Unfortunately I do not recognise this analogy. I left school in 1975 and higher education did not feature in any way shape or form in the choices available to me. It wasn't just me it was everyone that came out of the same shite secondary modern that I went to. I actually do not know anyone from my year that went into HE. Nor anyone from my neighbourhood. As far as I was concerned, HE and University was for the rich. Apprenticeships were my only option, which I took. At first I hated it but my step-father was a vicious bastard demanding that I pay my way in the house and was on my case from day one- that I was too scared not to go to work. Ironically, I am still in that industry and the place where I served my apprenticeship is now my biggest customer.
That's all fair enough and I can appreciate you worked hard to get where you are but Apprenticeship schemes have had funding cut from them so now aren't as easy to get into. Perhaps if you had an unsupportive step father today and couldn't get on a apprenticeship scheme you would of been in a more menial job that paid you much less.
They used to be fully funded by government and not they aren't. My dad is probably a little bit older than you, came from a deprived background got an apprenticeship, did nightschool and got into Uni with his costs fully paid.
Nursing training has funding cut too, my sister in law is studying nursing and they've removed the bursery which means it's harder to train while paying your living costs. They prefer to import nurses from overseas because it's cheaper to bring in foreign labour. The same with other skillsets, just bring in people other governments have trained so we don't have to pick up the bill.
It was not until 1987 that I went back into HE as a mature student on my own volition. My fees were paid and I received a mature student grant of £3,500. I moved off the part time course because I took a job in the Institution (now University) that I was in. This allowed me to move onto the part-time curriculum and to go beyond that which I went back for in the first place. So I gained a BEng and then Masters. From that point of view we have some agreement. With manufacturing (and hence apprenticeships) disappearing the big push was to provide more HE opportunities to a wider number of young people and so the University population grew dramatically as they vied to get bums on seats. PCFE funding depended on Full Time Equivalents. Whether that was good or bad I don't know, but the predominant view was that they were lowering the standards to get more students in. They threw the baby out with the bath water in my opinion. We created a load of 2:1 Business Degree graduates who were flipping burgers. Now we have a skill shortage and they are finally waking up to the fact that they should have not let apprenticeships all but disappear.
If apprenticeships can gain more credence as a decent alternative to University then I think that the opportunities will return for young people who may not be in the academic elite. In my business for example I have CNC Programmers who with the overtime regularly P60 over £65k
I absolutely agree with you about apprenticeships
We don't need free Higher Education - it would lead to rationing by the government and a lowering of standards. What is needed is pathway choices.
I absolutely agree with you about apprenticeships being more useful than expensive 'junk degrees' like media studies or sociology, unless someone is perhaps in the elite in those fields. But they obviously need full funding for apprenticeships and more career's advice pushing them in that direction. I'm sure you'd agree that without the opportunity for an apprenticeship you would have been worse off and hence cutting funding for apprenticeships is fundamentally wrong.
We don't need free Higher Education - it would lead to rationing by the government and a lowering of standards. What is needed is pathway choices.
I think we need subsidised degrees and apprenterships in skillsets that are in demand and no subsidisation in degrees that aren't in demand. We should subsidise those that are highly capable but not subsidise those who have poor academic achievement. At the moment Unis that offer kids places with 2 Es at A level that would see them get a junk degree and still have no skills to offer the world of employment. They will have racked up a government debt they're never earning enough to pay off and the government pays that off for them. This simply needs government loan funding cutting from it and funeling into more useful educational schemes. And cut off loans from the rich kids who don't actually need them too.
There's clearly efficiencies to be had and costs to be cut while subsidising those that perhaps have a great need of being subsidised.
I don't believe that things are worse now than when I was young. I have been lucky but I have worked hard too.
I do think though, that sometimes young people today expect too much on a plate and are not prepared to find a way to get it.
Beware of looking to a nanny governments to solve all your problems.
Getting on the housing ladder is definitely harder than when I did and when my parents did. I got on the housing ladder in 2002 and within a year local house prices around a deprived Yorkshire city had nearly doubled. But wages remained the same. We wouldn't have got on the housing ladder a year later and if we did it would have been a much smaller house. And that's the cheapest housing in the country.
Do you have children? Are they on the housing ladder? To get on the housing ladder in your neck of the woods I'd imagine to be incredibly expensive and unattainable for most young people in their 20s. Nevermind buying a house that you could raise a family in. 40-50 years ago it would be far easier and cheaper to buy a house in your region than it is today.
If you couldn't get on an apprentership scheme today you'd be in a worse position too.
And no I don't believe in a 'nanny government solving all my problems' because A) they aren't my problems I'm 38 and have a nice house in a decent area now and B) I don't believe in people being entitled upon the state. But that doesn't mean it's okay that the rich increasingly exploit the poor.
