Home Politics & Debate
If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨

Its the annual A-level debate

2»

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    What do history and english graduates do incidentally? History students always seemed to spend about 4 hours a week in lectures and the rest of the time in the library*.

    *Pub.

    For my undergrad degree in history there was about 6-8 hours of lectures/seminars a week. Postgrad about 12-14 hours a week (but that was at Oxford so probably more intensive, plus they have full-on one to one tutorials there).

    What pissed me off was that we historians were paying the same tuition fees (and I suppose for people now top-up fees) as lawyers who had 9-5 lectures, and medical students and scientists who were 9-5 using massive amounts of resources (lab costs, photocopying whole books for free, etc). We were probably paying £70-100 per hour of lectures, and seminars were usually chaired by teaching assistants/PhD students. So basically we, and other humanities students, were subsidizing students who presumably would then step into jobs with a substantially higher salary. The one thing that stopped me kicking up a real stink was that since my undergrad was at a London university, I got to use the British library (these were the days before it was open to anybody with proof of address) which was probably worth the tuition fee alone.

    But yes we still did spend a good deal of time in the pub.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    carlito wrote: »
    For my undergrad degree in history there was about 6-8 hours of lectures/seminars a week. Postgrad about 12-14 hours a week (but that was at Oxford so probably more intensive, plus they have full-on one to one tutorials there).

    What pissed me off was that we historians were paying the same tuition fees (and I suppose for people now top-up fees) as lawyers who had 9-5 lectures, and medical students and scientists who were 9-5 using massive amounts of resources (lab costs, photocopying whole books for free, etc). We were probably paying £70-100 per hour of lectures, and seminars were usually chaired by teaching assistants/PhD students. So basically we, and other humanities students, were subsidizing students who presumably would then step into jobs with a substantially higher salary. The one thing that stopped me kicking up a real stink was that since my undergrad was at a London university, I got to use the British library (these were the days before it was open to anybody with proof of address) which was probably worth the tuition fee alone.

    But yes we still did spend a good deal of time in the pub.
    You'd think post-grad would be fewer hours if anything. And photocopies for free? Are you shitting me? I spent a fortune of photocopies at uni.

    Well I can't really complain. We had a medium number of lectures, and then screenings on top of that. But the we had all of the camera equipment, studios, edit suites, lighting, etc. Still pissed me off that the drama department got £50 towards their final production, and we had to fork out for ours ourselves. Someone spent £3k on his. And it was shit. But I agree, there do seem to be certain courses that are there just to pay for everyone elses. Ours probably brought a lot more money into the uni than got spent on our course to be fair, because it was the biggest department, and camera equipment isn't as expensive as lecturers' time.

    And we also got to use the National Library (of Wales).
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Well I can't really complain. We had a medium number of lectures, and then screenings on top of that. But the we had all of the camera equipment, studios, edit suites, lighting, etc. Still pissed me off that the drama department got £50 towards their final production, and we had to fork out for ours ourselves. Someone spent £3k on his. And it was shit. But I agree, there do seem to be certain courses that are there just to pay for everyone elses. Ours probably brought a lot more money into the uni than got spent on our course to be fair, because it was the biggest department, and camera equipment isn't as expensive as lecturers' time.

    And we also got to use the National Library (of Wales).

    That doesn't sound too bad, and I reckon bearing in mind my experience 50 quid is pretty minor in terms of the overall expenditure.

    To be fair though, its actually foreign students who contribute the most by far; they're the real cash cows for British universities (per capita at least) which is why they try to get so many of them in.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    carlito wrote: »
    To be fair though, its actually foreign students who contribute the most by far; they're the real cash cows for British universities (per capita at least) which is why they try to get so many of them in.

