1. A large proportion of the most able people in the country are employed as teachers of people who will never use what they are being taught, this is a criminal waste.
2. Most of the brightest people in the country are wasting a large proportion of their time spoon feeding lazy, spoilt dullards who are too lazy and thick to learn by themselves. Many of the people being taught are foreigners. Our most valuable resource is being wasted on teaching our competitors how to ruin us.
3. Universities should serve their local area principally, the local population, businesses and industry. They should provide library facilities (reference only?) to anybody of any age who needs or wants to use them. They might also provide lab and workshop facilities. They should cooperate with local businesses on a reciprocal basis. Their principal functions should be to prepare course materials, run some courses, conduct examinations and do research.
4. There is no need for people who want to study Ancient History, The History of Art or English Literature to go to university. Public libraries and bookshops are full of books on these subjects, they are hobbies, we don't need any more novelists, historians or artists, we need people who can do worthwhile work
5. We are fighting a trade war against opponents with the massive advantage of very cheap labour and are being massacred, this is no time to be teaching people History, English Literature and how to use their cutlery in the right order and create worthwhile work for others, We don't want to be just a Merrie Englande theme park for the amusement of the Yanks.
6. Being an intellectual is a mug's game in this society, only a tiny minority can make a decent living out of it and when they become old and their faculties decline they are likely to become destitute.
7. The cleverest people, the one's whose work advances progress and is therefore the most valuable, ie. researchers in universities, are among the poorest paid in this upside down society.
8. Most people have a better chance of earning a decent living if they learn a trade rather than becoming an academic or intellectual these days. It is easier and more profitable to start and run a small business than to become an expert in almost any technical field.
9. Most university graduates have to have a long period of training in their first job before they are of any use to the company that employs them, they might as well skip university.
10. Most people go to university mainly to have a good time, meet suitable members of the opposite sex, get a ticket to the middle class and get a cushy, well paid job. Most choose a soft subject to study so that they don't have to work very hard.
11. Universities in their present form are a sordid, corrupt contrivance designed to ensure that the children of the prosperous classes can enjoy the same unfair advantages as their parents.
12. Many of the subjects that university students are studying should be hobbies, leisure activities, not the focus of three years of full-time study.
13. About the only people who can make a living out of history are those who teach it. History is of negligible use to most people but many find it interesting and enjoyable so read books about it from time to time. There are plenty of books to choose from in bookshops and public libraries, there is no need to go to university. Given suitable books on the subject, most children will be sufficiently interested to read them by themselves, particularly if they know they are going to be tested on what they have read.
14. Why on earth do English people need to study English or English Literature at university? Shakespeare didn't, Dickens didn't, Jane Austen didn't. If people want to read novels, most of which are basically love stories, they should do it in their own time at their own expense.
15. Three year degree courses are hopelessly inefficient, the vast majority of students have almost certainly forgotten nearly everything they learned at the beginning of their course by the time they reach the end, large numbers never make any use of the subject they studied in their subsequent life. This sort of inefficiency isn't tolerated in any other aspect of life. Some graduates should be made to sit their exams again at intervals after graduation, without warning, as an experiment to see how they perform. Ten to one most would fail dismally.
16. University is a sordid, corrupt racket designed to give the children of the prosperous classes another unfair advantage over and above those that being brought up in comfortable circumstances confers. It also provides a large chunk of the prosperous classes with a very agreeable way of earning a living.
17. Most of the jobs people who have had all this education do are no more demanding than driving a bus, they are just a bit more rarefied so the general population can be duped into thinking they are rocket science.
18. Every large town must have a university or college where anybody who needs technical information or training can go to get it, at any time, (libraries must be open till 10pm and all day Saturday and Sunday).
