Useless degrees

Interesting that you say when. I agree, i think it's inevitable.

Remember though, it's actually the government's money, not the students. On the whole, anyway.

I have no qualms with academics, almost all of the trouble comes from the management and admin staff in my university. But maybe this is simply because they have the academic staff under an iron fist of job insecurity.

The money that's apportioned at the moment via the RAE is the government's, which is why students feel ignored in favour of research, but the tuition fees changed that a wee bit, and that change will presumably continue exponentially 'when' the system does shift further (and I hope it never does…).

Students already pay a hell of a lot to do Masters courses, for instance, unless they are funded, so they tend to have higher expectations of the amount of pastoral and pedagogical attention they'll get in comparison to their undergrad degrees. But of course nothing changes, because the academics are under the same pressures, regardless of how much they're paying. Foreign students get a particularly raw deal much of the time.

Sorry for being so boring. I'll go and make some puns somewhere as penance.