British Universities, facing HUGE cuts, plan tuition increase

[DominiConnor]

OK, a worked example, good

I wouldn't set it up there unless proximity to clients was imperative.
Firstly of course proximity is an issue for many kinds of business, and the banking / media cluster is critical to that.
But my model predicts an levelling out of the playing field. Wage rates for skilled people in China and India are rocketing. When we talk of policy for people entering university next year, the market we are talking about includes the 2020s and 2030s as well as the 2040s. By then wage differences for skilled people will be nearer parity, and more driven by network effects which are largely a function of where skills can be sourced.


>What's happening with globalisation is that not only are white populations buggered
Lazy fat people get buggered, watch me cry over that. My sympathy for people who think faith and doing a course in media studies will sustain them is zero.

>Thus, average calorific content has actually gone down in India over the last 20 or 25 years
Sorry, what ?
'Average' in the context of India is a wholly useless measure of nutrition. One obese person plus a kid dead from starvation does not equal healthy. You knew that already, stop being silly.

>Then why not change the paradigm to a protectionist one?
Just so many reasons. First of all corruption. The protections will be those that generate the highest rent for decision makers. That means prices go up and jobs still get lost.
Also it makes your home industries lazy, and that leads to cosy cartels, that need propping up by the state. You claim to be a socialist, yet seem to see the owners of businesses through rose tinted glasses. If they don't have to compete, they won't.

Rentiers and finance capitalists might do well out of globalisation -- but I don't think anyone else does.
Almost everyone has done well out of it, except socialists who've had their faith discredited. You didn't even read my post. I accepted that it can be a way of becoming a way of becoming developed, it's just flat mad once you are.
Think of it as diet.
A baby needs a diet rich in fat, so high that it would seriously clog up your bloodstream if you tried it as an adult.

As before I only see market forces as useful when the players are in a position to make good choices. The choosers in education aren't.

 

[bigbadwolf]

" Degrees are being awarded to overseas students who speak almost no English, claims a whistleblowing academic."

Some truth to that, particularly with regard to second-tier universities.

Overseas students have been seen as a lucrative source of revenue - with the Higher Education Policy Institute calculating payments to universities of almost £1.5bn per year in fees plus £2.2bn in living costs."

Yes. That's why foreign students are treated with kid gloves, are a prized commodity, and are often admitted on the basis of qualifications a home or EU student would not be.

This has resulted to some low-quality graduates that actually are not looking to find jobs, but just buying degrees for back home where the employer highly regards overseas education or to be "managers" in mom-and-dad's outfit with a "PhD from UK".

Again yes, but note that this predates the dire financial situation of British universities, when they're willing to cut corners. A Third-World grad would arrive from, say, Pakistan. His British research supervisor would quickly realise his master's degree wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. What to do? Put the "research" student in some corner of the lab for a few years and write his thesis for him -- realising that the student would ultimately be going back to his own country, thus assuaging any qualms the supervisor might have had.

So, imo, there will be a balance between the number of graduates trained (there still will be russian and middle-east oil-money students), a higher quality of the training (as only the best academic practices will survive under funding cuts), and on the other hand the quality of brain-drain towards UK (or maybe from UK?).

There has been a brain-drain from the UK for decades. Sometimes entire departments have moved to the US.

 

[AlgoCan]

Yes. That's why foreign students are treated with kid gloves, are a prized commodity, and are often admitted on the basis of qualifications a home or EU student would not be.

The opposite DOES also happen. I know that some supervisors received EPSRC funding to train PhD students (as part of the "research" project), and as EPSRC does not cover overseas students, and most UK+EU students are unwilling to study engineering, they have to allocate the funding to "whatever" home students they could find.

A Third-World grad would arrive from, say, Pakistan. His British research supervisor would quickly realise his master's degree wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. What to do? Put the "research" student in some corner of the lab for a few years and write his thesis for him -- realising that the student would ultimately be going back to his own country, thus assuaging any qualms the supervisor might have had.

Again, not a complete picture. Many third world countries provide a much more rigorous post-secondary curriculum than UK.

There has been a brain-drain from the UK for decades. Sometimes entire departments have moved to the US.

True, but then again the reality is more complex. Besides specific examples I gave earlier, see for example Russian scientists based in Manchester University who won the Nobel award in physics this year.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Again, not a complete picture. Many third world countries provide a much more rigorous post-secondary curriculum than UK.

