Chart of the Day: the declining value of a university degree

If you lower the average standard of A-levels and lower the average standard of degrees so that a greater proportion of the population can achieve satisfactory marks in both, surely this chart is inevitable?

MP

If you have any evidence for your opinions on educational standards I would love to see it.

"I read it in a newspaper infamous for its right wing rabble rousing", is not evidence.

MP i agree with you that standards of A-levels and school education have lowered. My proof - a professor friend who is forever moaning that he has to spend the first year of the degree course teaching basic maths and english to get the students up to start of university standard - this should have been done at school! - something which was not necessary 15 years ago.

As for my views, as a highly qualified graduate myself, there are two many mickey mouse degrees around particularly from the old technical colleges. So when recruiting I look for a good university, a good degree subject and then the level of achievement. Three good hits and they get an interview - it is a good way of filtering out.

Opps a typo - for two read too

An obvious point which rarely seems to get mentioned:

The people who go to university are generally smarter/work harder in the first place.

This must be as important as the degree itself in explaining why they earn more.

Even without passing comment on standards it's obvious that if far more people go to University then the average salaries of those with degrees will drop.

I've looked at the data files on this to see how strong the case for having a degree is. I've come to the conclusion that you need to have some idea of what job you're going to do (difficult at 18 I know) and how important a degree is to secure that job and what difference it will make to your wage expectations. Then decide if it's worth spending up to £60k (fees and living expenses) to get it.

I think more of those with lower wage expectations will reconsider the degree route. But clearly a degree still makes a big difference to career prospects.

There is one issue with this graph. Some degrees lead to jobs with higher pay, Law and medicine for example. For these Jobs a Degree is absolutly needed. If you take out these Jobs, I think you will find the pay difference is even smaller. Take into the number of people with degrees is double the amount of jobs that require a degree, makes you start to wonder further about the cost of University

What I would like to see, and I think Students will also be interested to see, is the average starting salary for each of the courses/subjects is. Then the percentage of people who took the course who are in a role

where the/a degree was necessary… I can imagine with the number of candidates chasing the same job, and the micky mouse degrees available, I would put a guess at it being 50/50 if the degree was actually worth paying for….. When they could have started a job straight after a-levels and have a 3 year head start….

Well that’s my thoughts anyway…(Before people comment, I know there are a lot more factors, ie how much the students actually pay back etc..)

The comparison between 1993 and 2010 shouild compare people of the same intelligence since the expansion of universities means that on average people going to university now are less intelligent than in 1993.

Maybe comparing Russell Group university degrees in 1993 and 2010 would be a better comparison, although they also take a greater number of students.

Clearly we will have too many students graduating from University with many having to take jobs totally unsuited in relation to their expensive education. The people with tough demanding degrees will have the World employment market available . The other two a penny degrees will have to take what ever they can get. My advice is to consider trying to get a job with high skill training coupled with study courses like the proffesions and advanced apprenticships as a better course to follow than idling 3 years away plus a gap year learning very little. There is a finite limit to the amount of Journalists required or media peopleThe difference in degrees is very marked in the amount of time needed. My grandson spends 30 a week on Biology lectures at Bath ,whilst a fellow student taking Economics spends no more than 12 hours. Students will need to know what they are going to get for their money in future. The whole thing is really designed to reduce Degree education at the less academic end of it. Like taking a degree in Goal Keeping.

anonymous 1:

oops a typo-for opps read oops!

have a good bank hol all!

Some years ago The Observer did an investigation into the upward drift of degree classes awarded... with many more 1st class degrees awarded, for example, than ten or fifteen years earlier. With one notable exception. Civil Engineering. There had been no degree class drift with these because the courses were (and presumably still are) externally moderated by the Institution of Civil Engineers. Presumably this practice prevented the Universities from inflating their own exam grades.

Having just had my second daughter graduate from university, and having experienced at first-hand the level of the work ("Dad, if I e-mail you my essay can you correct my grammar and spelling PLEEEASE?"), I don't think it's any less rigorous than it was in my day (1969-72). I would also have got a rather better degree if some of my course-work had counted towards my degree, rather than having to churn out 3-hour papers at the end of my 3rd year using only memorised information. (Michael Gove please note - as a solicitor, if I advised my clients only on the basis of what I kept in my head I would be grossly negligent . . . . )

I do think we perhaps do the young a dis-service by assuming they all want to go straight into lifetime careers. I certainly didn't, and I'm pleased to say neither of my daughters do either. They see nothing wrong with trying this and trying that, and eventually finding something that suits. I have been very careful not to push them towards the law. They're old enough now to make up their own minds, and they put job satisfaction way beyond a high salary.

