On Jan 10, 5:59*am, wrote:
On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:44:53 +0000

Graeme Wall wrote:
The problem is who gets to define which courses are vocationally
useless *For instance golf management courses I would take to be a
subset of estate management which is a long established and valid
course. *I would agree that the general course (estate management in
this case) should be subsidised to whatever level the government of the
day thinks is appropriate and the specialist addition (golf management)
should be for the student to fund.

Well thats never going to be an easy one to solve since there has to be a
line drawn somewhere and someone will always object that their course should
be subsidised. I'd start with suggesting that all science, engineering and
major humanities courses - english, languages, history, law - should be free
so long as the students complete them and pass. Other courses should be
subsidised on a sliding scale based on how I would guess some national
committee feels how intellectually rigorous or useful they are. Media studies
should be somewhere near the bottom.

B2003

And then, with respect Boltar, you have created another taxpayer
funded Quango. Better, IMHO to let the market decide. If there is a
shortage of MBAs, then clearly an MBA would be a good investment. If
we need civil engineers, the a BSc in such would be money well spent.
and so on. If the state has an interest in encouraging study in a
particular field, then by all means give a grant to the institutions
offering the degree. But, preserve us please from liberal arts
degrees.