Standing Room

27 June 2009

Sarah Standing wonders what has happened to our universities

Since the 1980s, when the Conservatives first had the right-on and well-intentioned brainwave of lumping all higher education institutes together and encouraging each and every school-leaver to go off and get a degree, university has lost its kudos. It’s been systematically devalued. Still imperative for those seeking a vocational career, but for those kids who leave school with a sigh of relief it would appear a pretty pointless exercise in artificially depressing unemployment statistics. It saddens me because I want universities to be like they used to be: truly aspirational seats of learning.

I want wall-to-wall Alan Bennett types in crusty corduroys, young pontificating Stephen Frys, lecturers who don’t rely on impersonal emails to communicate, and cerebral tutors who stoke the fires of their students’ knowledge while sitting in wood-panelled studies, toasting crumpets and discussing 18th-century literature. I want eureka moments of learning. I want universities to go back to being the highly competitive and intellectually elitist institutions of yore. We’ve all been bullied and hoodwinked into sending semi-enthusiastic (and sometimes semi-literate) students off to third-rate universities to study subjects they’re only moderately interested in. It’s no longer the exception — it’s the rule. Everyone seems to have a degree in obscurity. It’s become little more than a delaying tactic. The government employment figures look so much better if indifferent students are busily employed binge-drinking, partying and saddling themselves with impossible debt as opposed to actually joining the real world and looking for a job.

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James Delingpole

June 26th, 2009 6:30pm Report this comment

Hear hear, Sarah

Elinor Pullen

June 29th, 2009 6:22pm Report this comment

Here. Here. My sentiments exactly. Rather than third rate universities we need to beef up 1st rate trade schools with real jobs at the end as opposed to a stint at Starbucks.

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