Children’s ability to speak clearly will be given the same status as numerary and literacy under a Labour government, Sir Keir Starmer has pledged as he vowed to shatter the “class ceiling” by ending snobbery over the value placed on university degrees.
The easiest way to do this is to ban a degree requirement for entering a job or profession. Like, say, nursing. Or that latest idea that child care should be done by graduates. You can already be an accountant without a degree, think you can still do articles as a solicitor? True, doctors will be a little more tough but the general principle stands. Want to make vocational training more valuable, degrees less, then remove the restrictions on what you may only do with a degree.
QED.
Children’s ability to speak clearly
Possibly even in English.
Given the number of Injuns governing the UK at present, there doesn’t seem to be any real restriction on social mobility.
However I do agree with you Tim. Banning the degree requirement for entering a job or profession is a good idea. If vocational training will allow you to do the job, then that’s what you need.
“Children’s ability to speak clearly will be given the same status as numerary and literacy under a Labour government, Sir Keir Starmer has pledged”
Innit doe!
Given the number of Injuns governing the UK at present
No shortage of cowboys, either.
Everybody has a degree anyway. so that has destroyed the value of a degree. It’s now just a bit of paper certifying that you’re alive.
Nope. Never had one. Never intended to get one. Never stopped me from going wherever I needed to be.
One thing that degreeitis did kill was the nursing profession. The sooner that is walked back, the sooner we can get back to nurses that aren’t too la-di-da fancy to clean up shit, which is a big element of what nurses need to do.
And police. You don’t need a degree to have bricks thrown at you by scumbags.
“Children’s ability to speak clearly …” Oh God he wants elocution lessons so that urchins can speak as vividly as wot Sir Kneel does himself.
By the by, I once horrified a group of academics by observing that the best single thing that we could do to improve the career prospects (in the West) of our Chinese research students would be to send them to elocution lessons. The level of outrage showed that I was right.
(You’d need to send them to lessons because often they won’t improve their English by speaking the language socially, over lunch or whatever. The Party always has spies among them to dissuade them from fraternising. There’s also the matter of their seeking to suck up to the sons of Important People – important in China, that is, in case they have to return home. It’s not a race thing – in my experience the children of overseas Chinese are a pleasure to work with. It’s a fear thing.)
Teaching them the difference between “of” and “have” would be a start. But that requires teachers who understand the difference.
They will still need a translator when a twelve-year-old Geordie meets a twelve-year-old Cockney.
Decades ago Milton Friedman said he was opposed to government licensing as it did little to no good and increased prices to the consumer. He included Medical Licensing.
My family was in the construction business & we knew many architects & engineers so employed. One friend was a non-degreed, thus non-licensed, architect who was so good his Architectural firm used him extensively & other architects in his & other firms sought his council. But he was paid significantly less than the licensed architects & could never be a principal or partner in the firm.
At the risk of sounding too self-promoting which is not intended, I have been applauded by many people including large firms such as IBM, DOW Chemical, Nokia, et. al. for my programming & software development skills. Even now at 80, I have investors funding a new start up to launch a SW product I’ve been developing, all based on their belief, right or wrong, I’m a bright guy. I have never had a course in programming or software development! In fact I would most likely fail any college test in such subject.
–tex
@tex… I too discovered that I’m not “qualified” to do the job that has earned me a reasonably lucrative living for the last 50 years. This was made very clear when my wife and I were thinking about emigrating to New Zealand some years ago. On reflection, looking at that benighted country now, a lucky escape!
When we’re giving someone a degree as part of their professional training (like the LLB for a lawyer or a MBBS for a doctor) then that’s one thing, but you shouldn’t be allowed to say that a person must have a degree, but it doesn’t matter what subject it was in.
@ tex
When we were young the UK didn’t have degrees in programming. In 1964 I, and two other lads, had pre-university jobs as trainee programmers: most of the programmers on the team had maths degrees but one was a Chemical Engineer and one had joined straight from school. The grown-ups taught us some of the basics and then we learnt by doing (with the grown-ups checking anything vital).
So I should have been surprised if you had a degree in programming … all the early degree courses had to be taught by programmers brought into academia for that purpose although a few years later one of my contemporaries became Professor of Computing at Bordeaux so some of those a decade younger will have one.