Record fall in university places taken up, says Ucas
bbc.co.uk/news/education-20700696
bbc.co.ukPosted Dec 13, 2012, 9:05 AM UTC
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bbc.co.ukCan we see which courses there's a fall in?
If there's a rise in STEM and a fall in the rest than I'd call that a net gain.
In b4 extreme hatred directed at me.
11
There has got to be some room for non-STEM graduates though.
Education is not just about gaining technical skills and helping your job prospects.
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I don't understand why there is a great divide. As a "STEM" graduate myself I think life would be incredibly dull without artistic types; I don't know how I would get through the week without well designed software tools that look decent, music, nice looking buildings.
Also, the creative industry is second to the financial industry in terms of our GDP so saying Engineering has more economic value than art and design isn't a fair assessment. This even ignores the fact that next to no-one wants to buy a car that looks like shit or use a computer that has an OS that still looks like windows 3.1.
Of course we need science and engineering graduates for technology to develop and not stagnate and have our society crumble, but the way every one of us connects to the world is through our emotions. Our society must have an artistic elite as well as a scientific one.
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As a "STEM" graduate myself I think life would be incredibly dull without artistic types
Agreed. As a non-STEM student (I'm studying Anthropology and Art History) I don't know where I'd be without all of the cool things STEM has done to make my life easier. My education would be very very different if it weren't for the internet, and I'd sure be lost without all the cool technologies that make television, movies, and music possible.
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Mathematicians are some of the most creative types out there. Stop lumping us in with the sciences!
Edit: Downvotes for being irrelevant or because you disagree with me?
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Haha okay. Actually, I feel like all of the STEM fields require some sort of creativity. Everything humans do requires creativity. How else would you be able to be innovative?
But I still feel very unhappy when I see all this hate for non-STEM degrees. I'm studying two different humanities majors and I love them, and I feel they are completely relevant to our society.
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I think most people just really don't understand the creativity required for mathematics. (I'm an English lit grad student, but I find mathematics fascinating.)
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Haha I have noticed that they're getting a lot of flack in this thread. Search youtube for singing banana, he lectured me at uni in my first year, funny and nice guy :-) shows that science and art aren't at all pulling in different directions
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Downvote for "Edit: Downvotes blah blah", since you asked why.
Got here late.
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You're getting downvoted because SRS is brigading the thread. One could say it's a mathematical certainty that any reasonable comment gets downvoted wherever SRS brigades.
You should have expressed more self-loathing for choosing a wretched, male-dominated and unimportant field of study like mathematics. What has maths ever done for us? Nothing, amirite?
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As a "STEM" graduate myself I think life would be incredibly dull without artistic types
I concur, it's very hard to laugh at a mathematician.
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The problem is that non-STEM humanities degrees were thoroughly corrupted. Instead of telling people how to tell better from worse, basically it is now a giant circlejerk insisting that there is nothing better and nothing worse. There is no point in educating people in that. They become the literal opposite of experts: while a doctor can tell this is a better treatment and this is a worse one, a linguist for example will insist on telling you that there is no such thing as a better or worse dialect when you ask him how to improve yours. Which means uselessness. Non-STEM must learn to be judgemental again to be respected again.
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STEM isn't about just gaining technical skills and helping your job prospects either. I'm going into physics knowing full well that it will probably not directly help my job prospects, but, in addition to letting me fundamentally examine the universe, which is what our purpose as humanity should be, it will teach me how to think analytically better than any communications or psychology sequence would.
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it will teach me how to think analytically better than any communications or psychology sequence would.
Analytically? Nah, maybe it'll help you process, but analytic-thinking is psychology up the whazoo.
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The thing is, apart from the "classic" non-science subjects, there is very little need for these arts degrees to exist at universities. They would be far better placed to be taught at colleges.
STEM degrees are not all about gaining technical skills or job prospects. The core of most science degrees is learning to think analytically, problem solve and practice science properly. These are necessary skills required to practice science and proper application of these skills is just as much an artform as anything else.
The reason STEM degrees also attract people who want to further their job prospects is that these skills are also highly desirable in the working world.
EDIT: To make it clear, I would include so-called "soft sciences" such as the social sciences as part of the useful set of degrees. The research methods taught follow a fairly similar chain of thought as other sciences and (assuming properly applied - in my experience many social scientists are weak in their understanding of stats, this is where someone properly trained should be brought in!!) the use of statistical methods within these subjects make them scientific to some degree in my eyes.