So I think I must have done something right . . . .

education is so overrated

The value added in rounding and polishing the individual should not be underestimated. With increasing charges, however, a very careful consideration of career path is more important than it was maybe 20 years or so ago.

Graham Barlow

Your comment about the length of time spent in lectures versus that in private study does not take into account the differences between subjects. Most arts and social science disciplines require a lot of private study with each student largely following an individual path. Most science and engineering subjects have (for good reasons) a much stricter adherence to a predetermined and externally monitored syllabus.

Back in the eighties, I did an HND, not even a degree, in Computer Studies. I had about 20 hours class time in the first year and about 15 in the second. I would be in the library or in the computer labs for another 20 or so hours. Sometimes I worked alone and sometimes with those in my class or even sometimes students and lecturers from completely different disciplines who needed computing expertise to beef up their psychology, accounting, business studies or whatever. I also represented my class and my department on a number of university committees.

I had to buy my own PC because the university terminals were all grabbed by people living nearer the campus. So I did more reading and more programming etcetera at home. This was before the internet became widely available or affordable. I rarely had as much as six hours sleep a night including weekends and holidays.

I was probably at one extreme as regards work ethic. 18 of the 35 starters left the class before the end. Three transferred to other courses, one had a drink problem, one a gambling problem, two had grant and homelessness problems due to parents splitting up. The rest either failed the first year exams or just stopped coming, I know not why.

So those who believe that "nobody is allowed to fail" are plain wrong. The qualification was valued enough that among my classmates several now occupy senior positions in the computing departments of universities (even in the Russell Group), big banks including in Geneva, big computing companies including IBM etcetera. I am the career failure.

In my 50s I did the first year of a philosophy degree before ill health caused me to drop out. The course was part time and involved around nine hours class contact a week. Students were by then able to communicate by email with each other and lecturers. We did. I put in at least twenty hours a week outside class and have never been more alive. COBOL, Pascal, Assembler, SQL, systems analysis - a cakewalk in comparison.

My point is that class hours have little to do with either work ethic, work actually done or the ease of a degree.

MP and Anonymous1

In the unlikely even that anyone is interested in facts and reason you should take a close look at:

http://ww2.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Labour_market_information/p!efeXak

and

http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/

But that would take the fun out of reading the gutter press and parroting the mindless rants. Wouldn't it?

I have to say that a point raised seems to have been overlooked - that is subjects studied - when my son graduated from Edinburgh University with an honours degree in Computer Science some 4 years ago - he applied for 3 jobs and gained 2 interviews - and was successful. It would appear that much of the problem is nebulous degree subjects that are not in demand from employers - together with poor degrees from even poorer so called "universities"

Peter, the increase in upper second class degrees over the past 30 years is much more pronounced than that of firsts, to the extent that a 2:2 is now widely regarded as a poor degree. In fact, the modal degree in England up till 1982 was the 2:2; since then it has become the 2:1 and the proportion of students attaining one has risen inexoribly in most subject areas, although, as you indicate, not in many Engineering degree courses. Indeed, in Scotland at the time I was an undergraduate in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the modal degree was the Ordinary degree, such as MA, BSc, and LLB, and only about 12% of my cohort were allowed to do honours. Two were offered the chance but, as they were going on to train as professional accountants, decided not to accept, as did those going into the legal profession. It made more sense to them to graduate a year earlier and complete their articles, etc., since an honours degree was not a requirement for entry into those and most other professions. Students were admitted to a degree course in Scotland, not an honours degree course. If one wished to take honours one had to achieve a merit certificate in each of the first 2 years' subjects; that is, a mark of 65% minimum in each, not an average of 65% and, as Maverick rightly says, there was no coursework contribution to help inflate the mark; it was all 3 hour unseen exams. By those criteria, I don't think many of today's undergraduate students (like most in my day) would leave with an honours degree, never mind a 2:1. Since the late 1970s, the honours degree has become the norm in Scotland too. Also, since the arrival of the internet, coursework has become much easier to research than before. Yet, despite this, many students, though certainly not the majority in my view, regularly display their inability to engage with academic texts and rigorous academic research papers, and cite sources lacking any academic authority, such as wikipedia, forcing one to question whether they really ought to be at university at all. Also, as Maverick omitted to mention but I suspect will recall, the pass mark in the subjects on most courses then was 50%, not 40% as is now the case.

