MIddle Aged Dread ?

[max_power]

Loved it !

I remember when it first came out but have since forgotten the words.

A classic !



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[Twister_Ken]

My mistake

>An industry has sprung up around education that uses a mixture of marketing, blackmail and threat <

Thought you were talking about the Yachtmaster scheme there, for a minute.

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[BrendanS]

Re: Ouch.... NM

<hr width=100% size=1>Err, let me know if Depsol enters the forum, I'll go and hide

 

[ParaHandy]

Re: ouch

I would agree with Claymore for these reasons:

Margaret Thatcher became Education Secretary in 1970, Prime Minister in 1979 when roughly 75% of the country was employed in industry. By the end of her second term, less than 50% were so employed. Her policies decimated huge swathes of manufacturing. Traditional heavy industries fell over like nine-pins. Volume manufacturing contracted; in some instances by 90%.

Assume, for the moment, she was sufficiently prescient to see, before any other, that Britain could not survive as a manufacturing nation and that manufacturing employment would inexorably continue to decline. This would inevitably mean, in a bag-of-a-fag-packet kind of way, that 50% of the country required re-educating to provide the country with the skills appropriate for what was to come and that could only come from expanding further education.

She had a problem or two. Education institutional inertia was one; but more fatal to the country was the inability of the universities to attract fresh blood. The children of the 10% followed their parents into university and this occurred generation after generation. That had to change.

Within one generation, the structure of university education duly changed. When a process such as this comes not from evolution (it frankly never would) but revolution then many idiosyncrasies will appear of which you have noted some; not least the lack of plumbers ........

all imho


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[tcm]

Thatcher killed manufacturing? haha

Ooh, i can't agreee with this. Margaret Thatcher killed UK manufacturing? Total rot.

I (and a few others on this bb) trained at university to join the UK manufacturing industry in the late seventies and early 80's. But we all ran from the industry and retrained for computers, law, finance, anything as soon as possible afterwards.

During the late 70s-early80's an quick external review of Leyland products (maxi, princess, allegro) and industrial placement by some friends confirmed the worst - that the management of these companies was inept beyond belief. There was precious little use of any degree-minded people, ever, even in quite sizeable organisations and indeed such clever-dick interference was positively resisted.

A short-term placement at one company making air compressors and "designing"them by just drawing them, making one and "seeing how it went" found me eventually having to explain to the entire r d team that air was quite incompressible stuff, didn't waft about like ciggie smoke, and when a person walked into a room exactly that volume walked out. A director piped up and said that he "couldn't quite agree" so I'm afraid I blew up at him, which was fun afterwards, once I'd left.

Some companies did employ new methods and technology - the appropriately-named "ARG" Austin Rover Group used Computervison CAD systems. Computervison eventually agreed not to offer jobs to the very best CAD operators who could douible their earnings if they hopped from the engineering sector to the computer industry. Thatcher didn't do that.

Foreign competition played its part : our visits to factories across the North in 1981 were stripped of "foreign-looking" students because some had taken their photos back to the far east and produced copies of the same products for half the money within months.

If one undertakes an engineering degree in the UK, it barely touches upon the idea that better mousetraps are useless unless made for the right price. If there's a lateral force on a bearing, then it ought to use a needle roller bearing, you know - even though and ordinary ball bearing costing less than a tenth of the money would be perfectly okay. For years, ostensibly "correct" but olde-worlde designs have subsequnetly forced to become market-priced, resulting in no profit, and no money to pay for decent kit or better people. The collusion of designers, accontants, stylists, production engineers that happens in other countries almost never happens in the UK, where the different departments are separated (just like at university) by roads or even by a hundred miles. We don't talk to those B*stard in accounts! No, nor marketing either!

I haven't even started on the problems caused by ancient, ancient working relations and the legalised vandalism which allowed a dispute an one company to shut down lots of other completely unrelated companies too.

Years later, quite recently actualy, I visited an egnineering company that wanted some software. The MD showed me the reports they wanted. It showed the last six recorded times taken for a drilling operation. The times varied haphaazardly from about 30 seconds to over 25 minutes. I asked about the time it took 10 minutes. "oh, probaly a machine breakdown", said the chap. What about the time it took 25 minutes? "Ah well, sometimes they forget to clock off the job, see". I prety much blew up again. I explained that over the last 20 years i had (invarious different jobs) collected this sort of information, discussed this sort of information in priduction meetings, written software to produce the information, and now discussing selling the software. Yet the information - when it doesn't conform to what management want to see- is simply "explained away" - there's no set of information which triger the use of a better machine, or an operator replaced or anything. He was fairly dumbstruck that this git software person sort-of toldim how crap he was at running an engineering compnay, told me as much, and I left. I did met him again a year later on the pontoon at Antibes as he was gawping at our boat, and I was very nice and asked him it all went okay, which was fun.