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I've never said I want to get rid of non-STEM degrees. I just feel like STEM courses should be subsidized more heavily to get more people into them.
I feel they're much more useful to society as a whole.
Art, film studies, 'media', etc. They should all carry on existing but forget about me being happy funding them as a tax payer. If you want to do a dos/vanity degree then go ahead but you need to pay for it.
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So when you go to a cinema and what you watch is utter crap won't you be wondering why there are no decent film makers any more?
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You honestly think a few more Media Studies graduates will fix that?
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Well in the US the film schools cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and they make some of the best movies..
It's clear that making the degrees cost more doesn't effect the quality of output too much.
Also, I started looking up directors I like and very few have film school as something they did.
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But do you need a degree in film making? Isn't that more of a hands on/experience type job?
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Seriously, you think the crap we have in the cinema is good now?
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People with STEM degrees are tools, they are useless without non-STEM degree holders using them. But even then for the UK they aren't that helpful.
This idea that STEM degrees boost economic growth or increase societal well being on their own is false. They are part of the package and considering that the UK's economy is highly service based and post-industrial it would be idiotic in the extreme to solely focused on STEM degrees.
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I don't think it's fair to completely demonize STEM people either, though. Yeah, a lot of people on Reddit have this holier-than-thou attitude about STEM, but I don't encounter that in real life. All of my friends are in physics and engineering and chemistry, and they're just lovely. Yeah, they occasionally razz me about being an Anthropology and Art History major, but they don't really mean it.
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And then you realise that our biggest export is nuclear power plants/equipment/parts and your argument turns to shit.
For the record, I don't have a degree in anything so it's not like I just prefer the kind of degree I took.
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I would personally also argue that STEM is more expensive (in general) than art degrees. I mean, between the labs, computer rooms and specialist equipment, the budget for STEM courses must be greater than for, say, history... But no one's going to suggest we should have to pay more than any course that has a smaller budget than ours.
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I mean I don't see a problem with wanting to get more funding for STEM degrees. But what you said was that you'd be happy to see a rise in STEM and a fall in the rest. That's not the same thing.
Personally, I'd be happy to see all education getting a lot more funding than what it's getting. Only good things can come of a population that is more educated.
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I thought generally reddit was strongly pro-STEM and anti-everything else. Ergo its not likely you'll receive a lot of criticism for this...
I did a science and humanities course at Uni (though ended with a BSc) so I win/lose both ways ;)
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Reddit as a whole is very pro-STEM but in every tuition fees thread in this subreddit I've had shit from people for proposing that STEM courses should be subsidized more heavily then other, what I consider, vanity courses are.
I imagine they just don't like the insinuation I'm making about the other courses which is fair enough.
I know art degrees mean a lot to some people, but they mean next to nothing to me.
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SRS is anti-STEM, however, and are likely to invade a thread if they see a comment such as this.
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No, SRS is not anti-STEM, you buffoon. Plenty of SRSers are in STEM.
We're anti-assholes who think the only thing worth doing ever is STEM while said assholes enjoy the fruits of non-STEM labor every single day of their lives.
Get it right.
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We spell them arseholes and labour in these parts.
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We're anti-assholes who think the only thing worth doing ever is STEM
How does a comment that says more people in STEM would be a good thing equate with "assholes who think the only thing worth doing ever is STEM"?
There's a shortage of people in STEM -- so why not encourage more people to get involved with it?
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I know right? These STEM majors are so self-righteous thinking that what they do is so important! We could do without shit like computers and water treatment plants, but where would society be without womyn's studies majors to tell other womyn's studies majors that the reason they can't find a well paying job out of university is because patriarchy????
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SRS is not anti-STEM, you buffoon
Excellent show of all the things SRS is against. Name-calling, bullying, etc.
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non-STEM labor
Is there such a thing? Is lesbian beat poetry a form of labor?
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They are here ...
ALL HANDS ABANDON THREAD
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I'm going to respectfully disagree. If you had a sudden rise in STEM majors, there would be more people competing for jobs. STEM salaries would fall, and a lot of people would be jobless.
Meanwhile, if all the other industries that buy the products STEM produces were to decrease-- the artists and journalists who use software programs, the clothing companies that use innovations in chemistry, the entertainment industry that uses cool technology like satellites and cameras and recording equipment, the social scientists that use statistics--STEM people would have way fewer people giving them money to support what they're doing.
