However - and this may well be an entirely different issue - I am firmly of the belief that a University is not a training camp: if companies want their intake to have specific skills then they should stump up the cash and train them themselves rather than let the burden fall on the taxpayer. Furthermore, a University education should be largely academic: that's rather the point. This, however, has the consequence that it's not suitable for a majority of the populace and, crucially, I feel there is no shame in such institutions being 'elitist' in the sense that they select only people for whom such an education is beneficial. The main problem faced in the UK today though, as far as I can see, is that institutions with a more vocational approach to higher education have been crowbarred into an existing structure designed to do something different, and anything that isn't a 'degree' is considered a second-class qualification. Not easy to see how one can change the general public's attitude to non-degree qualifications. Anyway, that's roughly what I wanted to say though I'm not sure it makes sense.
This seems particularly bizarre, though, when you realise that even having a degree is irrelevant if you have more than about three years of industrial experience. That hasn't stopped hiring decisions made by my boss from being blocked because the higher management felt that the degree was from a school which "wasn't good enough". Ludicrous.
[Thos] Fancy an apple? Or a tangerine (and you could carelessly throw the skin away with that too!)?
My apologies. One of my mates has been foisting it upon me at every opportunity for days, and I can't help enjoying it, and nor could I keep it to myself any longer.
A woman wakes up with a terrible hangover and finds herself sharing her bed with an elephant. "God I must have been tight last night!" she exclaims. "Yes," says the elephant, "at least the first couple of times."
Luckily I can't be bothered to type out the hamster joke.