Having said that, times change and in many ways for the better, and there are many excellent young and not so young students who produce work of the highest academic standard, regularly achieving merit grades and above, which their hard work and inquiring intellect deserves. Coursework allows good students to show they are capable of producing high quality, often exceptional, work in ways exams seldom can. Furthermore, although I had a small grant, as was common then, I had to a wife and baby son to support when I started university and, therefore, had to take on a range of jobs throughout my 4 undergraduate years, unlike the vast majority of my fellow students. In my experience, a much larger proportion of students these days have to work to support themselves through university.

About time they stopped making A levels easier. 'A' levels only real use is for entry to university. Instead of a constant pitch battle about whether or not they are getting easier they should make it so that every year 10% of entrants get an 20% get a B etc... There are a fixed number of places in Universities so if everyone improved and got an A in everything how would universities choose candidates?

The other thing they should do is to allow entry to a university based solely on A level grades, i.e. everyone would go though at the same time as clearing. Currently universities like Oxbridge interview candidates before they get their grades and can give them an offer of, for example, 2 'D's to gain entry to one of the finest universities. This just allows them to be totally subjective give offers to toffs, aristocracy and rich people and is a practice that needs to be stamped out.

Jeremy Bosk:

I don't read newspapers.

If you re-read my post you may notice that it is a question not an opinion.

As it happens, if you talk to business people about the quality of graduates applying for jobs - as I do - you will find that they report a lowering of all round capability and readiness for work.

If you compare - as I have done - typical Indian MBA graduates with typical British MBA graduates, for example, you will find that the Indians are head and shoulders above the British in terms of key transferrable skills and attitudes, such as curiosity, work ethic, and the three 'R's.

Why might this be?

I propose that it is because the Indians still have the old British educational system and standards. Britain has moved away from this over the years, experimenting with different - perhaps less effective - approaches.

David Chapman

If you trawl through the links I gave earlier you will find useful comment and figures for employment and unemployment rates by subject and by university. Or go straight to www.hesa.ac.uk for just the figures.

Graduates from what are regarded by employers as good universities find it easier whatever their degree subject. Most graduate jobs do not require any particular subject. Some much mocked subjects such as Media Studies actually have lower unemployment rates than more widely respected subjects in science and engineering. Some much maligned newer universities have very high employment rates for their graduates. There are many factors at work.

Jonathan

Allowing only a fixed number of entrants by altering the grades every year is very unfair to those born in population boom years and unfairly advantages those born in years with a low birth rate. It favours those with wealthy parents or parents in very stable jobs because their reproductive plans are least likely to be disrupted by the swings in the economy.

There is a lot more to being equipped to benefit from a university education than A-level grades. Many A-levels can be passed with some ease by those with particularly good memories. Many mature students have relatively weak A-levels for one reason or another - such as having studied part time after a hard day's work. When allowed to study full time their grades pick up amazingly.

You need other qualities such as emotional resilience, a wide range of interests, an ability to work and play well with others, the personality to survive in a strange environment and so on. It is quite reasonable to take these and other factors into account.

I have met and worked with admissions tutors, careers advisers and general academics from Oxbridge and elsewhere. They are generally very fair minded. I have learned to respect them. My dad was a truck driver and I went, as a mature student, to a very middling university to study at HND level.

MP

How do you keep abreast without reading a good paper? Television and radio cannot fulfil that function because of their linear nature and low information density.

Your post is in the format of a question. It seemed to me that it was rhetorical and assumed the answer was: yes. If my perception was wrong and you genuinely wanted a reasoned discussion, I apologise.

I agree with your description of employer perceptions. They are right in so far as they are now recruiting from people who would never have reached university in the past and whose background and school education leaves them less well equipped.

They are also recruiting those graduates into jobs that in the not so distant past would have gone to 16 year old school leavers. I actually saw my first job, obtained as a 16 year old school leaver with six O-levels, advertised four years ago. The requirement was for a first class degree in a business subject or an MBA and offered a starting salary of £23,000. Mine was £278 a year in 1965, in London.

I doubt that your "typical Indian MBA graduate" is at all typical. The best Indian universities are very good and do largely run on the lines established under the Raj. They are attended by the children of the rich who have benefited from all the advantages family wealth brings over here. Which would include a private education and tutoring where necessary. Which accounts for most of their superiority in "key transferrable skills and attitudes, such as curiosity, work ethic, and the three 'R's". They are the equivalent of Old Etonians who went to Oxbridge.