19. University is part of the middle class mating ritual.
20. The two classes now are, 1) those who have been to university and 2) those who haven't.
21. Why do English people have to study English or English Literature at university, isn't GCE 'A' Level good enough. Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Dickens, the Bronte sisters etc. etc. didn't go to university. Most Public Libraries stock most of the classics of English literature and most of them are a pleasant and easy read, why go to university to study them? To get on the pub quiz team? What good are English Literature experts except for teaching even more people to become English Literature experts. Subjects like English Literature are a very pleasant skive, that is why they are so popular, they provide a painless way to middle class membership. There are too many young people studying more or less useless soft subjects like English Literature, History of Art, Ancient History etc. These subjects don't produce people who can generate profitable work for those who don't have the wherewithal or leisure to enjoy three years at university.
22. Many people need education continuously or at intervals throughout their working lives. Educational resources shouldn't be wasted on the ignorant, inexperienced, spoiled brats of the middle classes who don't know how to make proper use of them. They should be reserved for people who have begun their career and know precisely what information they require so that they don't waste their own and other people's time and money getting information they will never use and soon forget. Most people who go to university never use the subject they studied there in their subsequent life. Most of them go there largely in the hope of enjoying themselves, getting promiscuous sex, a ticket to middle class membership and a well paid sinecure for life.
23. People who make the effort to educate themselves and therefore do not waste the time of people who could be doing more productive things must get the same rewards as those who have to be spoon fed.
24. Most students study subjects they like or are good at rather than subjects with some utility for which there is a need.
25. The education system trains children to be students and parasites.
26. Degrees are designed to be almost impossible for people from poor backgrounds to obtain.
27. It isn't possible for a country to survive in the modern world if 50% of it's population consists of philosophers and aesthetes who find any sort of manual or useful labour beneath their dignity.
28. Most education is a profligate, self-indulgent waste of resources, it is never used for any useful or productive purpose.
29. Subsidised education should be pursued on some sort of sandwich basis alongside work.
30. University education (three years of it anyway) isn't appropriate for most people (nor 'A' Levels come to that).
31. People who have been corrupted by going to university only want to work with others of their kind. They think they will be contaminated if they work with people they consider to be inferior, people who haven't cultivated a precious, phoney accent.
32. People who have been to university have usually studied one narrow subject to the virtual exclusion of everything else and it is usually a subject that is more or less useless and irrelevant to normal life, they come out more ignorant than when they went in but much more conceited.
33. It shouldn't be necessary to study full time at a university for several years to get an education. Virtually all the information imparted by universities is readily available from bookshops and libraries. The course books used by universities are all available and are superior sources of information to most university lecturers.
34. People who have sufficient motivation to learn, don't need to go to university, in fact going to university is likely to be a waste of their time (as Bill Gates of Microsoft found out, for example). It is virtually a waste of time trying to teach those without motivation more than the basics.
35. There is plenty of work available that requires a minimal amount of knowledge or ability, in fact it is becoming difficult to find any other sort in our wonderful service economy. These days, people who can barely read or write can make a better living selling double glazing or fitted kitchens than a person who has reached the level of Professor at a university. For most people, a university education is probably counter- productive now, only those who get first class honours are likely to be able to get any material benefit from it, the rest will just get frustration and bitterness.
36. The people who do the really difficult and innovative work that moves progress forward, the university researchers, are among the worst paid and have to go round with a begging bowl to get grants for their work.
37. Tony Blair wants 50% of children to go on to university from school, he wants to create a two class society, masters and slaves, those who have a prosperous and enjoyable life and those who don't, those who exploit others and those who are exploited, how disgusting is it possible to get?
38. Why don't our leaders look in the job vacancy section of their local newspapers to see what sort of jobs are available for the majority of people. Lousy, go nowhere, hopelessly poorly paid jobs for the most part.
39. Only people with proven exceptional ability should study full-time at university level, people who are committed to becoming top level researchers in high tech. subjects, it is a waste of time and money for everybody else.