Which countries? I was discussing Indian universities with one of my King's College London lecturers some years back. He made periodic visits to the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research. In his opinion the various IITs were about at the level of English provincial universities. Tata was stronger but not in the league of Oxbridge, Harvard, Princeton. That's India. Countries like Pakistan are significantly worse. I remember a Pakistani mathematics M.Phil. student -- one who already had an MSc under his belt -- asking what a vector space was.

 

[AlgoCan]

Which countries? I was discussing Indian universities with one of my King's College London lecturers some years back. He made periodic visits to the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research. In his opinion the various IITs were about at the level of English provincial universities. Tata was stronger but not in the league of Oxbridge, Harvard, Princeton. That's India. Countries like Pakistan are significantly worse. I remember a Pakistani mathematics M.Phil. student -- one who already had an MSc under his belt -- asking what a vector space was.

I should have been more specific and said the undergrad curriculum...on average undergards from India, China, Iran etc have to pass much more math and stat courses than most undergrads in UK.

BTW, I graduated from KCL too

 

[bigbadwolf]

BTW, I graduated from KCL too

Math department? Kings is having to make big cuts itself.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

This is a cool shot.
What you didn't see were the shots taken from across the road...

The big window got trashed, and the door was broken, some people sprayed graffitti, but the attack was so small that the shop you can just see in this picture was virtually undamaged.

As for it being 'violent' it was nothing like a European or American riot.. There was considerable pushing and shoving, a few punches were thrown and some stones were thrown at windows.

Also, look at this shot carefully.
One guy is kicking a window, whilst the others stand politely back, and let the press take the photo they need to get paid for that day.

There is of course deep anger, much of which is justified, but this is not civil disorder, and took place on a Wednesday...

In Britain, there is a convention that Wednesday afternoons are kept free of lectures for sports and other activities.

So we have a mild scuffle on a day when the students didn't have much else to do.
Hardly a revolution.

Are we still talking about mild scuffle now?

Protesters Attack Car Carrying Prince Charles - NYTimes.com

Looks pretty serious to me.

 

[Andy D.]

Looks like Charlie's driver decided to take the usual route to the West End, even though the protest had spread out from parliament.
Bit stupid.

Shame about the Rolls Royce though, lovely motor they have there.

Are we still talking about mild scuffle now?

Protesters Attack Car Carrying Prince Charles - NYTimes.com

Looks pretty serious to me.

 

[Barny]

As a rare example of a working-class UK student, I have mixed feelings about the increase in fees. Firstly, there is no doubt in my mind, judging by my friends from school, that £9000 per year will put working-class people off going to university. However, I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing. Firstly, if you looked at the Sutton Trust report among others, even "bright" working-class/state-educated students with equivalent grades to their privately educated counter-parts will on average attend universities which are less highly ranked and are more likely to choose non-traditional courses. This could perhaps prompt them into applying to more valuable universities and courses and evaluating the cost-benefit ratio of their degrees more carefully.

One of the biggest problems we have with UK universities at the moment is that nearly 50% of them are awful and should frankly be culled. You could even use some awful ranking like times higher/independent and decide to drop the bottom 50 universities on that list, with no real harm to the economy. The government could simply divert funds from the bottom 50 and redistribute them amongst the top-50. Actually, I think this is what the conservatives *want* to happen. Various MP's over the years have voiced their disgust at the devaluation of degrees and education that his arisen from the 50% of all-young-people into higher education quota that the Labour government had instilled. I think they're secretly hoping that the £9000 fee level will be a deterrent for students to attend such universities, since they're almost wholly made up of state-educated working-class people anyway.

In this regard, I don't think it's that much of a bad thing. Universities which offer no value to the student or the tax payer will die, working-class students who are able to go to real universities (as opposed to some of the polys with EEE entrance requirements) will go to them rather than their lower-ranked counter-parts.

The biggest problem I see now is this. Oxford and Cambridge will definitely charge the full amount, other prestigious unis such as LSE and Imperial may also do so. However, other top 20 unis may be forced into a fee-battle to attract good students, and as the £9000 is simply a redistribution from government money to student money, this could mean a net reduction in funding for higher-education institutes. Indeed, my prof at Cambridge has said that because of the fee rise, they now have to provide more scholarships for the bright poor kids, which is going to mean a net-loss overall.