Universities and secondary education could be more useful to those student in their charge. They could spend some time explaining how the business world really operates. But instead, the first half an hour at school is spent praying to God. Appropriate, I suppose. But many educationalists strongly resist the idea that they or any of their charges be asked to discuss the nasty grubby commercial world, and even demand its isolation from them, as do some doctors, also in the public sector. In discussion with HM at the local school, I protested that although one of our kids had misbehaved, at least his behaviour didn't extend to using string to tie his shoelaces like one of the teachers. "There are more mportant things here" said the HM. Not in the real world there ain't -he'd get fired or sent home.

Scuse the rant. Perhaps we shd stick to boating!

Separately - was there (in the course of this thread) a confusion between vocational training at colleges and university degree courses? I think so.

Claymore spoke in defence of the former. Peppermints critcism was of the exploding number of less vocational courses taught at degree level - quite different.


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[Peppermint]

Re: I would add

British industry in general is and always has been plagued by over priced labour and short term profit.

It still is. The british worker is quite productive but is competing with foreign workers who are working to eat not to get the second holiday in Spain.

It's interesting to watch the way new wave industries are now exporting the jobs of the brit worker just like the heavy industries did.

It's not helped by the regulation heavy practises of HMG but it is really all about the cost of labour.

We need a stong core of excelent graduates that can continue to push the country into the future. We don't need a demoralised degree holding workforce with no chance of satisfying employment.

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[Twister_Ken]

Is the jury still out...

...on whether a country can be prospeprous without a manufacturing sector? Maybe Switzerland is, if you discount cheese and chocolate and Swatch and pharma and chemicals. Otherwise, manufacturing seems to be a given, even if it is at the hi-tech end, rather than metal bashing.

And so, back to college, what do our best and brightest graduates want to do when they shake the dust of university from their trainers? Law, the City, management consulting (don't get me started!), politics, the media or NGOs.

It's OK to criticise manufacturing (past and present) as being badly run and badly led. It was, it is. But that's at least partly because it's always been a place for 2.2 graduates to decline into, not somewhere that the boys and girls with 1sts aspire to.

Can that ever be changed? Discuss.

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[jimi]

Re: Is the jury still out...

Seems to me that value has got to be added somewhere, and that is in either the primary or secondary sectors (digging or making), the service sector seems to me to exploit or be parasitical on the back of the first two. Therefor I would argue that for a nation of significant size (rather than a nation small enough to operate within a niche sector) there must be a balanced economy for long term growth and stability ... all IMHO.

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[ParaHandy]

Re: you\'re missing the point ....

... by a country mile or to abbreviate the argument I have left too much to suit your deviant mind! .... Thatcher was merely the Prime Minister at the time. Whether it was her or Wilson (Selective Employment Tax?) the course was set. Whether Thatcher exacerbarted the decline is a moot point. Her & Lawson's adherence to the D Mark wiped out, for example, the textile industry which then brought the chemical industry to its knees. The industrial bellweather in the 70's was ICI. Not any longer.

We make the same point about industry. The management of mainland European manufacturing companies had trained engineers in senior positions - not so and never had been in Britain who preferred lawyers and accountants of which the universities could provide in abundance. We simply were not very good at running such enterprises. Leyland & Lord Stokes is an example. We eschewed "trade" for the "professions". It was not always so.

The distinction you make between vocational and degree courses is unclear. Universities trained many people for a career they had no intention of following but argued that education did not necessarily require to be specific. To an extent, that is true but is a luxury we could not afford given the scale of the changes occurring.

And that is my point .... some 8 to 12m people found themselves with skills that were no longer appropriate or required. The changes have to be regarded as a success. The UK has the 3rd largest GDP .... we got something right .....


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[tcm]

Re-revising history

Hm.

I was in Bradford/Leeds in the 70's and 1 mill a week "caught fire" in the face of huge cheap imports, lots textiles from the far east actually had little tags saying "made in Huddersfield" and so on, featured in the local paper. Thatcher didn't do any of that.

Not at all sure that degrees qualify for a career - universities never set out to do this - they were always about academic excellence. A degee in History, French, engineering, law qualifies one to start a training course to teach, do articles, or other training or in engineering... well it wd probly be best to pretend that you actually didn't have a degree...

