It's kicking off in London...

[marin man]

I agree with you to a certain extent there but letting everybody go to uni is untennable as it will leave jobs that people are "over qualified" to do,that means importing labour while idle graduates sit on the social complaining there is no work....well none they want to do anyway.and as for dumbing down .....innit m8 :roll:

 

[dbmtb]

letting everybody go to uni is untennable as it will leave jobs that people are "over qualified" to do,that means importing labour while idle graduates sit on the social complaining there is no work.

Read it again MM.
"successive administrations have pushed for increased access to higher education, which has led to it being dumbed-down and what has become an untenable situation."

That's part and parcel of what I was saying.

 

[marin man]

:shock: sorry I am tired......anyway you want the bacon sent out,it is real good

 

[dbmtb]

PM sent re. bacon.

 

[cyfa2809]

i am a student!
but, i hate students
most of the people on my course are either in halls (first time away from mummy and daddy) or still living with mummy and daddy!
the fill the streets in the morning and evening and are blissfully ignorant to the world around
i am opinionated but i wont argue a point unless i have learnt from experience or been taught from someone who is experienced, hence, im always right
but, when i am wrong or unsure i am very open to new ways, techniques and points of views (or edits of my own!)
the thing i hate most is how the other students can go out/live on pizza/talk about what they did last night rather than do work!
i rent my flat and my job is low paid (if i get work)
i dont really stand anywhere on the fees for uni, its not a physical debt just yet, come back to me in a few years
that said, nobody wants to pay more but the staff at uni have indicated that it wont really matter as you will leave with a degree which means a well paid job and student finance take installments
silverclaws, do you want an apprentice?

 

[silverclaws]

Must admit that I watched the protests and thought every one of them looked like a student.

Good on 'em I say. At least they seem to have a bit of fight left in them. The more people that sit by and take every shafting the government of the day hands out the more shafted we all become.

As I see it the top Uni's will become as elitest as they've always wanted to be as the poorer (no matter how clever) will not be able to afford to attend.

I thought the Lib Dems were against this?

As far as I know they were, but that is not why they got my vote, but having given them my vote as being a middle of the road option between the two tosser parties that existed either side I have come to the point where I am totally dissapointed with the vote for change system.

LibDems have sold out or rather their elected leader has, perhaps he saw a grab at power as more important than what he used to believe in, there reinforcing the belief that power corrupts.

Cleg as far as I am concerned can go to hell in a hand cart, as to me he has sold out to the point his powerless party members are divided on what Cleg stated regarding tuition fees, ( it is all on record, for his aversion to an increase in tuition fees is recorded on video tape). But now he uses the phrase;' no plans' which is politician speak for we have led you down the garden path, got your vote, now we are going to abuse you in whatever way we can and it is your fault because you voted us into power. Everything a politician says prior to election, they should be held to account for whence they are in power, as to do anything different erodes the belief people have in politicians full stop. And we wonder why there is always a poor turn out come election time, maybe the ones that don't vote are the intuitive ones and the voters havn't grasped the reality yet.

To Cyfa,what blacksmithing, its easy, anyone can do it, just build a fire hot enough to heat metal and then hammer it into shape, but if you are interested in that, what you doing over the road at the uni?

 

[dbmtb]

iyou will leave with a degree which means a well paid job

That tired lie.... Are they still using that old sales pitch?

Not many of those I graduated with in 91 ended up in well-paid jobs within the first 2-3 years.

And well-paid job=pay more in tax.

 

[NickD]

iyou will leave with a degree which means a well paid job

That tired lie.... Are they still using that old sales pitch?

Not many of those I graduated with in 91 ended up in well-paid jobs within the first 2-3 years.

And well-paid job=pay more in tax.

In my experience, having a degree has made no difference to my earning potential. If anything, others have got further as they had 3-4 years more experience by the time I graduated. I don't regret it though.

 

[silverclaws]

Personally I am at the point where I am questioning what I am being taught, as I have a number of years in industry already, Some of the subjects go into earning potential, things I know from experience are largely crap, they teach as if everyone will be a success, something which is not the case for the majority. Same as schools really for they also create an unrealistic illusion regarding the world of learning to live by one's own means.

I am wondering three years in, if my desire for a BA is worth it, when it is I can already work to BA level and that only due to my experience and pure interest in my art.

My history of most of my skills is self taught, I learn by poking around and see how things work and from there study literature relevant to the job in hand, I am self taught in most of my skills, but my initial interest in a degree was because I wished to learn how to manipulate hot metals so I may qualify myself as a metalsmith as hot metals was the hole in my knowledge.

But the degree course I am on is predominantly academic not craft, so I lose interest, not that I can't do it, but because I have no interest in the definitions of art, it's history and those who were reported to be good at it, guff to my mind and of no relevance to my plans.

This evening I talked with another of what my interest is and there the passion I feel for what inspires me to create I believe was evident to that another. The result of which I think I have bought an independant investor who is interested in my creations should I desire funding that is not bank awarded, the route to destruction I know too well.

Added to that, I have my past skills to employ, those of repairing whatever piques my interest, streams of income as they say, far better than all eggs in one basket but as an artist, I will not let my skills of the past pass by for to do so and rely on a new idea only is suicide for a new business in any time let alone the difficult times that are with us now.

 

[stevet1]

Too lazy to write my own reply so heres a quote that you can make your own mind up about whether its apt.

"This exalted, reverent view of man has rarely been expressed in human
history. Today, it is virtually non-existent. Yet this is the view
with which--in various degrees of longing, wistfulness, passion and
agonized confusion--the best of mankind's youth start out in life. It
is not even a view, for most of them, but a foggy, groping, undefined
sense made of raw pain and incommunicable happiness. It is a sense of
enormous expectation, the sense that one's life is important, that
great achievements are within one's capacity, and that great things
lie ahead.

It is not in the nature of man—nor of any living entity—to start out
by giving up, by spitting in one’s own face and damning existence;
that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man
to man.

Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run
down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when
or how they lose it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of
their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of
abandoning one’s mind; security, of abandoning one’s values;
practicality, of losing self-esteem.

Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that the fire is not to be
betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But
whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble
vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.
It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and
achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature—and that the rest
will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its
meaning—and it is those few that I have always sought to address.

The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me that they will betray:
it is their own souls."

- ayn rand