The big story in the UK at the tail-end of last week was the students' protests against the government's plans to increase tuition fees from £3,290 to up to £9,000 a year. Will these protests be a vanguard of popular discontent at Cameron's cuts?
Currently, the average British student leaves university with £24,000 of debt - student loans that need to be repaid. If you were hard-working and dilligent enough to complete a degree in law, medicine, engineering or accountancy and finance - the chances are it will not take you too long to pay that debt off once you've settled into a career where annual salaries can quickly leap from £25,000 - £50,000 - £100,000 a year. But if you went to a second-rate university to do media studies, your prospects are landing a high-paying job (indeed nowadays, any job) are rather bleak. And that average student debt is likely to rise to £32,000+ once the new tuition fees come into force.
I can appreciate the concerns of both students and their parents. But as with healthcare, the real issue with tertiary education is not really about costs but about rationing demand. Back in the late 1970s when I was a student, only 8% of young Brits went on to university or polytechnic. Today, the figure approaches 50%. The question is - are 50% of the jobs in the UK economy at graduate level? It's a similar question in Poland, indeed more so, as Poland's educational system produces holders of masters' rather than batchelors' degrees. Do our economies really need so many graduates?
As tuition fees rise, the question young people and their parents must ask is - what is the economic value of a university degree? The economy is crying out for engineers and scientists, yet few pupils today are prepared to work hard in subjects such as maths and physics in order to get onto courses that would guarantee them a well-paid career.
And so in the UK and in Poland, all too many young people go into university to fill the gap between school and work, between being a child and being an adult; to learn something that's not necessarily practical, but teaches you how to think. And while you are propping up the student bar, you can try to figure out what to do to earn a crust. The world is a tough place to get by in without education, but with more and more people competing in the labour force with a decent degree, is the economy ready to accept so many graduates?
In the UK, employers are increasing looking for bright school leavers who understand this dilemma and are willing to sign on with a large employer (Marks and Spencers, PWC or National Rail, for example) as management trainees, on a salary, getting experience and training. Three years later, these young people will be without debt, a few rungs higher up the management ladder and possibly even some savings to recompense them for not going to university. Will we see this trend spreading to Poland?
To make matters more complicated, while English, Welsh and Northern Irish universities charges tuition fees, Scottish universities do not. The Scottish Assembly in its wisdom voted to cover tuition fees from taxes. Only students from the rest of the UK have to pay tuition fees. Students from the rest of the EU do not. On the one hand, this policy is helping to attract the brightest and best students from across the EU. On the other, it's not helping to attract and retain the best teaching staff, especially once England's higher tuition fees kick in.
So then - questions for policy makers. What percentage of school leavers in any country should go on to university? What incentives should there be (other than the market) for students to study 'harder' subjects that employers need? Should tuition fees be higher for say, mediaeval Japanese poetry studies than for mechanical engineering or medicine? Or the other way around? Should tuition fees reflect society's need for a given skill - or the supply of lecturers in that subject? With two children at pre-university age, these are crucial questions for me!
Useful info from the BBC about this subject here.
The issue might be simpler than you think. It's been a while since I've seen a decent study on the topic, but from what I know, Polish unemployment rate among persons with tertiary education is by far the lowest among all eductional segments of the populace. On the other hand, the strongest predictors of being unemployed are gender and young age. Unless general sleepiness caused by today's weather is affecting my reasoning, it follows that young age/gender ALONE are the factors that affect chances of being employed, regardless of education. Young educated people are jobless because they are young, not because they are educated. Over time, their chances of finding employment increase greatly compared to their less educated contemporaries.
ReplyDeleteYour suggestion that access to tertiary education should be rationed is thus incorrect, or, in best case, correct only in short term perspective. Instead, entrance to job market should be facilitated, so that vulnerable groups are not discriminated against due to their perceived deficiencies (young mothers/unexperienced young graduates are less capable to work efficiently etc).
Whether or not current trends in education match the needs of economy is a completely different matter. More natural sciences/engineering, less humanities - I agree. So called "Bologna process" is doing much harm by permitting people to roam round university without clear purpose.
All in all, unless your childern are willing to study abroad (in which case I'm unable to opine) the best advice you can give them is: go study something that you find interesting, without much regard for current trends. But do not neglect the need for practical training in the same field, from the very begining.
Firstly... I noticed western youngsters have a tilt at left-wing agenda, while Polish ones stay rather economically liberal = right-wing. My explanation is that Polish society is still growing richer and young Poles take matters into their own hands and plug away, while Westerners are spoilt by wealth...
