On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 08:06:23PM +0100, David Kastrup wrote: > > Engineering student numbers have dropped significantly > at my former university, and it is to be expected that standards were > adjusted downwards in order to get enough students back (we have state > education almost exclusively, but the funds are distributed according to > student numbers).
Sounds familiar. > And that means that the degree is less worth as a means of securing a > reputation and a job. Sure, but it'll take 5-20 years for employers to realize this (depending on the employer). Government elections happen every 4-5 years, so guess what the government pressures universities to do? Famous quote (well, paraphrase) from a high-ranking UK government official approximately ten years ago: Official: we want to have over 50% of school-aged students attending university in ten years. Reporter: excuse me sir, but only 40% of students finish their A-levels. [these are high school exams for academic-oriented students] Official: well then, we'll just have to reduce the difficulty of the A-levels. *shrug* They know what they were doing. The government, and universities, know that they're trading short-term "number of students with degrees" and "tuition fees from foreign students" for "quality of degrees". I don't think that's a good trade-off, but then again I always tend to favor long-term approaches. But although I criticize their goals, I cannot find fault with their methods. They wanted to reduce long-term quality in exchange for short-term numbers, and they are succeeding. - Graham _______________________________________________ lilypond-devel mailing list lilypond-devel@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel
