer more to the uni society. A boffin who sits in their room, or someone who will be out and about getting involved in Uni Life and being active?

[jake-the-peg]

Attempt mathematics without a calculator?

Why on earth would you do that? Were you training them for bar work?

Are you one of these people who confuses arithmetic with mathematics?

One of the 2 GCSE papers is entirely without a calculator so these days people have to be able to do so to get a good mark.

But it's pretty pointless really, that's what calculators are for.

It's like criticising a carpenter for using power tools and not cutting wood by hand!