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Is this a global phenomenon? In the UK we had an unemployment problem when Margaret Thatcher was around, one solution to that was to lower the entry barriers f
by Theodores 7y ago
Is this a global phenomenon?
In the UK we had an unemployment problem when Margaret Thatcher was around, one solution to that was to lower the entry barriers for further education. University became remarkably easy to get into, however, the economics of this were such that teaching was different.
In the sciences it was much more profitable for a university to run access courses with 10x the amount of 'customers'. However, you would not have students getting one to one tuition time and having experiments taking up ten foot of a workbench. It was more a matter of multiple choice questions with none of the staff personally mentoring the students.
Some of the older courses were impossible to get a first in. The course I did had historically only ever given out one first, just getting a pass was a heroic achievement.
Due to the elitist nature of how it worked back then a given institution had a certain amount of reputation that went with it so an employer would know that getting a third from a highly reputable university was of merit, not to be compared with a higher grade issued by a mere 'polytechnic'.
I did not think the elitism was bad back then. The reason being that if the state had invested so much money in you then there was an expectation to pay it back. But that all changes when the onus of payment falls on the students and the bank of mum and dad.
Perhaps that is the nub of the problem. When you have students paying for their education you need to have a certain amount of grade inflation to make the investment worthwhile to them.
I would be interested to know if countries that do have state funded free tertiary education can keep a grip of grade inflation. I know that some professional degrees, e.g. in medicine, are not internationally comparable. So, if Western countries don't recognise East European or other degrees in the same way, there should be no need to grade inflate.