Essentially then, it's going to mean a cut in total funding to even the best universities, which can't be a good thing. The government should either fully privatise the higher-education system, or reform the current state education system by getting rid of the terrible universities which make up our university system. This quasi private system which will now prevail is the worst of both worlds.

Finally, I agree that there simply aren't the jobs available for the number of graduates we're putting through the system. I've simply lost count of the number of my friends who can't get ANY job, nevermind a graduate job, and I assume the numbers are stockpiling year-on-year. In a global market place, our education is also sub-standard compared to every other developed country. The quality of education outside of Oxbridge at British universities these days vs Germany/France/America is simply woeful, and our graduates can't compete against these students in their home countries.

Also, I really think there should be some incentive to people study STEM subjects. There are so many students studying arts and social science subjects which offer absolutely no-value in a high-tech economy. Subsidize STEM and you'll see a shift in that pattern.

 

[bigbadwolf]

One of the biggest problems we have with UK universities at the moment is that nearly 50% of them are awful and should frankly be culled. You could even use some awful ranking like times higher/independent and decide to drop the bottom 50 universities on that list, with no real harm to the economy. The government could simply divert funds from the bottom 50 and redistribute them amongst the top-50. Actually, I think this is what the conservatives *want* to happen. Various MP's over the years have voiced their disgust at the devaluation of degrees and education that his arisen from the 50% of all-young-people into higher education quota that the Labour government had instilled. I think they're secretly hoping that the £9000 fee level will be a deterrent for students to attend such universities, since they're almost wholly made up of state-educated working-class people anyway.

First of all: excellent post. As I think I've said before, my opinion is the government has decided having a credentialed unemployed population is more expensive than a non-credentialed unemployed population. That there's no real logic in churning out hordes of graduates for whom no jobs exist. And so let the market decide which universities deserve to survive, which don't. A lot of the universities and ex-polys that opened their doors during the boom period of the '60s will go to the wall.

The biggest problem I see now is this. Oxford and Cambridge will definitely charge the full amount, other prestigious unis such as LSE and Imperial may also do so. However, other top 20 unis may be forced into a fee-battle to attract good students, and as the £9000 is simply a redistribution from government money to student money, this could mean a net reduction in funding for higher-education institutes. Indeed, my prof at Cambridge has said that because of the fee rise, they now have to provide more scholarships for the bright poor kids, which is going to mean a net-loss overall.

If memory serves, Oxbridge has been straining at the bit for years, wanting to be free of government shackles so that they can compete on a level footing with institutions like Harvard and Princeton.

Finally, I agree that there simply aren't the jobs available for the number of graduates we're putting through the system. I've simply lost count of the number of my friends who can't get ANY job, never mind a graduate job, and I assume the numbers are stockpiling year-on-year. In a global market place, our education is also sub-standard compared to every other developed country. The quality of education outside of Oxbridge at British universities these days vs Germany/France/America is simply woeful, and our graduates can't compete against these students in their home countries.

No dispute. British universities are underfunded and ossified. Aging faculty that is not replenished with young blood, insufficient money for libraries and labs, a student-teacher ratio that seems to keep getting worse, curricula that is getting outdated. But then again, these symptoms of senescence and decline seem to afflict so many aspects of Britain.

Postscript: Unrelated to the above but here is an RT interview with Lindsey German.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Interesting points made by people familiar with the UK education system.
Where does the financial industry there i.e the City get their best and brightest mind from? The Oxbridge system?

We used to have discussion back here a couple years ago re: Wall Street versus the City, New York City versus London, which is the financial capital of the world. Nobody cares to stop and ask question when things go smoothly but when stuff hits the fan, ugly things like this surface.

Tuition raise, student work visa restriction, what else is going to hit UK? How is it going to compete for the best and brightest to come study and work?

 

[Barny]

Interesting points made by people familiar with the UK education system.
Where does the financial industry there i.e the City get their best and brightest mind from? The Oxbridge system?

We used to have discussion back here a couple years ago re: Wall Street versus the City, New York City versus London, which is the financial capital of the world. Nobody cares to stop and ask question when things go smoothly but when stuff hits the fan, ugly things like this surface.

Tuition raise, student work visa restriction, what else is going to hit UK? How is it going to compete for the best and brightest to come study and work?

