Now Universities Get A £1,000 Bribe to Take D-Grade Students
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Universities are being paid a bonus worth up to £1,000 for every student they accept with lower qualifications.
They are receiving the cash premiums for taking students with Ds and Es at A-level as ministers battle to come within reach of a controversial university expansion target.
Funding chiefs admitted the Government’s flagship target to recruit 50 per cent of 18 to 30-year-olds to higher education—originally given a 2010 deadline—is not likely to be met for another decade.
Universities are being told to spend the bonuses on remedial classes to help students with few or no qualifications cope with degree-level studies.
They are expected to provide pastoral support for students and re-draft their first-year teaching to include courses that will ease them into university life.
But academics called the payments “perverse incentives” and said universities should concentrate on developing talent rather than meeting numbers targets.
There were also claims that the bonuses amount to inducements to universities to distort admissions and sideline candidates with good grades.
Under a funding settlement unveiled today, universities will be paid “retention” bonuses on a sliding scale, with £943 available for undergraduates with no qualifications at all.
Premiums will also be paid when students achieve DDE or less at A-level, with smaller sums available for three Cs or less.
The cash is meant to help bring down dropout rates after evidence that nearly a quarter of students fail to finish their courses.
A separate premium of £287, part of the same £352million pot, is handed to universities for every student recruited from a deprived postcode.
But there were claims last night that leading institutions are being penalised for failing to do enough to recruit “non-traditional” students.
Many, including Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol, will see cuts in funding designated for attracting students from broader social backgrounds.
Cambridge is receiving just £371,445 while many former polytechnics—at the forefront of Government moves to boost numbers at university—are getting several million.
Professor Alan Smithers, adviser to the Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee and an education expert from Buckingham University, said: “This is a perverse incentive.
“It’s a bit like trying to find young people to represent us in the 2012 Olympics who are not very good and giving the coaches more money to try to train them up.
“These incentives will encourage universities to take more risk and it will lead to young people being taken on in higher education when they would be better off with practical education.”
Ministers say the target of getting 50 per cent of 18 to 30-year-olds into higher education is needed to equip more workers with high-level skills.
But critics are increasingly questioning the quality of some courses and asking whether university is always the best way of acquiring such skills.
Apprenticeships and vocational training could be alternative options.
They also warn that growing numbers are recruiting students with poor grades, casting doubt on their aptitude for degree-level studies.
Business leaders have said that too many graduates are emerging in subjects such as media studies when the country is crying out for engineers and scientists.
Under today’s settlement from the Higher Education Funding Council, £185.9million is being allocated to institutions to help improve drop-out rates.
A total of £943 is payable for mature students without A-level qualifications or no qualifications at all, with lesser sums for average-or low A-level grades.
Among school-leavers, £566 is payable for those with DDE at A-level or less, with a lesser amount for three Cs or less.
The separate “postcode premium” is worth up to £287 for all students from areas where few residents have university degrees.
But a scathing report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee claimed that £800million already spent on initiatives to curb dropout rates had failed to have an impact.
Higher Education Funding Council chief executive David Eastwood admitted that even with more than 60,000 extra student places planned over the next three years, ministers would bring university recruitment up to 45 per cent of 18 to 30s—short of their 50 per cent target.
But he added: “If you continue to grow the sector at the existing rate you will reach 50 per cent quite rapidly, certainly by the middle of next decade.”
There are around 900,000 undergraduates in England.
(Posted on March 6, 2008)
Comments
In other words, the British education system is catching Yankeeitis — the bar is going to be lower so that more people can flop over it. Meanwhile, the education system will become a sovereign entity unto itself.
This article does not mention race, but I bet that racial pandering and “positive action,” (as AA is called), has a lot to do with it.
Posted by St. Louis CofCC Blogmeister at 12:03 AM on March 7
In America, colleges hire high school teachers to provide one-on-on remedial training to Black freshmen. This remedial goes on to jurnior year and the student often gets college credit for taking junior high and senior high school courses. Whites are denied this kind of treatment.
Posted by the Soviet Republic of New Jersey at 12:41 AM on March 7
Ah, more progress. Just think of the bad old days when you had to have an intellegence level above a banana slug to gain admitance to a university. Thankfully those days of racist exclusion are long over.
Posted by Eric at 1:52 AM on March 7
Predictable outcome of decades of egalitarianism
Posted by at 1:52 AM on March 7
Equality at any cost. Doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we’re there together.
