Lower the number of places on not needed degrees to reflect demand?

Would you agree with doing this? It would have huge ramifications as lecturers would lose their jobs etc but I think it might be worth it.

Universities should be forced to cut the number of places on courses such as sociology, psychology, media, linguistics etc to reflect lower demand and raise the number of places for STEM subjects to supply the demand.

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Reply 1

Pulse.

And I suppose its idiots like you who want to feel better about the degree your doing who have a solid idea of which degrees are useless.

Reply 2

Really_now

Original post by Pulse.

And I suppose its idiots like you who want to feel better about the degree your doing who have a solid idea of which degrees are useless.

Not useless, less demand I did Linguistics but I admit there is at least less demand for it. Linguistics shouldn't be wiped off the face of the earth, of course not I love that subject but the thousands doing it are being left with no opportunities. I know many people who graduated before me in Linguistics still out of work. There is a skills gap where the things people are graduating in is not actually matching what is wanted.

Reply 3

Pulse.

Original post by Really_now

If lowering student admissions to university is ever a priority; it should be done by creating meaningful, worthwhile and certain alternatives like apprenticeships and let the market dictate which courses fissle out. Its something I'm all for and I've seen nearly everyone I know go to study useless courses but right now from what I've seen its because they want to avoid the uncertainty of the real world rather than gain skills.

Reply 4

Zenomorph

1) Force these unaccountable but publicly owned entities to be audited

2) I'm sure then we will find loads of corruption, fixing and wastage, which will include what the OP said

3) Demand lower fees to reflect this

Reply 5

Really_now

Original post by Pulse.

The market is dictating but in a way that is beneficial to big business and not young people. That goes without saying the apprenticeships system needs a complete reboot so it is more like Germany, it should become the norm not something that people look down upon. At my college there was no talk of apprenticeships, that needs to change.

But I still think the number of places for these courses should be lowered, not eradicated, but lowered.

Reply 6

Joinedup

Well raising the number of places on STEM doesn't mean more people will enrol on them - many require maths which a lot of people aren't choosing as an A level. By the time students get their hands on a ucas form they're already quite well tramlined by the A level choices they made.

lowering the number of arts & social sciences places means more 18-22 year olds with nothing to do - needless to say reducing the number of NEETS is a stated target of labour and tory parties alike.

btw is linguistics really such a problem? - I thought it was a fairly small course offered at a handful of unis

Reply 7

Zenomorph

How about getting a job ?

Reply 8

cambio wechsel

Original post by Really_now

First I'm unsure whose interests you're trying to represent.

Is it employers? Because I certainly don't feel that the universities should be understood as the at-no-cost-to-you training schools for coroporations. A university provides an educated and engaged population, and is not there to churn out worker drones in the quantities demanded by the bosses.

Or are you petitioning for students? Because I can see some sense in a version of this argument. There are 17 year olds, and more particularly there are parents, who imagine that getting a degree in whatever subject is a golden-ticket to professional success and financial security. Many of these need to be better advised.

Reply 9

hslakaal

I really couldn't care less about the debate on the whole "useless" subject thing

But really, isn't there already a difference in terms of places available? The department sizes are completely different, at least at King's (and UCL). Don't they already kinda reflect demand? Unless you're specifically speaking in terms of employability etc. again, isn't it kinda already balanced out?

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 10

1drowssap

Original post by cambio wechsel

To add on to this point, I think more people should have access to higher education, as it can develop one's character, make the society more culturally refined, and for many, it could be a way out of (relative) poverty. Cutting the number of places and denying them that opportunity of higher education is quite cruel, in a sense that they may be the first in their family to get a degree, and have the chance to have that middle-class lifestyle.

We have also been in a recession for the last few years, with a very tight labour market. But once the economy picks up again, there will be a larger demand for jobs. Therefore, cutting the number of places in degrees would just create a labour shortage in 3/4 years time, when the economy is at its peak, which in turn, does not do anyone any good.