The vast majority of Indian HE is poor, Indian state schools are usually a joke. Corruption is rife at all levels of the education system. You undoubtedly have met "la creme de la creme". You are comparing them with British MBAs who are more representative of their country and on average of poorer quality than your Indian elite.

I actually know quite a lot about the Indian education system and labour market (as of 2008) because I spent six months researching it for a government department. Who told my employers that my research was of a quality expected in ministerial briefings. I shared my findings with a professor at one of the Russell Group universities who took the trouble to thank me, in person, for a very useful and accurate briefing when she returned from a working visit to India.

I give the biographical detail not to boast of my cleverness but to show that I am not making empty assertions.

Despite the weakness of the education system here and the less than ideal output, I do believe that we are better educated (less badly educated) than ever before. I base this on everyday conversations and watching the idiot box. Very ordinary working people with few formal qualifications are able to talk sensibly about topics their parents and grandparents barely knew existed and correctly use words that their parents and grandparents knew not at all.

Once again I apologise for doubting you bona fides.

@Jeremy Bosk

I don't see how not altering grades so that fixed percentages get each grade would be fairer when there are a fixed number of university palaces. Whether or not you alter grades it is still unfair to those born in population boom years if the number of places at university remains fixed. All that needs to happen to make this fairer is to create more places at university in these boom years, just as more places are created at schools for these years.

I agree interviews are necessary for some degrees like medicine where the person is being honed for a particular job role and needs other soft skills but for 95% of degrees it should be on A level results alone. As for mature students, they could up there grades using an equation based on how old they are or how many years out of education they have. Just something they can plug into a formula.

Incidentally, it has been statistically shown that pupils from state schools with the same A level grades as pupils from Private/Public schools get better degree results. The difference is equivalent in points to 2 grades. So someone with results A,B,B from a private school would get on average the same degree result as someone with grades B,B,C from a state school.

If you go somewhere like Oxbridge the students are disproportionally from from private/public schools with many colleges having direct connections to public schools, like Trinity College Cambridge to Winchester College London with special invites for pupils there.

Jonathan

I am against unearned privilege and do not deny that it exists, merely the extent of it you appear to see.

I think your arguments about plugging mature students into a formula are simplistic.

The flaw in raising tuition fees is that it deters many and prevents more of our brightest from further education. There are those who regard a degree as a commodity, that may or may not make money for the holder.In this case, the value of a degree rises and falls according to rule of supply and demand based on the number who qualify, rather than the quality of the qualifications. Any twit with the luck to be born to well off parents will be able to go to university and scrape a degree whether they deserve to or not. Where as the bright and gifted kid from a poor family will not.

A number of our universities are ranked among the best in the world and its conceivable that the quality and standards of our universities will decline.

The coalition increases its expectations that our universities are to be used as an export commodity for overseas students whose fees are often paid for by their own governments, as in the case for Brazil and China. How the government can balance that, with an election promise to reduce the number of overseas students, is a mystery.

Wasting our own home grown talent, is to our detriment, leading to the lowering of skills and academic and professional standards. Education is not a privilege or just a tool to make money. It is a vital necessity for the health and well being of the country.

Cant say I am against unearned privilege, just jealous that I never got any of it.

Am I also to believe that all these dopey looking ill spoken kids I see hanging around today had a better education than I received in the fifties and early sixties,at my old fashioned secondary school? Has the human brain and our teaching skills improved so much that most kids are seen as suitable to attend a university? Does the future of the UK really lay with degree courses in photography and fabric design and can the kids hope that there is job at the end of it?

Was Wilde correct when he said that " those who can do, those who cannot teach"?

Find out in the coming episodes of :- Post Recessionary Britain

a Brown/Blair national production appearing in towns near you now..

Dogdays:

You pose the question "Was Wilde correct when he said that " those who can do, those who cannot teach"?"

Perhaps one could attribute different reasons to this career choice, such as:

"Those who empathise with other people and can explain complex concepts clearly teach, others don't"

Ian Berry:

The "bright and gifted kid from a poor family" will likely do very well for themselves without needing to go to University. What they need can be access to finance for entrepreneurial start-ups etc rather than university places.

