I do agree that the comment about whether students deserve to be there or not was not appropriate. Clearly, students have to make their own mind up about studying at university and their motivation should not be questioned, nor should their right to be there. Whether or not their chosen course will benefit them and/or the country as a whole — in my view, the chances are that it won’t — is probably the point that Neil was trying to convey.

Thanks for your comments. I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve said - 50% is wholly unrealistic. Further, I don’t believe that there should be any goal with the aim of getting x students to university. To do so simply devalues the degrees of people passing through and doesn’t help anybody in the long run, with the possible exception of the universities themselves. Some people will simply not need to go to university, and I think this is something that the government refuses to accept.

You need to couple this with the education system we have in place to supposedly prepare under 18’s for university. Unfortunately I think we’re at the stage where a lot of - or possibly too much - damage has been done. Having two teachers in my immediate family (one primary and another secondary), I know that they would just like some common sense to be used. Those going through primary education and now into secondary education are going to be seriously disadvantaged due to similarly stupid schemes and unnecessary paperwork for teachers brought in by the government.

Anyway, I’m glad you found this entry. I feel that I should write something else on this topic soon as it’s proven to be the most popular by far!

I completely agree that it should not be the place of universities to be teaching students stuff they should already have known. As far as I can tell, making the students learn the knowledge themselves isn’t going to help matters.

Apart from a small minority, most students will simply not be able to cope with the amount of knowledge that needs to be absorbed, and when it comes to exam time, they’ll simply fail or get much lower marks. Universities will then moderate the marks upwards, and we’ll be in the position where people are coming out with 2.1s or even 1sts who don’t know what the heck they’re talking about - this is probably an even worse position than we’re currently in.

Lack of funding forces universities to take on foreign students who are not up to scratch (I sat through some tutorials with someone who didn’t even know what computer science was before he arrived in England) and to grant places to home students who have not been adequately prepared by A-levels (the ability to demand top-up fees is dependent on the university meeting certain discriminatory admissions criteria.)

As a result, when I sat through training for my new job at an American company, I was embarrassed by the vast chasm between the British and the American graduates. I wish I had gone to university in America.

However, as Hitchens points out, now that Gove is in the Shadow Cabinet, he is silent. The Tories aren’t going to help solve this problem, then. Actually, they’re the ones who started it!