Reply 11

scrotgrot

No because the humanities degrees cost almost nothing to deliver so they subsidise all your fancy wind tunnels and lasers and supercomputers.

Reply 12

TolerantBeing

Whilst I agree that the number of psychology undergrads are way too high, making postgrad courses incredibly competitive, you can't do that. The departments fund would massively decrease, and their research will obviously severely suffer. And the main focus of a university is their research. Psychology research can be really expensive, especially if you have an fMRI centre.

Reply 13

Old_Simon

I am not sure about this. Take Physics for example. Very highly regarded no doubt. But really how many jobs need Physics actually ? Very few. So as an academic subject how is it more worthy than say Psychology ? Take History. Apart from academics no one needs history in real life. But that is not the point. As a tool for developing the mind it is wonderful. This forum is stuffed with youngsters who are being drawn to frankly vocational subjects while dissing everything else. Unless we decide what uni is for then how can we determine what is useless ?
At this rate our unis will be stuffed with UK Asians doing Economics and nobody else.

Reply 14

Smack

Volunteer Team

Original post by Really_now

I wouldn't agree with doing that because we already have an oversupply of STEM graduates. Cutting cheaper humanities and social sciences places to create more expensive STEM places, when there are already enough, is silly.

Reply 15

Nichrome

Ditto to the post above. There is already a large surplus of STEM graduates, if anything it is these expensive courses that must be cut. I think the number of degrees in total need to be managed downwards, whilst turning lower ranked institutions into diploma awarding colleges, which offer more vocationally oriented courses in services and trades.

Reply 16

Катя

Original post by Nichrome

Cutting STEM funding? What about finding the cure for cancer, dealing with climate change, etc? STEM is vital, I think, more so than the arts and humanities. The arts make our lives more bearable on a psychological level, sure, but without STEM, where would we be?

Completely agree with you on your second point, though.

Reply 17

Lasershark

Original post by Катя

Having more graduates in STEM subjects doesn't make the cure for cancer or mitigation of climate change any closer; it just decreases the funding available for those already researching these areas. I'd rather have a cancer lab funded, with PhD holders working there than a university spewing out hundreds of STEM undergrads who probably won't be trying to cure cancer in their futures.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 18

Smack

Volunteer Team

Original post by Катя

He is not suggesting cutting STEM funding per say, but rather cutting the amount of places available.

Most STEM graduates don't go into STEM careers, simply because the amount of workers required for such careers is small in comparison to the amount who graduate in such fields. Most go into other fields, because the skills they've learned are highly transferable to almost every other field, but ultimately this means that a lot of their expensive education is "wasted".

We could probably save a lot of money if we were to better tie the amount of STEM graduates to the amount of STEM positions required. Sort of like what already happens in medicine.

Reply 19

drbluebox

I would rather applicants be judged not just on what degree they have but their actual potential as I hated when I was at uni being told I was expected to do a lot of volunteer work just for my CV so people would pick the work that was the most fun then act as if they were giving something back when they only cared for the fun and to put something on their cv and I could of been far more talented than them but didnt do volunteer work.

Media courses SHOULD be useful in theory because if someone wants a job in the industry they need to know how to do the work the problem is the amount of applicants is so great that companies know people are desperate so give them jobs as runners anyway so their degree is useless as they are not doing what they trained for.

I have always been great with computers, I am 30 now and used the old computers aged 2 years old when they were so basic it took 10 minutes to load a game and got 100% for my Standard Grade exams despite using Windows 95 and even then the school just bought the pcs that year but I chose to go into media as I found studying programming or hardware to be boring outside of personal use and media stimulated my mind and made me more confident, in fact I did work experience in a radio station aged 16 for a year and in a newspaper aged 17 for a few months because I had the talent just with media if you fail for whatever reason which for me was a family member dying and their 1 year old being put into care as social work refused us access as we were on benefits added to the negative press who only showed one side destroyed my faith in things.