Jeremy Bosk:

I admit to reading the FT in paper form sometimes but I tend to rely on selected online content, TV/radio, and my own research and discussions with people. Much of the "information density" of newspapers, to which you refer, is of little/no interest to me and is therefore "noise".

I defer to your greater knowledge of the wider Indian HE system, and I accept there are many more Indian MBAs in the "la creme de la creme" segment than there are in the equivalent British MBA segment so I may not be making an appropriate comparison.

Unfortunately, we are now competing on a global scale and therefore we need to be investing even harder in growing our national talent if we are simply to keep up.

Ian Berry

Yes.

Jonathan

I now remember the original research that showed that the kids in the state system with grades equal to the privately educated kids actually did better at university. You neglected to mention that almost all the kids in the state system went to selective grammar schools. These selected partly on intelligence, partly by geographical catchment areas carefully drawn to exclude the hoi polloi, partly with the religious requirements, partly by interviewing parents to make sure they knew about the funding gap for the new laboratory, new music room, new sports pavilion or whatever and purely by the bye, WOULD THEY LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE? In short the state grammar schools were public schools for the slightly poorer parent.

Dogdays

Look on the HESA website to see the comparative employment and unemployment rates for worthy subjects such as physics and what you plainly regard as inferior subjects. The truth may surprise you.

I have a friend who studied textile design and production in the early seventies. After working for others she struck out on her own and established a very successful design based export company with customers on four continents. After selling up, she is now a very comfortable retiree.

MP

I did not think anyone as intelligent as yourself could get by without a decent newspaper. I read the FT but bin How to Spend It and ignore other sections of no interest or value to me. I hope they will be included in the package as long as the the advertising subsidises the uniquely valuable parts of the paper.

Does not anyone with internet access use it to read all kinds of information and entertainment? I read as much online as off including the FT for background and the bits that do not make it onto the pages of the UK print edition. Most of us like to talk to people on and offline. We can learn from some surprising sources, checkout operators, people waiting for a train, former colleagues. Even sometimes from a discussion forum on this site.

Yes we need to invest in education, infrastructure, R&D...

@Jeremy Bosk

I don't think you do remember the original research as it said students at comprehensive schools who got the same grades at A levels did better than students from both grammar and private schools:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/03/state-school-pupils-university

"Pupils from comprehensive schools are likely to do better at university than children educated at private or grammar schools with similar A-level results, according to research carried out for the government and published today."

Seems obvious to me that the more degrees there are, the smaller any additional salary resulting from that degree will be.

Soon we'll find that almost all jobs "require" a degree, not because they require somebody educated to the highest level, but a) degrees will be that plentiful they might as well require it, b) not to insist on a degree will mark the job as being second class.

As to A level standards, I believe they're falling. To suggest that year after year, without fail (in ANY year), the marks are higher - either due to naturally brighter kids or better teaching - just beggars belief. Simple politics - government of the day wants us to believe they're doing better. A more objective measure would be to ask where we are in international tables. The answer is - we're sinking.

Clive B

Your first two paragraphs are definitely correct.

Your last is probably partly correct. Teachers are getting better at teaching to the exam and not trying to teach their charges to actually think. Pupils understand that they need the right kind of paper so they abandon any attempt to learn and concentrate on passing the test.

Which is why so many need remedial teaching, especially in maths and English when they arrive at university. They concentrate so hard on their A-levels that they have no time for acquiring a work ethic, the 3 Rs and rudimentary social graces.

That they work hard at the frequently pointless tasks in their A-levels but do not acquire a work ethic is a paradox. Learning is not valued of itself but as a means to an end and you do as little as you can get away with because it has no intrinsic value. They are then ill placed to see any value in work beyond the pay check.

Their self respect has been destroyed by credentialism.

Well, that is my theory based on talking to students and family members over the decades. Plus interesting conversations with the waitress at my local Chinese chippy. My weekly treat. She was born in mainland China, has lived here since the age of 12 and sometimes visits her homeland. She speaks Cantonese and Mandarin as well as quite good English and will start a Business Studies Degree at a Russell Group university next term. She plans to get involved in import and export. I am trying to convert her to reading the FT. She is very pragmatic and has not yet connected all the dots. Imagination and experience will help.

Jonathan

You did not mention the date of the research or the newspaper in which it appeared. So I trawled through my overburdened memory and came up with something which I think was originally reported in the Telegraph in the 1990s. There are so many of these reports over the decades. They sometimes agree and sometimes disagree.