40. Diplomas obtained by part time study are adequate for the vast majority of people's needs. Everybody is being educated to the point where they can't bear to do practical work, it is beneath their dignity, so there aren't enough people to do the work that needs doing and too many wanting intellectual work which isn't available.
41. Degrees need to be abolished, they are discriminatory, the necessity of having one even to get on the career progression ladder traps most people in poverty and hopelessness. Children brought up in disadvantaged circumstances are still unlikely to realise the importance of getting a degree until it is too late to obtain one in the normal way, (which would be difficult enough for them), so it becomes almost impossible for them to obtain one. A fairer system would be to award 'A' levels for more and more specialised subjects and encourage people to obtain them as they require them throughout their lives.
42. Degrees merely show that a person has wasted a lot of time and money (much of it usually other people's) learning a lot of information most of which they are unlikely ever to use (only a minority of graduates pursue their degree subject when they leave University).
43. About the only people who might need degree level training to perform their job satisfactorily are scientific researchers, not many people fall into this category.
44. Why do teachers have to have degrees, if they are only going to have to teach one of the subjects they took at 'A' level, which is the norm, why aren't their 'A' level qualifications enough. They should be able to teach to 'O' level standard straight away and be sufficiently interested in their subject to reinforce and expand their 'A' level knowledge over two or three years of part time study so that they can teach at that level with confidence. It is even more ridiculous for primary school teachers to be required to have a degree, they didn't have to in the days when children left primary school able to read, write and do arithmetic proficiently.
45. The degree is the passport to the middle class, it's only function is to separate the winners from the losers, the people who will enjoy life from those who will be condemned to poverty, frustration and humiliation.
46. Efficiency is the watchword in anything that affects the working class but gross inefficiency is permissible if it enables the middle classes and their offspring to gain a big advantage for themselves; education is a long drawn out succession of expensive (in terms of opportunity cost even if not actual cost) redundant tests, each one designed to separate sheep from goats but in total designed to discourage and defeat anybody not from the prosperous classes.
47. In any case, most degree courses are not an adequate preparation for most jobs, yet more training is needed after graduation as a rule.
48. As people get higher and higher qualifications most specialise in a narrower and narrower field. Unless they have phenomenal memories, which I think few do, they merely end up being expert in a very restricted area. This may or may not be beneficial to society and the individual concerned but it doesn't justify very large salaries.
49. The damned universities don't provide what is needed, namely, affordable through life education as and when it is required. All they need to provide is books, libraries, tutors for people who need a bit of help and year round examination facilities. At present they largely fulfil a social, finishing school ritual to qualify the children of the middle and upper classes for their own entry to those classes.
50. What is the point of 50% of the population going to university, most jobs don't require those performing them to have had a university education. There will be hordes of people expecting fat salaries although it will be beneath their dignity to do the only jobs available. There needs to be a drastic rethink of the purpose of education and of universities.
51. University is a barrier erected by the prosperous classes to enable them to pass on the best opportunities to their children.
52. One isn't allowed to do a job that requires the ability to read, write and do simple arithmetic unless one has a degree. To be a primary school teacher and be allowed to teach reading writing and arithmetic to tots one has to have a degree. To teach one subject to 'O' or 'A' level one has to have a degree and do a teacher training course as well, IT IS LUDICROUS. Apparently, nurses now have to have three or four years training, presumably part time. What do nurses do that requires all this training? Are they all trained to do everything that a nurse might have to do? If they are, it is unnecessary, inefficient and possibly dangerous, they are likely to make mistakes if they are called on to do something they haven't encountered since their training ten years earlier. They should be trained to do several specific tasks, not all possible nursing tasks. If they want to learn the whole range they should do it in their own time at their own expense. What if they want to become manager of all the nurses in a large hospital? Most managers don't know much about what their subordinates do, these days. Is this a good thing? There probably isn't any need for a manager who is organising and allocating the work of a range of different staff to know in detail exactly what each of them does. All this training is designed to give it's recipients status and to try to provide some justification for giving them high salaries and thus to justify even higher salaries for the givers.