I can't talk for PhD level, or for quant jobs, maybe Dominic can chime in on which universities are sought after there.

For undergrad recruitment it basically goes:

LSE
Oxbridge
Imperial
UCL
Warwick
Bristol/Nottingham/Edinburgh/Durham
Other top 20 unis
Once in a blue moon, someone from outside a top 20

In that order. The reason Oxbridge doesn't do as well as LSE is because many at Oxbridge go onto other things - consultancy, civil service, NGO's, FTSE100 graduate jobs etc. whereas LSE grads almost exclusively aim to get into the city.

There are plenty of bright minds in the UK, just not enough jobs for them, that's the issue, people from top 20 unis are struggling to get jobs so I wonder what the use of all the other 90 unis in the UK are really.

 

[Barny]

First of all: excellent post. As I think I've said before, my opinion is the government has decided having a credentialed unemployed population is more expensive than a non-credentialed unemployed population. That there's no real logic in churning out hordes of graduates for whom no jobs exist. And so let the market decide which universities deserve to survive, which don't. A lot of the universities and ex-polys that opened their doors during the boom period of the '60s will go to the wall.



If memory serves, Oxbridge has been straining at the bit for years, wanting to be free of government shackles so that they can compete on a level footing with institutions like Harvard and Princeton.



No dispute. British universities are underfunded and ossified. Aging faculty that is not replenished with young blood, insufficient money for libraries and labs, a student-teacher ratio that seems to keep getting worse, curricula that is getting outdated. But then again, these symptoms of senescence and decline seem to afflict so many aspects of Britain.

Postscript: Unrelated to the above but here is an RT interview with Lindsey German.

Agreed about credentialed vs non-credentialed, except the downside to the credentialed route is that it's now massively devalued real-degrees from real universities. Having the letters BSc after your name now is literally meaningless, as every tom-dick and harry has a degree.

The thing is I don't know if the government will let them go to the wall. It's a bit of a grey area. Nobody seems to have discussed the consequences for universities (except for the fact that funding is being cut), rather they've only debated the effect on students. Will the Conservatives allow universities to fold, especially given the potential political backlash? Hopefully, as long as they don't all go down at once, I'd hope they'd let them fall one by one. Either that, or we'll find the ex-polys massively downsizing and sticking to their own niches, or perhaps merging with other institutions, or maybe move to an OU-style online/part-time education system. Either way, I think it's important for the government to keep meddling to a minimum.

Re: Oxbridge, yep they've been wanting to privatise for years, not sure what the reasons are behind them not doing it to be honest.

Re: Britain, agreed, I hate what's happening to its culture and society. We really are on the way down rather than up IMO. If I was in the situation to be able to do it I'd be on the first plane out of this hell-hole. Probably move to Germany, I love that place.

 

[Barny]

Wow, only 11k tuition to go to LBS, LSE, Oxford? Get these people some tissues.


I am extremely anti socialist, but my personal views aside, when the government is paying for or subsidizing everything you either increase taxes to you cut some services when things get tight. I think eliminating a lot of the education subsidies is probably the lesser of the evils if you ask me. Either way, British education is still incredibly cheap.

The whole French rioting was simply pathetic. It is really funny because it shows how disconnected a lot of Europe is with the global economy.

There are several factors you're overlooking here. The first is access to the money required to undertake these courses.

11k might seem like a bargain to you, but the problem is that there is absolutely no way to source that money currently unless you have the money in your bank account. Banks do not give personal loans that large for non-vocational courses. Savings? Well the problem is that these costs are a recent thing. Your parents can set up a savings account for you if they know that in 20 years it's going to cost you 20k to go to university. They can't do that if the government decides to hike up fees 2 years before your son/daughter is due to go to university.

It's costing £16k all in to do my Masters in Physics at Cambridge this year, which to you is "pathetically" cheap, but because the government don't give student-loan funding for masters courses, banks don't give loans for non-vocational courses, my parents had to sell their house in order to get me the money to go to Cambridge this year. Except that didn't work, because nobody is buying houses at the moment, so my nan had to remortgage her house and then loan the money to my parents with interest, who are now giving it to me. I'd have absolutely no ability to do this masters without them, so it's massively favouring those from well-off/middle-class backgrounds who have the money sitting around in their bank accounts.