    Well, I suppose. In that case, the international politics department bankrolled our university. They were all foreigners. Gotta say, I did witness what everyone has been accusing universities of doing: enrolling students that clearly don't have the English ability to study in England at degree level. I lived with two Chinese girls, and one of the struggled to even have a conversation in English. God knows how she managed to write an essay. She left our flat after half a year, so maybe that's my answer.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Are A-Levels getting easier? Yes, they almost certainly are. Look at the facts - the pass rate has gone up every single year for the past 26 years. Every single time that the authorities claim that they're making the exams harder, the pass rate continues to go up. I refuse to accept that students now are so much more intelligent than those going through the education system around 40 or 50 years ago. The fact is that A-Levels, along with many other qualifications, are now utterly worthless. This may seem a huge insult to those who have got them, and it is. Blame the legions of useless politicians who treat our education system as a means for social engineering instead of teaching the nation's children.

    As for university degrees, I have not been to university, so it would be far more difficult for me to make any comment on that.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I love history but I can't think of one time I've ever had to use my knowledge of how chivarly and religion banded together in medieval warfare.

    everytime you debate something you tend to use skills you learnt in history

    what A Level do you think law schools prefer?

    they don't get easier either, it's jsut a case of them being taught to the exam more than anything so there's no real way of knowing if they're easier
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    everytime you debate something you tend to use skills you learnt in history

    what A Level do you think law schools prefer?

    they don't get easier either, it's jsut a case of them being taught to the exam more than anything so there's no real way of knowing if they're easier

    But I don't use the knowledge. And the skills picked up in history (eg critical thinking, analysing conflicting arguments) are the same skills picked up from dozens of degrees - including I would venture to guess Film Studies...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Some papers I took at as/a level where predictable (especially Maths as Scary Monster pointed out). Most of my accounting exams where like that as well.

    The only thing I dont agree with is resits, it should be you take the exam and live with the pass (I did badly in a couple of papers and just accepted it) with resits allowed in certain cases only (illness on the day etc)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    But I don't use the knowledge. And the skills picked up in history (eg critical thinking, analysing conflicting arguments) are the same skills picked up from dozens of degrees - including I would venture to guess Film Studies...

    er whenever you talk about facism or compare to a previous situation you are using history

    using history as opposed to film studies provides you with political knowledge, yes films influence to a certain extent but most historical things are self perpetuating, especially the thing about a generation that forgets it's past is bound to repeat it
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    er whenever you talk about facism or compare to a previous situation you are using history

    using history as opposed to film studies provides you with political knowledge, yes films influence to a certain extent but most historical things are self perpetuating, especially the thing about a generation that forgets it's past is bound to repeat it

    I've never had to discuss Nazism at work. The knowledge I got from history has been (in work terms) useless. the skills may have helped me - but I could have got those skills from dozens of other degrees
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I've never had to discuss Nazism at work. The knowledge I got from history has been (in work terms) useless. the skills may have helped me - but I could have got those skills from dozens of other degrees

    Exactly. There might be knowledge that is specific to your degree that could be useful (particularly in things like the sciences or law), but it's the skills it teaches you that are what you really use in the future. Even within history, if you did ancient history, and the conversation turns to 20th century history, you're not gonna be in much better a position as someone who didn't study history at all, other than that you could maybe draw comparisons. Similarly, I don't have a clue about asian cinema or South American cinema, because I didn't study them. But I have the skills necessary to study them if I wanted to.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    The only time my GCSE history has come in useful is when I've been called a facist or Nazi at work.

    It's quite indicative of the sort of people I have to deal with when asked "Do you even know what a Nazi is?" and they reply no.
    Morons.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    back on topic, the skills it teaches is fine for outside of school, that is why it is academic, if you wanted to learn work specific stuff you'd do some form of vocational course, which imo aren't promoted enough because you can do very nicely from it

    a distant uncle of mine is a college lecturer on electrical engineering for a vocational course, and many of his students who turn up and make an effort make a decent living out of it because people need their electrical wiring sorted
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i can't really comment on how hard A levels are, because i did a BTEC ND instead.