Earlier you argued for the educational and social background being ignored:

"I agree interviews are necessary for some degrees like medicine where the person is being honed for a particular job role and needs other soft skills but for 95% of degrees it should be on A level results alone".

Now you arguing that Comprehensive school students should be judged not on their actual results but with some hypothetical addition for invisible qualities that may appear at university? Make up your mind!

From the Guardian article:

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: "These findings provide further evidence that universities are right to take into account the educational context of students when deciding whom to admit – alongside other information on their achievements and potential."

The bit after the hyphen in the quotation from Sir Peter means "alongside the Oxbridge interview".

I have just read the original report from the Sutton Trust. It is long and contains a lot of serious research on different aspects of university selection.

http://www.suttontrust.com/research/use-of-an-aptitude-test-in-university-entrance/

Relating to my point about selective grammar schools being the poor (or less rich) man's public school, this otherwise excellent report does not cover the existence, or not, of streaming within comprehensives.

In some comprehensives, all levels of academic ability are taught together by the same teachers. In other comprehensive schools the bright pupils are streamed to do their classes separately with only the best teachers and the best facilities. The comprehensive becomes a selective grammar and a separate secondary modern within the same building.

Without this information the report is inconclusive regarding the merits of comprehensives and other schools. But worth reading for other reasons.

@Jeremy Bosk,

Firstly I am not arguing for students from comprehensive schools to have preferential treatment over ones from private schools just equal treatment based on their grades. I pointed to that article as a reference to comprehensive school pupils doing better at university with the same grades as there are too many students from private schools being waved in at interview time by the elite universities. My argument is that all too often a pupil at somewhere like Westminster College London will go for an interview at somewhere like Trinity College Cambridge and will get all doors opened to them. If the entrance is done on grades alone it takes all subjectivity out of the process.

Jonathan

I think a degree of subjective judgement based on experience, based on interviews, can help admissions tutors make better decisions. I would trust the ones I have met over the years from different status universities.

If it really were only about the upper classes looking after their own and a real thickhead from a public school was preferred to a bright state school pupil, I would agree with you.

I may have mentioned before on another thread that I went to university (HND course, not a degree) with a young Muslim who had the title Hafiz, awarded to those who had memorised the Koran. He also had straight As in Pure Maths, Applied Maths and Computing. A perfect candidate to your way of thinking.

He did reasonably or very well on all the modules that did not require any original thought, did not require honest and open co-operation between students, did not involve any of the women students. Other modules were a struggle because we all found out very quickly that he was a liar, a cheat and a vile bigot. In "we" I include his three fellow Muslims one of whom I still see and talk with from time to time.

One afternoon in between lectures I tried to strike up a conversation by saying how much I looked forward to going to the pictures that weekend. I asked did he ever go to the pictures? "No, and I think all the cinemas should be burnt down with the audience locked inside".

There is a reason that Islamic art omits the representation of humans or animals. Something along the lines of the Old Testament Second Commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments". (Exodus 20:4-6).

He went on at the end of the course to come in early in the morning (living a short walk away) and steal all the job notices posted for the benefit of all. He pinned them back up a day or so later when he had applied for the ones he wanted. He was spotted but nobody snitched. We should have.

A few minutes talking to him would convince any admissions officer to turn him down. He belonged in Broadmoor. One of the Kuwaiti students pointed at him and said, "There are a lot like him back home. That is why I want to stay here after I qualify".

Imo, the reason successive governments (including, unbelievably, this one) have suggested adding "context" (e.g. parental income, pupil background) to the scores of state school pupils is simply that the government absolutely refuses to believe the state school is lagging behind private schools.

(I went to Uni, when it was still referred to as a University, via a comprehensive school, from a working class background, and would have been horrified to think my grades had been "boosted" because of my background).

End result of this is that some very good pupils (well off parents, private school background) will be denied university education. We're simply dumbing down education (again) for reasons of political correctness.

If the state wants, as I'm sure we all do, more state school pupils to go to Uni - fine - improve the system !. Don't penalise a system (private schooling) simply because it's doing better.

Clive B

I especially agree with your last paragraph.

Your first paragraph has I think got it the wrong way round.

Successive governments know very well that private schools normally have better teaching and better facilities than state.

Attempts to even up the results by favouring the state school sector at admissions time are simply a dishonest refusal to admit the frequently dismal level of state education.

But it is cheaper and easier for a cynical, short-termist politician to penalise the few than to uplift the many.