Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

But does the fault really start with the students, as he claims, or is that blaming the victim? Certainly noone wants to work as hard as people used to ... that's a fact. The old culture (50 to 100 years ago) also supported a much lower population, and there were many more resources - many trees to chop, dams to build, necessities to invent ... all that's now paved over.

Many more people wanted to attend college to get 'the good jobs'. Only,there was only such much demand on the high-end. You wind up with an over-educated population, deep in debt, with Great Expectations that just won't be happening. Those who can't be anaesthetized with TV or video games or web-surfing inevitably turn their frustrated analytical skills upon the powers-that-be.

So, well, here we are. Clearly colleges are in for a deep re-organization. We need to recreate eduction - but to what end? what future will we re-tool to create?. And how will we provide opportunities for all that 'computing power' waiting to be harnessed!

I originally graduated from one of the better known universities in 1983, and returned to post-graduate study and teaching in 1989. I experienced an even worse scenario then he - teaching as a part-time temporary lecturer at several of the 3rd tier universities (polytechnics).

Even when students turned in work that was totally incoherent (unfinished sentences and half the size of the minimum word count), I wasn't allowed to fail them. This was on modular degree courses, were most (if not all) of the assessment was of such submitted work.

For years I witnessed half the students turn up to class with no recriminations against the non-attendees, and with only half of the actual attendees having read the 1 or 2 articles which were required reading for that class (photocopies of which they had been given previously, so they didn't have to find the original journals themselves).

The overall level of education and comprehension was appalling. I realised that pursuing such a career was a path to frustration.

In 1997 I decided I couldn't be part of this sham any more. I have friends who had gone through the same experiences as I, and they too decided to quit and find new careers. The story of one of them was even written up in a national newspaper ten years ago.

I have other friends who teach only at post-graduate level. They are shocked by the lack of basic maths, basic grammar and basic essay-writing skills of the graduates they teach. And in their institutions they too provide the students with all the reading matter, so that these post-graduate students don't have to find their way round a library or find out anything for themselves.

Degrees from UK universities were now meaningless, and it was only a matter of time before the wider world found out. What will probably happen is that employers and/or students will realise that in the majority of work-related degrees the degree itself doesn't indicate anything in terms of skills or competencies.

Several of my neices and nephews have gone to university. Whilst I went there to study, their principal purpose is to party.

My partner is Thai, and I know several of his family and friends who graduated from Thai universities. Some have completed post-graduate qualifications. Yet they would never read a book that was more complex than Harry Potter (even in Thai). Nor would they ever go to a museum or art gallery.

Degrees have just become something that most people do either as a way to move out of home safely and/or a stepping stone to a job. For most graduates there is no sense of education being important in itself.

Debt is never a serious problem in the Netherlands. The government interest rates are so low that if you loan the maximum and put the money in bonds or a high interest savings account you'll actually turn a profit.

Just looked up at Leeds on Wikipedia - I'd assumed it was a fairly mid-range institution (and so I thought there'd be other institutions the same or worse, but many which were better). Just found out it's in the Russell Group. Christ. I (partially) retract my earlier respones.

I study CS (just finished first year) in the UK at a institution that usually places in the top 10... now you mention it, a lot of students do match those described by you and others. However, it's easy to ignore these people, since they never go to lectures (I have friends on other courses who say they attend on average 1 lecture a term...) It's trite, but with university, I feel you get out what you put in.

The opportunity to mix with the people who are bright and motivated (and they do exist) is great, as is having a library full of free programming books. For every student who only goes to party, there's one in the CS building late at night writing a Scheme parser in Haskell. (OK, the ratio's probably more like 3:1, but you get my drift).

On the other hand, I feel like I've learned about as much from pursuing independent projects than I have from my course, though the resources on campus make such projects easier.

BTW, a large part of me is thinking about dropping out of university at some stage and startup a startup - read too much pg - so I've been thinking about the value of university lately.

CS is a bit of an odd subject in this regard - with a lot of subjects^, I'd guess a majority of students don't expect their degree to be useful in their future careers (how many history grads become history teachers?), so it's understandable that many would just see their degree as a career ticket. I do actually hope to learn useful stuff on my course, but I'm not sure if I'd learn more by dropping out and starting up.

*Exceptions I can think of - Law, Medicine, and possibly foreign languages, Engineering, and Economics. Also more 'vocational' subjects like Nursing.