British education is not cheap. It is only cheap compared to the US. Everything in your post indicates that you think the US-way is the right way, which I have to disagree with. Again, the French have a different outlook on life, particularly working-life, compared to Americans, and hence what seems absurd to you isn't absurd to the French, quite the opposite. Isn't globalisation and "being in touch" about respecting and appreciating different cultures rather than getting everybody to conform to the capitalist, American way?

Also I think many Brits take issue with the following: we are fighting a war in Afghanistan which can be likened to pissing money up the wall by flogging a dead horse. I think it's to the tune of £30 billion a year. The Conservatives ring-fenced the second biggest budget in the public-sector - the NHS. Personally, I think ring-fencing the biggest budget for an organisation with 1 million employees is utterly retarded, since that clearly has massive room for cuts on inefficiencies. Secondly, I think rather than charging students through the roof for education we could just stop fighting wars. If things still need to change after that, then so-be-it, but it strikes me as strange that the first thing the government hit hard is the education budget, considering all the waste elsewhere.

 

[DominiConnor]

Yes, British unis do award degrees to people who barely speak English, so do US ones. Not the top tier, but it gets very bad very quickly as you go down.

I recently was interviewing my first wave of interns, and it became clear that some simply didn't understand what I was saying, even after several years of education in an English university.

Algocan's right on the money about oil money people, though there's an increasing % of Eurotrash, ie not very smart kids with rich parents, but with severe attitude problems, basically spoiled brats.

I have been at finance lectures where the brats talked amongst themselves, drowning out the lecturer.

 

[Andy D.]

I have to agree with some of the comments below regarding the over-expansion of the higher education system in the UK.

I think it really came to a head during the New Labour years, there was an inverse snobbery of types at play where vocational qualifications were seen as sub-par and everyone should go to Uni regardless of if they had an academic bent or not. Many institutes were given the opportunity to award degrees, when really they shouldn't have been.

There are def some good ex-polys who have become Universities, but they have really concentrated on certain subjects and built up good ties with industry (and tend to offer degrees with a sandwich year). Some are frankly awful though.

I think the best way forward really would be for the Russell Group, UoL (LSE, SAOS etc.), a few of the specialist schools (for music, literature etc.) and Oxbridge to go fully private like the Ivy leagues.
You'd have what, maybe 40 colleges max?

Let them take the best students, let them offer scholarships to working class kids with the smarts and let them bring in fresh talent for teaching.

The government could then take a handful of the ex-Polys, merge them into maybe 5 institutes and run them like the IIT's, free entry to anyone with the brains to get in. Make them world class and pump the funds into those for research and similar.

I'd then let the rest go to the wall as some of them aren't worth the time of day. Or turn them into vocational schools, a much neglected area of the educational sector.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

"I have been at finance lectures where the brats talked amongst themselves, drowning out the lecturer. "

There are quick ways to resolve this source of annoyance, some more rigorous than others.

For example...

But it is much better to define the rules before you start:

- Lecturer to noisy people at back of class: can you hear me down there?
- Back of class in unison: YES
- Lecturer: That's good, because I can certainly HEAR YOU!!

Take it from there.

 

[bigbadwolf]

I think it really came to a head during the New Labour years, there was an inverse snobbery of types at play where vocational qualifications were seen as sub-par and everyone should go to Uni regardless of if they had an academic bent or not. Many institutes were given the opportunity to award degrees, when really they shouldn't have been.

This predates New Labour. A poly degree has always been seen as a second-class qualification (often with no justification). And vocational qualifications like ONC, OND, HNC, and HND have been seen as yet further down -- also with no good reason.

The problem for British politicians -- as for their American counterparts -- has been to offer some ray of hope to people, especially the young, where the traditional forms of work have been evaporating into thin air as manufacturing has become eviscerated and we are borne, like it or not, into the brave new world of a post-industrial "service-based" economy, with generally lower wages and insecure employment. In stronger economies like Germany, Japan, France, and the Netherlands, 30-40% of the population is now classed as the "precariat" (precarious + proletariat), involved in temp or seasonal work at low wages and with no benefits. This incidentally includes a sizable chunk of credentialed people. In the UK and US I'm convinced things are worse. So British (and American) politicians have to stress the dubious merits of "acquiring an education." It gets them off the hook with regard to structural economic and employment problems which they're ostensibly voted in to tackle. And it stresses individual solutions over collective solutions -- look for your own way out, pal, and the devil take the hindmost. Blair (and Major before him) thus did the same thing Clinton and GWB did -- stress "education, education, education." The thorny question of whether there actually exist jobs for newly credentialed people has been deftly swept under the rug. In this sense, formal education has been a false solution to the real problem of structural unemployment and underemployment.