Also, can you imagine a world without art, literature, music, movies, television, architecture, newspapers, magazines, fashion...without any of that? It would be so boring and bland and depressing. I mean video games? A lot of people on here like video games! You need artists and actors to make those!
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Also, can you imagine a world without art, literature, music, movies, television, architecture, newspapers, magazines, fashion...without any of that?
I disagree with the notion that if you took away degrees then art would stop happening.
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Art itself would continue, but it would be very different. There are so many industries dependent upon artists with specific skills. Graphics designers, fashion designers, actors, journalists...all of those jobs require training. In fact, drawing and painting are not something that most people are able to just "do" without any kind of training. Having taken some art classes, there are a lot of techniques out there that are very difficult to master without being taught. In fact, the Renaissance era, which many would consider to be a golden age of art, was made possible by serious study at art academies. Do you think Michelangelo just woke up one day and decided he was going to create his David statue? Or that Raphael learned how to paint in his spare time? Or that da Vinci just inherently knew how to paint the Mona Lisa without any training whatsoever?
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Especially considering the amount of people that are in design teams for videogames these days...
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You need non-STEM graduates to manage the STEM graduates. A society full of scientists, technicians, engineers and mathematicians would be clueless.
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Bullshit. Not all scientists are clueless autistic types and plenty of science/engineering courses have business sandwich years.
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Sure, but people trained in scientific fields understand very little outside of their specific fields.
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Source? I have seen a lot of scientist trained people move straight into management. The fact is the degree shows you can work hard and pick up concepts. If you have a decent degree in anything you can get into management and in a lot of smaller tech companies I have seen people with science/tech and engineering majors go straight into management and also start in other places and then move into it.
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Not necessarily. I've met many scientists who were great at dealing with people outside their field. Sure, it's exactly a ubiquitous trait, but it's not exactly rare. You're relying on the traditional engineer/scientist stereotypes that aren't really as accurate as people think.
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Holy shit, your generalizations are ridiculous.
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Yeah because all STEM graduates are cookiecutter cliches out of "The Big Bang Theory", right?
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That's bollocks.
Everyone hates a manager who has no understanding of the thing they're managing. The term 'Middle management' was invented for such people and no one likes middle managers.
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Hmmm. I see there are a lot of STEM grads who are reading this comment and getting a bit pissed :D
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generic hate
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So should I try to study a comp sci degree in the next academic year then?
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What are you studying at the moment?
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If you think you'll be interested in it, yes. Programming is pretty dull if it's not something you enjoy, but on the other hand I know people who never tried it until college and discovered they enjoyed it.
Plus arts and computers aren't mutually exclusive, especially if you're into music (logical structure of sound), photography, animation, etc.
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I don't think one is good and one is bad so much as they don't mix. People in the liberal arts need the room to take their views to extremes and explore where that takes them. The problem is when there are STEM departments that suddenly are being told the "new rules" by the womens' studies department; or the science people being told that what they are doing is evil.
Quite simply there are too many differences between the arts and the various STEM disciplines that having them under the same roof is just unfair to both. A simple example would be budgets. The study of English just doesn't need a CERN or a space program. Sociology doesn't need access to millions of dollars of medical equipment. Yet you often hear of these arts departments bemoaning the massive budgets of the sciences and whatnot.
But the worst incompatibility is in the basic way of thinking. Sciences are strongly based (oddly enough) on the scientific method. This means that there is little basis between the arts and STEM departments for debate as to how things are done. A simple example would be affirmative action. For the most liberal universities affirmative action is simply not up for debate; they would use some wooly term such as universal right. But if you go to the hardest of hard core technical institutions you will find not a disdain for affirmative action but puzzlement; they think: be smart, study hard, and you get in. Which they would argue is 100% fair. So to give one inch of power over a technical institution by its liberal arts department and it will be destroyed as reputation of its students is paramount. The moment their is doubt then the value of the institution drops and the logical minded students of the future will flock to whatever institution has not succumbed to stupidity.
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I love it when STEM people argue that they are the kings of logic, and then casually dismiss entire bodies of literature in the social sciences that they've never even been bothered to read.
Yeah, STEM talks a good game at methodology, but that doesn't mean they are competent to go toe-to-toe on subjects outside of their domain.
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The scientific method has nothing to do with how departments are managed or ran.
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Excellent news. People are starting to make more critical assessments as to whether or not university is right for them.