    But i think that the quality of teaching is far far better than it was even 6 years ago. But i was definatly not spoon fed information, and i worked incredibly hard and it more than paid off. But there were many people that bailed out because they couldn't hack the work load or couldn't be arsed, so we ended up from a class of 45 to only 12 of us actually passed the course, but all of us got MMP or higher (equivilant of BBC), most of us got DDM or DDD.

    I think the pass rates are so high a) due to the fact that many "underachievers" are now taking vocational courses of some sort or going straight into the work place, and the high achivers are being directed down the route of A levels, b) because some of the papers in certain subjects which require more people in their industries have been made easier, where others have been made harder, c) the quality of the teaching staff and teaching materials available.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    xsazx wrote: »
    convert to the IB (compulsary to do english, maths, a science, a foreign lang, a humanity and an art plus theory of knowledge, extended essay, CAS etc) much more all rounded course that holds much greater respect from uni's as the course is a lot more demmanding than alevels... saying that i wouldnt inflict my work load on my worst enemy :p

    They'll never do that, because that would show the education system up, and make it easy to compare Britain to other countries. True though, a middle grade in the IB is worth the same number of UCAS points as 3 A grades at A level, plus an AS Level. A top grade is worth over 700 UCAS points.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    They'll never do that, because that would show the education system up, and make it easy to compare Britain to other countries. True though, a middle grade in the IB is worth the same number of UCAS points as 3 A grades at A level, plus an AS Level. A top grade is worth over 700 UCAS points.
    I got a middle-ish pass grade for IB (33 points) and my IB Coordinator said it was worth 4 A's.

    Saying that, much as I love the IB, it's not worth that. It's worth the equivalent in UCAS points, but what I actually got (2 6's and 4 5's) was the same as 2 A's and 4 B's (oh, and a D in my Extended Essay). However, what it does do better that A Levels is prepare you for doing your own work (the EE for example is all self-researched and your tutors only guide you through it) compared to A-Levels, where some teachers at my college freely admitted that they were teaching students how to pass the exams. Plus it forces you to look at the wider world and looking out for people other than yourself because of CAS, where you have to do AT LEAST 25 hours of "Service" - aka helping other people. Plus the AT LEAST 25 hours of Creativity and the same of Action (has to all add up to 150, but we were told we had to have at least 25 of each so that we had a good range) mean you are sometimes being forced to do things outside of your comfort zone.

    Although Saz - it's not compulsory to do an art, I didn't do one because I SUCKED at it. The "sixth" can either be an art, or you can take another language, another science, or another humanities subject (I did History and Philosophy), so you CAN play to your strengths as well.

    Incidentally, one of my friends got the full 45 points (which is equivalent to 6 A's at A2 and 1 at AS) and he worked damn hard to do it, and yet the entry requirement for his course at Cambridge was 39 points, which imo is grossly unfair given that in UCAS equivalents, that equals a lot more points than the 3 A's the A-Level entrants would have had to get.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    xsazx wrote: »
    oooo didnt realise it was that high!! what's the point in ucas points now though as when we're applying they only give a specific points/HL requirement no mention of ucas points (or is that just specific to medicine?) whats 40-42 equiv of?

    hehe yup talk about self motivation (was given all of 15minutes with my supervisor for my entire EE support! mainly him going on about cancer (my topic was stem cells and parkinson's :eek2: )... oh and they're still flat out refusing to let us do any less than 50/50/50 for CAS (though done well over for each so dont care hehe)

    yeah i did a second science at HL for my "art" hehe (relevance! i wanted art sooooooo badly but the blocks wouldnt let me as medicine needs bio and chem :()

    yeah is completely outragious some of the uni requirements (alot were asking for triple science and higher maths to get into med... which is physically impossible so the head wrote a massive stroppy letter to which the uni had to lower its expectations, and it's still not given nearly enough credit for the amount of stress and effort involved compared to my mates that doss along easily on 3/4 alevels gaaah cant wait till may hehe
    I think they only calculated the UCAS points equivalents so that the universities would put their entry requirements more in line with the A Level ones and recognise how hard IB students actually work to achieve the points they do. According to the UCAS website 40-42 is equivalent to 652-698 points. 33 is equivalent to 489, so yeh, just over the equivalent of 4 A's. 45 is nearly 800 UCAS points.