But "retraining" would never be done in a university - training colleges perhaps. Politicians prove the point - they train for law, then run a ministry. It remains a myth that 50% can properly undergo the academic rigour despite the best efforts of some universities to drop standards and accomodate the illiterate art students or innumerate science undergrads.

Intersted to hear that UK GDP is 3rd. The labour lot said we were 30-somethingth in 97, another load of cobblers. I understand that one press release even complained that 50% of school leavers werre below average, duh. Could it possibly be that Thatcher's revolution was generally a good thing rather than a bad one? Coiuld it be that Thatcher was the only recent PM any good at the job? Perish the thought. But for many starting a career in early 80's the change in attitudes came as a breath of fresh air. Blair is merely the acceptable face of Thatcher, a guardian not The Guardian.

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[jimi]

Re: Re-revising history

Blair - the acceptable face of Thatcherism ?????????????

I knew what Thatcher stood for I do'nt with Blair
Thatcher understood accountability Blair does'nt
Thatcher beleived in results, Blair in spin
Thatcher cut cost improved efficiency, Blair vice versa
Thatcher cut taxes ...

ad infinitum

and
I beleived Thatcher .. did'nt always agree .. Blair on the other hand.


Boo Hoo ... and to think I wanted rid of her!! Look at what we've got now ... Boo hooo!


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[ParaHandy]

Re: beg to differ ....

My recollection is quite different ... there was a period (not in the 70s but early 80s) when first Tootal then others closed because of cheap imports which came from the exchange rate being pegged to the D Mark at too high a level.

I also beg to differ about what universities are there to do. The redbrick universities most certainly believed they were providing qualifications for people who would use them.

What do you think happened after Thatcher wiped out ALL of the support for apprenticeships? Employers were supposed to train them. They didn't of course. Slowly and mostly effectively the gaps here and elsewhere were filled by the old polys. It may be semantics to you in the context of re-training, but it was crucial that these institutions became universities (I can't remember the reason why but I think it was that the polys were controlled by local councils and Thatcher wasn't having that but it could also have been the fact that granting a charter made these places less one dimensional)

The argument which is peppermints as to whether all degree subjects are appropriate is another side of the same coin - competition. If you and I knew which technology or skill was going to be the winner in 20 years time we would be very happy ... "but Dad I don't want to be a plumber even though ..." etc etc. Some diversity is not all bad .............

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[Peppermint]

Re: the problem with added value

seems to be that it's a seductive idea. We have it made somewhere cheap and sell it on. The problem arises when the market decides to cut out the middle man.

My mate The Chief spends a lot of time in China and Russia getting his fleet of future poluters mended. It's obvious from his time there that as soon as we ship a design there for manufacture they simply copy it. Make millions of them for the domestic market and knock out a few to other countries who don't care much about intelectual properties and copyrights. They don't have a very enlightend approach to Health & Safety either in a three month refit you could expect to loose a couple of workers each week to fatal accidents.

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[Boathook]

I heard a saying the other day 'that there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots' It was refering to airplanes rather than boats but there must be a link somewhere.

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[tcm]

Re: The demise of Thatcher

Her primary failure was to hang for too long. Of recentish American presidents, I understand that only LBJ recognised that he effectively had two years, not four.

I didn't mean Blair is Thatcher - but that his premiership of "sounding" busineslike was only possible because Thatcher preceded. He now delivers sermons to Europe to take steps ...that Thatcher took, not that he took - he simply left most reforms alone, working time directive aside. Fear not, he will be gone soon.

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[tcm]

Re: beg to differ ....

ah. My understanding was that the pegging to the d-mark at a high level happened post '83.

Tootal was surely but another manufacturing conglomerate with its eye of the ball? Some of the decent middle-managers left and set up better companies. But margins in that sector are tiny, not big enough for so-so management like in erm um er...computers.

Is that enuf politics yet?

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[Jeremy_W]

Re: Degrees

>>>I plan to make a fairly hefty bet on this government losing the next election. Forgive the long rant

It's a free country, but I wouldn't waste my money. A change of government seems to require BOTH a government that appears to have lost its way AND a main opposition party so eager for power that it hurts.

Nobody could describe the Tories under IDS as poised, like a coiled spring, to snatch power. Since the Iraq conflict IDS seems to have lost the plot as far as being an Opposition politician is concerned.

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[jimi]

Re: Degrees

Do'nt think IDS ever has been an effective opposition .. I weep when I think how diffferent it could have been with Ken Clarke in that position.

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[uforea]

I have just spent the last half hour being educated in the recent history of ,Politics, History and Economics and enjoyed it all thoroughly.Congratulations to all who contributed.



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