Today's discussion about the news
Comments
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International exchange of talent is a huge value to the UK. If you accept this, and welcome PhD students (for example) from abroad, what are your thoughts on bringing family members?
If they are hired as researchers, they will be employees, in mid to late 20s or older. The rules on overseas are clear enough.
So should PhD students, who are likely to be early to late 20s, and likely to be doing some undergrad teaching, any different?
It is a different question entirely whether or not they should be allowed to stay on after graduation or for how long.
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"..at least that was my impression 18 years ago..."
So bang up to date. Right around the first peak in this graph.
I don't pretend to know what it's currently like but my brother's experience was endlessly being strung along with promises to extend contracts that never quite made it to an actual firm offer. There was also a big cut in research funding post-Brexit. So he took his skills to Canada.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Temporary contracts are a way of academic life. In reality you are no more or less a permanent employee, you are just in an industry where there is a risk of redundancy every 2-4 years.
I've worked with universities in the decades since, and they employ no fewer people in the academic support functions I was in. My own brother is at a university in a support role, complains about job security, has never been made redundant, is well paid for what he actually does and still thinks it is a hard life. He got shelled out of the private sector earlier in his career because he wasn't good enough at dealing with pressure.
All anecdotal, I accept.
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The really daft thing was that after he had emigrated, they managed to find the money that they could never find when he was in the UK and employed him as a consultant for a year or so.
I think this just confirmed that he'd made the right decision.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Having worked in a support role at a red brick for a couple of years. I would tend to agree, certainly that in my particular institution, there were a lot of academic support staff being paid to do not very much. I would argue though that a lot of this comes down to the departments, or even individual academics who are very good at lobbying for funding to get support staff to basically do much of the administrative functions of their jobs that they don't really want to do. I was employed at quite a senior grade and was supposed to do all manner of fundraising, marketing, public engagement work etc. In reality I was there to update the academics twitter feed, book rooms, travel etc. The crazy thing was that for about 6 academics they actually had another two members of staff doing virtually the same as me. I could name numerous departments and schools where similar went on.
There was also certainly a culture of jobs for life, and those that underperformed could hide this quite easily or would be covered for by colleagues. I remember one member of staff who had just over 50 days 'sick leave' in one year. The problem was her Line Manager covered for her and never reported them so officially she had zero!
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Anyone want to offer a considered thought on why there seems to be quite a backlash to the success of Ozempic?
I think everyone agrees that managing your weight without drugs is optimal, but given how problematic obesity is and how effective the drug is, why are so many objecting to it?
Surely tonnes of people no longer being obese is a public health masterstroke?!
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Worth reading.
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I think a lot of it comes under how society views illness in general. Obesity is largely seen as being down to individual choice (and a lifestyle choice at that in terms of diet and activity), people don't accept it as being an illness. Therefore, many view it that it is down to individuals to address it themselves and I think drugs such as ozempic are viewed as the easy option, and that medication should be preserved for people who they determine are 'unwell' I think the same can be said for substance addictions, and in many cases, mental health conditions. A lot of people still do not view these as being genuine illnesses and are less sympathetic to those who suffer from them
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The ongoing cultural association between body size/shape and virtue. Plenty of that on here an' all.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I have no experience of working in education, but your experience accords very closely with mine in a large and well established multinational company. I only worked there for 6 months by which time I knew more about my job than any of the other 7 existing employees doing the same role in the same department. I left for the same reason that you did to go back to small business again, I'm not sure it was such a good move now that I'm approaching retirement but at least I've rarely been bored at work.
Inneficiency isn't restricted to public bodies.
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Isn’t the issue that the 1990s push for everyone to have a University education has led to too many Universities? The HE college where I did my BTEC become a full blown University a few years later.
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It’s well known educated work forces are much more productive.
The question is not why are there so many universities but why the economy needs so few educated workers.
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There is no need to go to uni to be a brickie/plumber/sparkie assuming good training. Just 3 examples.
I could add recruitment agent. 😉
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
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Manual trades have a pretty fixed upper limit on their productivity. And if anything they take longer and cost more to train.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
So, educating them more at uni would improve the situation? I think not.
The Blair legacy has many failings and one of them was the notion of sending as many as possible to uni, regardless of the need.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
So your point is that the economy needs higher educated people going to uni, but the people who actually build or maintain stuff are of less importance?
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
I suspect a few things.
The lack of industrial strategy. The story of British industry is very much a list of things we were world leading in, but now have no or few skills in. Having said that, we do have a handful of very worthwhile success stories, and we probably punch above our weight.
Poor management with UK companies. Within (some) UK engineering companies, the most talented engineers get promoted away from technical work. With the US company I work with, that happens to a far reduced extent and you can get all the way to director pay scale while basically only concerning yourself with technical work.
Poor training within UK companies. I work somewhere were the attitude is, to a large extent, you learn mostly on the job. Which works if you hide a highly motivated small group who read technical papers in their own time, but less so when you end up as a "large" company.
Finally an education system that allows too much specialization too early.
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Perhaps we need to get past the idea that a degree is something you just do because you need it. And the idea that one has to choose between higher education and manual trades. If nothing else, having something else to fall back on once your knees give out is good planning.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Who chooses to get tens of thousands in debt for something they don’t need?
Fine if the family can afford it but it shouldn’t be a national strategy.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
A lot of people who maintain difficult to maintain stuff will have some level of tertiary education anyway, or be in an apprentice scheme where they can work towards degree level qualifications...
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Imagine if there were more than one reason for doing something. Also, last time I checked, trades training isn't free. At £3.5k for an 8 week course for a basic qualification it's pretty comparable with academic fees.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
The issue with aiming for a 40%-50% university educated population is that in order to get many jobs, you need some sort of degree. A tick box exercise if you like. Whether or not the degree is itself of any value whatsoever is besides the point.
There was talk of a two year degree a while ago. I don't see how you can do a BSc or a BA in 2/3 time of someone else with the "same" qualification, personally, but I am not averse to high levels of university education, in so far as the life skills and type of learning (i.e. more self-directed) that it theoretically encourages - it doesn't need to be the same letters after one's name does it?
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Lengthen the terms and increase the contact time? I feel my degree didn't really end up being a hardcore full-time endeavour until the final two years. Try and reign back the prevailing wisdom that first year doesn't matter at all.
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Did you get a first? I hear a lot of people saying they didn't work very hard at uni so they should make it more difficult, then you find out they got a 2:2 or a 2:1 - well yeah, you obviously didn't work hard.
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Yes I got a first, you cheeky so and so
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To be fair I did my not trying hard enough at a levels so was lucky to end up at the uni I wanted doing the subject I wanted. I then had to do well enough to get put back on the masters course I had originally applied to do...
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Okay let me put it another way. We need a balanced workforce. There is no point everyone studying to be architects if there is nobody to build things, maintain things or clean them.
Studying purely for educational purposes is for the privileged few.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
100% the wrong way around, but OK. Couldn't disagree with you more.
We need a balanced economy. We shouldn't have only the privileged and elite studying at university because the only jobs around are cleaning things and other menial work.
Backwards thinking.
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