Vintagewhine
Intellectual snobbery because I want all school leavers to have the same choices regardless of wealth or lack of it? What rubbish! Please explain why it's intellectual snobbery.
It's not, VW. I think you and I are coming from the same place. We should all be able to take advantage of a good and rounded education, regardless of our career choices.
My decorator has a degree in Music. She enjoys decorating, and as a mother of young children finds it hard to get a musical job that doesn't involve touring, so she set up a decorating business, and doesn't take on work when she's playing. She doesn't see her degree as a waste of time or money.
Similarly, I know people who have jobs in (amongst other places) the local council, who went straight into supervisory/lower management roles straight from university just because they have degrees, managing people without them who have worked there for years. I can see no sense in that either. They learn on the job, as no degrees teach local government practice, AFAIK.
Of course, there are roles where people need subject-specific knowledge - I don't want to be treated by a doctor with no knowledge of biology, or have my children taught by unqualified teachers. But IMO if there is the snobbery it is in assuming that tradespeople shouldn't go to university, and that graduates should have their path through management eased by blocking those without degrees. That is not to say that a university education doesn't confer transferrable skills - of course it does. But these can be tested 'on the job' or in open interviews.
An educated workforce is better for the country as a whole, and the cost is only an issue when universities are treated as businesses rather than services.