    I lack self-motivation, which is a huge part of the reason I got a D for my EE. Shame really, because it was a pretty good subject (anthropomorphism in Watership Down and Animal Farm) but there was SO MUCH to write about and not enough words and I ended up doing it all in like a week. I only got 1 of my +3 ToK/EE points. Oh well.

    I think if you're going into medicine you'll be working a lot harder (higher sciences, higher languages and higher maths are the hardest you can do - I tried higher chemistry and was heading for a 2, hence why I restarted) because of the subjects you're doing and how competitive the course is. My friends that were applying for medicine worked so hard compared to say, me.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Scraping 6's? I was scraping 2's :p. Seriously, if admissions people don't realise how difficult it is to get a 7 in higher Chemistry they are very very stupid.

    I was predicted...er...555, 665 and I got 665, 555. Don't go on predictions. My studies paper and my environmental systems paper were absolutely awful whereas I lucked out on my English paper and there was a fuck up with my History paper so I think they marked people up a bit (we got given a paper for paper 2 that was the same as 2 years before so some people (not us, though) had already seen it for mocks etc). I didn't even finish paper 1, but then what I did write was pure gold so it made up for it. Given I was getting higher marks without attempting the final question (worth the most) than people who did the whole thing in practices, I think I must've done pretty well in those bits.

    Man, I miss IB :(.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I realise the IB is very good in many many ways but one of the reasons the top courses have to ask for such high IB grades is that the IB syllabus frequently doesn't cover the depth that the A level syllabus has. It's one of the problems I know Cambridge has, it assumes/expects thorough A level knowledge of subjects and IB students haven't been taught such a wide syllabus as they've covered more subjects.

    Not critising IB, just explaining one of the reasons uni's seem to make unreasonable offers. Likewise for medicine, they'd usually expect 3 sciences and maths spread across A/AS levels and teach their 1st years based on that knowledge and an IB student is unlikely to have done that because of the way IB works.

    Bizarrely the bredth of the study is far better for arts students than science ones.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Admissions tutors at Cambridge open days I've worked at....

    Definitely applies to Natural Sciences, Maths, Engineering and Medicine at most Cambridge colleges.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Admissions tutors at Cambridge open days I've worked at....

    Definitely applies to Natural Sciences, Maths, Engineering and Medicine at most Cambridge colleges.
    I don't mean to be rude, but your admissions tutors are wrong. IB students at my college did the same amount per higher level subject as A Level students (minus one 45-minute block per week because otherwise we would have had no free periods). I know that in chemistry at higher level, IB students cover things that A Level students don't. In standard level subjects we were only given less time because there were only 5 teaching blocks to cover 6 subjects, and so we had to work that little bit harder (although I did do the piss easy standard level subjects - when I dropped from Spanish SL to Spanish abinitio I dropped a teaching period as well).
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    You don't quite get what I'm saying, or maybe I'm not expressing it.

    I'm not saying that IB is in anyway inferior, simply that because it covers a broader spectrum to demonstrate the same level of knowledge as an A grade student in a specific science subject you need to have a top IB grade in the higher level of that subject.

    Overall a good IB is more impressive than 3 A levels, but for specific subject knowledge you need the high mark in the higher level and it comes unstuck for sciency courses that want science A levels because the broad IB syllabus means you can't do it, hence admissions want really high grades so you show you've got the academic ability to catch up on your own.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I don't know.

    I'm merely explaining the reasoning the admissions tutors go through.
Sign In or Register to comment.