More uni places isn’t the answer
UNIVERSITIES minister David Willetts has been lambasted for treating degrees as lastminute.com holidays, following the offer of cut-price courses via the clearing system to make up the numbers.
The remedy lies not in filling up courses but in doing the exact opposite. We have too many students, too many “degrees”, many of which would have been recognised as diplomas in the past, a confusion between the academic and the vocational, too many universities including institutions which were once first-class polytechnics but are now third-rate universities, too many A grades at A-level, which should be rare not standard and too many hyped-up expectations. Everybody knows it so why cannot ministers say it?