Don’t put your daughter on the course Mrs Worthington.

Apparently student complaints about their university education has increased 10-30% and a solicitor specialising in legal cases has seen his enquires rise from two a week to ten a day according to a BBC program last night. And these aren’t middleclass teenage gripes about poor coffee in the refectory. One chap was faced with an unannounced 100% rise in his tuition fee for year two, 23 out of a class of 27 complained of ridiculously poor content and paying £250 for ‘special materials’ they never got. Another signed up to a local uni for easy travel and was informed the course had been moved to another college forty miles away. The list went on. Every student lucky enough to get some redress had to sign a gagging order as part of the settlement. Official reports of bad practice excluded the names of the universities concerned. The picture is of middleclass establishments forced into the cut and thrust of commerce unable to reconcile the ethos of education with the necessity to cover costs by bums on seats. Their rhetoric is of providing an ‘exceptional educational experience’ whilst their actions are to do whatever’s necessary to satisfy their huge overheads. Twenty years ago I suggested Ford should go into FE. Their capacity to design and manage a quality, functional mass-market product seemed much needed, but perhaps I was wrong. University education is about letting your mind wonder and also wonder, being curious, contemplative and argumentative, even objectionable. Though underpinned by acquiring necessary knowledge it’s about what you will do once you’re standing on the shoulders of giants. All this requires a gentle reflective atmosphere to produce fruit and only suited to the most fertile minds. But where many polytechnics have become universities by renaming in essence universities have become polytechnics focused on the mass-market teaching of trades. And at £27,000 a pop plus expenses. Anyone with a university education will consider this utterly stupid, not because we got ours for free but because mass training needn’t cost anywhere near that much when it’s the student doing most of the work, and the resulting product, a degree, doesn’t have anywhere near that market value. It’s a £1,000 coffee percolator. So don’t put your daughter on the course Mrs Worthington.