Posted by Joe at 10:09 AM on March 7
Pure Marxist social engineering. The politics of envy is embodied to perfection in the current educational system in England. These Marxists want to level the playing field to the lowest common denominator so that no-one is seen to excel and equally importantly no-one is seen to fail. The result? everybody is happy with their useless little bits of paper and even the laziest underachiever can stick it to those edjicated toffs ‘cos i got me degree too. How long before this appalling state of affairs reaches the original 30 or so genuine universities that make truly rigorous demands of each student. The search for excellence is now assigned a place in the trash bin, it started in the 1960s (!) when the classical language requirement for to entry to University was discarded; after all what use would there be for Latin or Greek for those enrolled for Soccer Studies, Fashion & Make Up or Food Marketing? None whatsoever, but prior to the great leveling, these types of vocational courses were taught at Technical colleges. Another nail in the coffin of the demand for excellence came with John Major’s ‘Conservative’ government’s granting of university charters to scores of Technical Colleges in the 80’s and the subsequent lowering of the entry requirements.
Keep ‘em dumb and keep ‘em dependent with government handouts, that’s the way to total(itarian) control. Alter the history books, remove incentives to betterment, fill their minds with pablum, we can see it happening before our very eyes and yet we still think we’ll muddle through, but how does one remove this destructive force once it has started to permeate society and generations of state clientele know of no other way of life?
Arc.
Posted by arcadian at 10:40 AM on March 7
When half the young population (including unqualified minorities) attends university and then acquires a degree (not really earns a degree), then they can demand to be hired in better paying jobs. If employers fail to hire them, they can cry discrimination, for they attended university and have a degree. This is simply a scheme to push affirmative discrimination in the UK, their version of affirmative action. Hiring by quota is one of the reasons for the delcine in the US; it will be one of the reasons for the decline in the UK.———————HM
Posted by at 2:20 PM on March 7
The very idea of remedial classes in a University or college, even a community college is repulsive. It’s just another liberal/progressive idea that causes nothing but chaos and waste, as well as lowering standards in everyway imaginable.
Posted by Bobby at 5:01 AM on March 8
When any of these non-whites show up for employment with a degree in hand, will any prospective employer believe they were truly earned? I think not. And when any white person sees a non-white in a managerial position at any place of employment, do you think they will believe the position was truly earned and not given away to satisfy affirmative action and the government elites? Again, I don’t think so. Why should any white work hard to achieve a position when he will most probably be displaced by a non-white with an f grade degree; and why should any non-white work hard when they know they will be given a degree at any cost and when they don’t get a particular job somewhere they can always cry ‘racism’ to get their way? Another question. When, in the history of the U.K., or any other country for that matter, has 50% of 18-30 year olds attended institutions of higher education and completed their degrees? I believe the answer to that question is ‘never’. While the idea sounds great, it is unrealistic, and will only displace those true achievers who deserve to get a good education. What about ‘LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR’ do the elitists not understand?
Posted by at 8:49 PM on March 8
“The very idea of remedial classes in a University or college, even a community college is repulsive. It’s just another liberal/progressive idea that causes nothing but chaos and waste, as well as lowering standards in everyway imaginable.”
Posted by Bobby at 5:01 AM on March 8
Bobby, in one sense I disagree with you, but I know where you’re coming from.
Here’s my story. When I was in my mid-thirties I decided to go to college and get a degree. I had taken some college courses here and there, but now I had decided to get serious about it and wanted to major in biology. I was living in NYC at the time. The college had remedial courses in math and I took a placement test. When I went to register for my first semester they didn’t have my placement scores so being very insecure about math I signed up for the lowest level remedial math class they had. I was thinking it would be a review of algebra, geometry, and maybe trigonometry for older students starting college.
I go into the class the first day and they give us a workbook. (By the way, there were a lot of Whites in this class, too.) So, I’m going through the workbook and I’m thinking, “This is very strange.” I’m adding one digit numbers as in 4 + 7. I figured this must be some kind of trick question that I’m not getting. (This was my insecurity showing.) Then I got to a word problem and I figured out it out. I will never forget it. The problem was, “If you have 4 red pens and 3 blue pens, how many pens do you have?” At that point I went up to the teacher and said, “I think I’m in the wrong math class.” She found my scores and agreed.
This happened about 30 years ago in the 70’s. I could not believe that students could graduate from high school not knowing such simple things that I had been taught in grammar school.
I guess my point is that I have no problem with “refresher” courses for those who have been out of high school for some years, but colleges are not obligated to teach students things they should have learned by 3rd or 4th grade!
By the way, I did quite well in math and got my degree.
Varina
Posted by Varina at 9:03 PM on March 8