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I wasted so much of my life trying to go to uni. Wish I'd have got a trade under my belt from 18. I'm relatively bright, but academia just wasn't for me, no matter how many times I tried to contort myself into the education system.
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The problem is many people seem to equate uni with a job that pays loads. There may be a grain of truth in that but really uni is about study and research, not a glorified job centre. That said, I hope you're on the right track now.
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Am I bollocks. I forgot to add in that last part that I'm lazy and easily distracted.
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I'm glad to see someone else saying this. It really gets on my tits when people see university as a stepping stone to a big career in the city or suchlike. That is not, never has been, and never should be the purpose of a university. They are there to increase knowledge through teaching and researching, and this is what people should be considering when they apply to university. It's "do I love my subject and want to discover more about it", not "is this degree going to broaden my job opportunities and land me a 6 figure salary".
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Maybe the establishment should stop selling it as a money making job satisfaction factory then, it's hardly fair to blame people who have been told for their entire life that Uni will make them rich that Uni actually won't make them rich. The fault lies with the establishment brainwashing people not with the brainwashed.
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Someone else was saying that uni graduates earned more money. He posted a figure for a starting salary which I said was £7k less than I earned over half a decade ago as a shunter at Stobarts driving round a Tesco depot putting trailers on loading bays.
I then pointed out that with the amount I'd earned whilst he had been at Uni and the amount of money I'd not had to pay out by not going that it was almost the same as the amount oft quoted they reckon uni graduates are better off over a lifetime.
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"The statistics also suggest an underlying trend of increasing applications from poorer teenagers has continued and that more disadvantaged 18-year-olds are getting places in the most academically-selective universities"
University education is as accessable as it's always been. Of course this will be drowned out by the "Tory class wants to own you" from all the students who think they are having such a rough time.
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Yeah, but as a STEM graduate I end up subsidising people who did doss degrees, meanwhile the older (and generally wealthier) generation, many of whom went to Uni for free, have completely gotten themselves off the hook for paying.
Either we should have completely unsubsidised loans without any possibility of forgiveness or default, or we should fund it via general income tax. At the moment it's more like the latter but levied only on students so hard-working students bear the burden of those doing vanity degrees.
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hard-working students
This is a perfect example of an oxymoron
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Who would have guessed that would happen....
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The ruling class would have.
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Let's see how things turn out over the next few years.
The elitism is in the way everyone now has a massive debt hanging over them forever. This has less of an effect on people from a wealthy families who cushion the burden.
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Does anyone else who received a University degree within the last few years a bit cynically happy about this? Less competition...
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Unless you feel threatened by BAs in Humanities, no.
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To be honest, I was sort of hoping that this would happen so that it would give me a better chance (I feel bad for thinking like that but there's so much competition that I think the only way for me to be noticed is by a lack of students filling places). Our centre has to devote entire tutor classes to people who aren't applying to university now rather than mixing them together.
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To be honest, I was sort of hoping that this would happen so that it would give me a better chance
My thoughts too. When I saw the drop a year ago or so I was quite happy. Though, I wonder where the demand has fallen i.e. what uni's and what degrees.
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From what I've gathered from my school, the majority of people want to be teachers — when asked, there were only two or three people out of a 20-person group who didn't want to go into English literature teaching. The others were either into maths (planning to go into either psychology or game design) or languages. It was bizarre but I suppose people just want to go into a job they're familiar with and which has relatively lenient grade requirements.
I specifically decided to stay on doing A-Levels for an extra year in the hopes that when the fees came into effect that the numbers would drop. Since the fees didn't affect my course, I didn't have anything to lose.
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Great news.
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Well... that was the point, wasn't it?
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Really? Well I wonder the fuck why, I could of told you this in September.
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You're telling me a record price increase has lead to a record fall in applications? Well, colour me shocked.
Are you selectively ignoring all the reasons UCAS gave for the fall?
Yeah this is why there isn't an 11.6% gap between England (new fees) and Wales (no new fees). It is nothing to do with fees at all.
Yes, but some of it is undoubtedly cyclical.
This year won't have had any students that left sixth form in 2011, as very few of them would've taken gap years so as to avoid the fee rise.
Essentially the 2012 university intake has only been made up of 2012 school leavers, whereas the 2011 university intake was made up of 2010 and 2011 school leavers. Likely it will go back up, perhaps not all the way, next year when you get students going to university from both the 2012 and 2013 leavers.
Shush up and start the circlejerk.