Let them take the best students, let them offer scholarships to working class kids with the smarts and let them bring in fresh talent for teaching.

It will tend to accentuate class divisions. The government has an agenda to dismantle the welfare state that was built on the basis of the Beveridge Report of 1944. But this "class war" is taking place throughout Europe, not just Britain. And the street scenes one witnesses all over Europe indicate people realise what the stakes are, what the agenda is.

 

[Andy D.]

I don't disagree with you on the point about the Poly's and it was the Tories who started expanding the education sector. However under Labour we saw this accelerate, complete with the fees being introduced.
Labour had the opportunity to build a parallel vocational route to that of academia, however chose not too. I'm not sure I agree with you 100% on the "off the hook" analysis. I think there were a good number of Labour MP's who generally believed that 50% of the population should get a degree and that the Tories were "keeping the prols out". This is why the went along with the Blair "education, education, education" sermon.

As for my second point about the IIT type scenario. I'm not sure it would accentuate class divides in Britain but it would provide, in my opinion a very viable and valuable route through higher education. Yes it would compete with the private schools, but with the purpose of contributing back into the economy and providing an alternative route - that encourages the most academically adept to get pursue further studies regardless of background.

This predates New Labour. A poly degree has always been seen as a second-class qualification (often with no justification). And vocational qualifications like ONC, OND, HNC, and HND have been seen as yet further down -- also with no good reason.

The problem for British politicians -- as for their American counterparts -- has been to offer some ray of hope to people, especially the young, where the traditional forms of work have been evaporating into thin air as manufacturing has become eviscerated and we are borne, like it or not, into the brave new world of a post-industrial "service-based" economy, with generally lower wages and insecure employment. In stronger economies like Germany, Japan, France, and the Netherlands, 30-40% of the population is now classed as the "precariat" (precarious + proletariat), involved in temp or seasonal work at low wages and with no benefits. This incidentally includes a sizable chunk of credentialed people. In the UK and US I'm convinced things are worse. So British (and American) politicians have to stress the dubious merits of "acquiring an education." It gets them off the hook with regard to structural economic and employment problems which they're ostensibly voted in to tackle. And it stresses individual solutions over collective solutions -- look for your own way out, pal, and the devil take the hindmost. Blair (and Major before him) thus did the same thing Clinton and GWB did -- stress "education, education, education." The thorny question of whether there actually exist jobs for newly credentialed people has been deftly swept under the rug. In this sense, formal education has been a false solution to the real problem of structural unemployment and underemployment.



It will tend to accentuate class divisions. The government has an agenda to dismantle the welfare state that was built on the basis of the Beveridge Report of 1944. But this "class war" is taking place throughout Europe, not just Britain. And the street scenes one witnesses all over Europe indicate people realise what the stakes are, what the agenda is.

 

[Barny]

Yes, British unis do award degrees to people who barely speak English, so do US ones. Not the top tier, but it gets very bad very quickly as you go down.

I recently was interviewing my first wave of interns, and it became clear that some simply didn't understand what I was saying, even after several years of education in an English university.

Algocan's right on the money about oil money people, though there's an increasing % of Eurotrash, ie not very smart kids with rich parents, but with severe attitude problems, basically spoiled brats.

I have been at finance lectures where the brats talked amongst themselves, drowning out the lecturer.

That's incorrect - I live with a chinese PhD student in organic chemistry who can't even form a coherent English sentence. He literally struggles with answering the question "How are you?". No problem, he's Chinese, he's new here, give him a chance etc. except that he's been living in the UK now for five years.

I've also had experience with the eurotrash brats, this is what 30-50% of modern Sutton Trust UK universities are made of - they are the norm rather than the exception. Welcome to modern middle-class Britain. People with a strong sense of self-entitlement but absolutely dick-all talent to justify that belief. Take for instance this blog:

http://careers.guardian.co.uk/grad-seeks-job-revising-high-career-expectations

Which is absolutely hilarious, but indicitave of the attitude of most people graduating from the country's top universities today.