“Today there is an enormous risk that higher education will turn into a series of utilitarian and functional courses, which are simply designed to pass on knowledge and skills to those consumers who somehow manage to acquire enough resources to purchase them. In such a world, education becomes contractual and mechanistic; the ends justify the means, and the system as a whole simply serves the continual commodification and consumption of knowledge”.
“‘Higher’ education should be radically different. It has a vocation to set us free, raise our vision, discover new horizons of possibility. To be in higher education is to be focused on truth, wisdom, formation, character and virtue – not only the acquisition of new knowledge, but pressing the boundaries of research. Higher education is for personal and social transformation. It speaks in a language of the soul and the heart, as much as the head; it is higher.” (The Very Revd. Prof. Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford).
I would add: A successful time in higher education should have encouraged you to think for yourself and not to simply accept the views and habits of mind of those around you. Secondly, it should have taught you how to set about solving problems; and thirdly, it should have made you good at extracting the main points, or nub, of any written work or report, and setting them out succinctly, in good English. That’s for starters.
The truth is, less than half of UK students even apply to university. The idea that there is a plethora of courses that have no use in the real world, is a fabrication designed to justify cuts to higher education. Even a degree from an average university is far better than no degree at all. People should go to university, not simply to further their career prospects, but to become more intelligent, sophisticated and more well-rounded individuals. Britain has arguably the world’s best higher education system- it should not be left to decline simply because business demands that it become more vocational.