Higher education - Value for money?

I know I’m rattling on about education at the moment but the latest missive from the department has got me thinking.
 
Higher education costs the Island a reasonable amount of money to fund a select band of reasonably intelligent individuals. The department quite rightly wants to know if this is a wise spend, or as they put it, are they getting value for their money?
 
Now this is a dangerous and sticky path to start walking down.
 
Let’s look at how many degree students bring their skills back to the Island.
 
Hold on a minute, what about those who can’t practise their skills here or need to undertake in-service training before they become qualified?
 
As I write this, the Island is celebrating another successful Eisteddfod with a whole raft of talent in the performing arts. A small number of these talented performers will go on to study their craft at degree level in the UK. Some will continue to visit the Island to perform when they can but for the majority, the only way to get work will be to stay in the UK and develop their skills.
 
Does this mean that we shouldn’t support such courses in the future?
 
Forget performing arts, we could ditch Arts altogether.
 
I can see a lot of people agreeing with this idea but hold on a moment.
 
Instead of performers, think about doctors.
 
These medical students cost the Island a whole lot more as their courses are more expensive and spread over five years. Even then, they have to spend another two foundation years working in hospital as part of their essential training before they can start their training to become a consultant which could take another eight years or more.
 
During the whole of this period, they are of no benefit to the Island and even at the end, there is no certainty that they will return as there may not be a job available in their speciality.
 
Let’s not train doctors then. Instead we will just leech off of the rest of the world to supply us with the doctors we need.
 
Now let’s look at the pure subject degrees.
 
Maths, English, History, Geography, Physics… the list can go on.
 
None of these subjects are of any use as such and bring no immediate benefit to the Island. So let’s stop supporting these as well.
 
Then we have those students who decide not to pursue their subject and instead, say, join our finance sector. What use was their degree?
 
Perhaps we should insist that the student stays in their field of specialisation for a set period of time and serve the Island.
 
But how? Do we have that many vacancies?
 
Newly qualified teachers are finding it more difficult to get full time jobs here but we keep training them because we know that we need teachers. But sometimes we need more experienced teachers so perhaps there is a benefit to allowing NQTs to stay in the UK to build up this experience before coming back to Guernsey.
 
But what if they don’t come back?
 
As I said at the beginning, this is a sticky path with lots of twists and turns.
 
What I hope you will be seeing by now is that education has a worth in itself and a worth to the community which might not become apparent for a while.
 
Maybe the answer is to follow the UK and move to student loans. Just think how much that system will cost us!
 
Not only do we have the whole business of registration and loan payments, we also have to monitor repayments over a long period of time and keeping track of the students over decades. Then we monitor loan repayments tied of course to income levels; something else to monitor.
 
For those who don’t return we then have the problem of enforcing the loan. Our youth is more mobile as each generation passes and could scatter to any of the 190 odd countries in the world. How much would it cost to pursue our loans in each jurisdiction?
 
I suppose we could privatise the whole exercise. Of course, whatever company got involved would have to make a profit, so educate would become more expensive to the individual.
 
So then only the rich would be able to afford university, just like it was decades ago.
 
Now that’s real progress!
 
The real problem is that university has become the norm for a great many more people. Those institutions themselves have woken up to the fact that degrees are a good money spinner and don’t require an awful lot of work; maybe a few lectures a week and then leave the rest to private study.
 
It is not the Island who is not getting value for money, it is the students themselves.
 
Because we live in a world where a degree is the norm for a great many occupations, we must continue to provide our students with the opportunity to study at this level. Otherwise we degenerate into a third world country.
 
Do we need to cap the cost to the Island?
 
Yes.
 
How do we do that?
 
I’ve no idea.
 
What we need is some clever people to give this some serious thought. I’d like to say that takes us back to where we started but I fear not.
 
Any thoughts anyone?