53. By the time they reach university age, people should be able to teach themselves largely from books etc., they shouldn't need much tuition. Is learning from books too boring?
54. Children are being encouraged to spend years getting an education that probably still won't enable them to get a half decent job, they are being duped.
55. To a large extent, the education system trains people to be scholars but this is an occupation from which only a handful of people can make a reasonable living, mostly those teaching other people to be scholars.
56. Sending 50% of children to university is creating a society in which there are more chiefs than Indians and in which most of the elderly will become the serfs of the more recently and therefore more appropriately and better educated and more privileged young. There are not going to be enough good jobs for all these graduates, a very good degree is already necessary to get a job in some fields, ie. electronic engineering. Many of these graduates are going to be very annoyed when they find that all that their education gives them is large debts.
57. University is a humiliating nightmare for children from poor families because they find themselves having to mix with spoilt, rich kids with money to squander.
58. Only a small proportion of university students learn anything about the process of wealth creation.
59. Most of the education given in schools and universities is a waste of time for most young people, it will never be used in the rest of their lives. This puts children who don't like wasting their time at a hopeless disadvantage.
60. Most children choose soft subjects to study at university and make no use of their degree subject subsequently; they are just looking for a pleasant interlude before starting work and a passport to membership of the prosperous middle class. If they are not going to make use of what they study they should do it outside working hours as a hobby, not deprive somebody else of an opportunity they would use constructively.
61. Most higher education should be provided on a sandwich or other part time basis in conjunction with work. Work and education should be coupled closely together throughout life, in the case of intellectually inclined people at least. It would be a good idea for most people to work for a year in their chosen career before undertaking further education, so that they are confident they have made the right choice and won't be wasting their own and other people's time.
62. Universities should open there libraries and lab facilities to anybody who registers with them and fulfils some minimum requirements, they shouldn't be a resource that is only available to a restricted, privileged clique.
63. People with broad intellectual inclinations are probably more vulnerable to unemployment and poverty than any other group in this society, there are very few jobs suitable for them, people with narrow, one track minds who can do a specific job quickly are in far greater demand. In these circumstances it is grossly irresponsible for Chris Woodhead, ex Chief Inspector of Schools, to advocate a broad education designed to turn children into civilised aesthetes aware of their historic and cultural heritage. He says such people are always able to find jobs and that they do better than those given a specialised education, (The Moral Maze, BBC Radio 4, July 13th). If this is true it is only because there are even fewer such people than there are jobs for them. These days, most employers want people with very specific skills backed by several years experience spent honing them, nothing else will do, they don't like spending money that could otherwise go into their pockets on training new recruits.
64. Universities produce effete, indolent people who regard it as beneath their dignity to do any sort of manual work or get their hands dirty, the more university educated people we produce the more immigrants we will need to do productive work to make money to support them.
65. Universities should be open to people of all ages.
66. Few mature people want to find themselves in an environment full of adolescents. Some separation of young and older students appears to be necessary if the latter are not to be discouraged and alienated. Perhaps there should be separate colleges for the two groups.
67. Many Academics are more interested in their extra money making business schemes than teaching their students. Many are more or less useless teachers. They are parasites who prey on the need of students to get qualifications. They ensure that qualifications cannot be obtained without tithes being paid to them.
68. One can't get on to MBA courses unless one has the right credentials, attitude (the ambition to make a lot of money for oneself principally) and class, ie unless one is a corrupt egoist.
69. Course material for degree or 'A' Level courses should be available in book form, most people learn to read at primary school, academics and teachers are, to a large extent, parasites.
70. In this disgusting society the only way for most people to get the chance to study something worthwhile full time without running up large debts is for them to get a jail sentence.
71. In this society it is a waste of time studying anything unless one can get a degree out of it. In many subjects the minimum qualification that counts for anything is a first class honours degree.