ReplyDeleteSecondly... Tuition fees can serve one good purpose - they might divert candidates to study what the economy needs and for what it offers well-paid jobs. But on the other hand in Poland, where there are still many students who break away from poverty thanks to unpaid studies. Or finally children of rich parents, who can pay a lot to prepare them for high-school leaving exams, will not be benefiting from tuition-free education at the expense of taxpayers.
Thirdly... No, our economies do not need graduates spewed out by mushrooming Wyższa Szkoła Wszystkiego i Niczego... What matters is quality, not quantity. When everyone is a MA or MSc holder, then it debates the value of a diploma...
Fourthly... Jan's right, "the Bologna process" cuased a lot of mess.
Fifthly...
What percentage of school leavers in any country should go on to university? round about 30% - 40%
hat incentives should there be (other than the market) for students to study 'harder' subjects that employers need? Good teachers who can inspire them to learn maths or physics and who can fish out and develop talents
Should tuition fees be higher for say, mediaeval Japanese poetry studies than for mechanical engineering or medicine? Or the other way around? Should be higher for all those "political science", "marketings and managements", "cultural sciences" and lower for technical specialisations such ea engineering. I'm in two mindsa bout lawyers.
Should tuition fees reflect society's need for a given skill - or the supply of lecturers in that subject? Surely society's need, but if you'd leave it to the market alone, supply would be a crucial factor.
After entering high school, within a year or so, students must decide on university direction and the type of work they will be doing for the next 30 years. Working closely with parents and high school guidance, based on their skills and talents and hopefully how the economy is doing 6 or 8 years prior to their graduation, they decide on a field and a specific faculty. They enter university and before you know, globalization changes the economic outlook of a given country and the world. Take IT for example and how it evolved over the past 20 years. Many repetitive and scripted jobs can be done in lower cost countries with our without the knowledge of English. Did you think 20 years ago that you would now be living in a Polish suburb, writing blogs on your laptop? Probably not, If it wasn’t for 1989 and the Internet revolution. Then there was the finance bust and the collapse of many financial institutions, which attracted so many educated Financiers and who are now jobless. How about the automakers employing many well educated engineers, who could not produce a more efficient or a safer vehicle. So what should one do? Even the brightest visionaries can’t predict the future. Newspapers, the way we know them today, will probably disappear. (I seldom read printed news material – news gets old by the time it hits the presses.) Traditional TV will change and the way we communicate. And probably the way we teach in traditional classrooms, will be replaced by online schooling. Manufacturing will shift and so will low cost jobs. One thing we do know that the new economy will produce thinkers and it will be knowledge based. The world will always need doctors and nurses, plumbers and poets. But the future will belong to innovators in technology and health sciences. Countries will have to create new economies to compete and to get ahead. We do need educated people and I am all for affordable education, without students or parents having to take on huge debt loads. Perhaps the EU countries could create a tiered tuition pricing, different for nationals, EU and international students. Keep in mind universities are also used if not primarily for research, utilizing those exactly same well educated people. So what does one do other than pick a safe and free area of study? Do what you love and love what you do.
ReplyDeleteSGH, what makes you think 'western youngsters' are more 'left-wing' and in Poland they are more economically liberal? At my university it was (and still is) quite the opposite.
ReplyDeleteAlso, what makes you think 'political science' should have higher fees than, say, engineering? Having studied politics, I had around 6 contact hours per week with lecturers (which has never been problem for me) and a library insufficient in every regard for the number of students expected to use it. For the course alone, my tuition fees didn't provide value for money as it is.
@Martin
ReplyDeleteWhy do I think they're leftist?
1) recent outcry in France over raising retirement age
2) protests decribed by Micheal in the UK
3) and some other protests, in Germany, Austria
On my university it's different, I'm somehow sure University of Warsaw is far more leftist than still my Warsaw School of Economics
What's the benefit for the economy from graudates of political science? We need few good people who can become scholars and some who will look into political scene, comment on it and advise politicians. Graduates of political sciences in Poland are estate agents or sell cash loans in bank outlets.
I can't speak for situations in France or Germany, but I wouldn't say that protests in the UK are indicative of any particular political stance. For every student that has been protesting in some form, there are many, many more doing nothing and there are even some who support the complete lifting of fees. The surveys which come out saying that students oppose fee rises are hardly surprising: turkeys don't vote for Christmas either.
ReplyDelete