Originally posted by zeeblebot
what the heck happened in the UK Uni system?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/7952155/Seven-students-to-fight-for-every-clearing-place.html
The former government was obsessed by the notion that every child should be given the opportunity to be educated at an establishment called a university, regardless of what subjects they intended to study and whehter or not the work required a considerable degree of theoretical or academic knowledge for its satisfactory performsance.
As a result a multitude of non-academic courses, such as 'media studies', 'sports management', and nursing, were added to the curriculum of former technical colleges (renamed 'universities'😉, and opening new establishments of dubious academic standing.
This naturally led to an enormous increase in the number of applicants for a univerity place, and coincided with an ongoing policy of making it easier to obtain high marks in the qualifying 'A-level' examinations, together with the employment of persons with inferior academic attainments to mark the examination papers .
At the same time the government would not allow the top well-established universities to increase their fees for UK students, and this forced them to increase he number of places offered to foreign students who paid considerably more for their courses of study.
The following link elucidates the defects of the present A-level exammination. a
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/7957721/A-level-results-How-can-we-rescue-our-examination-system.html