72. The education system is designed to protect the middle class's hold on all decent jobs.
73. People should be able to improve their education throughout their lives and get proper recognition for it, (if it is relevant to their work), academics seem to be the only people who are able to do this easily.
74. Educational increments should be a less daunting and more meaningful size than the degree.
75. If the educational system was rational, anybody would be able to improve themselves but the middle classes don't want that, they want to be sure of maintaining their imagined superiority, so they restrict the educational opportunities of everyone else.
76. Education is the means by which some people kid themselves they are entitled to a better life than the rest of us.
77. Universities and further education institutions of every sort are designed primarily to give a good life to their staff rather than to satisfy the needs of people needing information.
78. What is the justification for academic as opposed to vocational education? One possibility is the idea that people who have been suitably trained can tackle anything, this is a myth. Are academics trained to push back the frontiers of knowledge? Is the idea that the frontier has to be reached before it can be moved? Being an academic is just another vocation anyway, it is no more special than most others.
79. Full time education prepares hardly anyone for anything specific, nearly all of us are still dependant on the charity of employers for training and experience in the job we do, most of our education is often completely irrelevant.
80. Everybody has to pay a tithe to the educationists if they want a chance of a half decent life. Education only counts if one has paid one's dues to the academic community and got a fancy gown in return.
81. People who don't have first class honours degrees aren't likely to be able to earn enough to justify paying for further education.
82. Education in this country is largely about learning how to pose as somebody who is superior.
83. The education system, Universities etc., is designed to overawe and intimidate the working class and thus repel them.
84. Most education is a waste of time, qualifications don't count for much without recent work experience (except in certain management jobs perhaps), it is impossible to have recent experience of applying more than a very small fraction of the content of a three year degree course.
85. People must cripple themselves with debt to get virtually meaningless qualifications to satisfy stupid employers.
86. Education should be paid for by those receiving it unless they need it for their work (because their skill is declining in value, they are bored with it, or another skill has a higher or rising value). If education is received free then not used, it's cost should be recovered from the recipient.
87. Turn Public Schools into adult education colleges?
88. Management should be part of the curriculum at all levels of education so that everybody, rather than just an obnoxious clique who think they have the right to control other people's lives, will be a manager.
89. Private schools and private tutoring to be illegal. Everybody to be educated in the state system or by self-tuition. Qualifications obtained in other ways not to be recognised by the Universities or official bodies or employers. It isn't possible to assess student's abilities fairly if they have been educated very differently.
90. Get info. on Public Schools, who owns them, are they limited companies or charities?
91. To discourage private education, only qualifications obtained in the state education system should be recognised by the state sector, since people taught in the private sector have an unfair advantage, (or should the qualifications of privately educated people be downgraded by a factor?).
92. There should be well defined ways for mature adults to retrain.
93. If the degree qualification is essential then getting one shouldn't be a painful and costly process.
94. The USA's education system is usually dismissed as being inferior to ours, how is it that the United States is so much more successful in nearly every technical field than we are? Is it purely because they bribe so much foreign talent to go there? I doubt it.
95. The Open University is a swindle, it is far too expensive. I was interested in an MSc computing course until I found it would cost me over £6000. I believe that half a dozen books costing less then £200 altogether would cover the material in the course but, of course, teaching oneself from books doesn't count because it doesn't pay the salaries of an army of academics who should be doing something more productive than spoon-feeding information to people who can't feed themselves.
96. The education system has to be re-jigged so that it gives as much attention to serving the needs of adults as those of children.
97. Why aren't we all educated to be Masters of Business Administration so that we can all become tycoons with fabulous houses and private jets? Why are people duped into taking up careers that condemn them to poverty for life?
98. There is no way that most people can afford to retrain to a level that will enable them to get a half decent job.
99. On the Today programme on Radio 4 on Tuesday Aug.14th 02 a Professor said that 'A' Level results were about as useful as tossing a coin for deciding who should go to university.

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