A Proper Post
After the speight of quizzes I completed on the blogthings page, I think I'll leave the self analysis for when I really need it... hopefully never! It is quite funny how your answers on those things equate to certain sentences which, when put together, contradict eachother very seriously! I think the love thing said I was serious yet lazy... I'm not sure... but maybe I'm a woman of contradictions. Actually, I think it's not too far wrong.
I'm slightly peeved today at hearing the news on the radio that UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admission Service) want to be able to ask prospective students whether their parents have degrees or not so they can work out the intake attributed to lower income/disadvantaged families. Basically they are saying that if you're 'middle class' your parents will have degrees and if you're 'working class', they won't and you are judged to be 'disadvantaged'. I'm unsure whether they mean disadvantage due to lower income or lower intellect, but either way I find it...classist!
I guess they mean well, and it would generate usful stats, but they don't take into account the fact that there are plenty of so called advantaged people my age whose parents don't have degrees. My dad has a degree but my mum doesn't - both are clever, and in terms of the 'intellectually disadvantaged' label, nothing could be further from the truth. Ok they're not mega-rich... my dads a teacher after all... but it says nothing about their intellect.
Study is all very well, and I loved Uni and want to study some more some day, but it is not good enough to judge students on whether their parents have an official degree or not. It doesn't make me think of people any differently.
More anon
posted by Alice @ 6:13 AM
5 Comments:
Never liked UCAS,
bunch of whinging toads that think they know how to judge (& possibly more scarily they think they have a right to judge) the intellect of university applicants.
It's all an extesion of the government's schemes to give more places to so called disadvantaged school kids who will tend to drop out of uni due to the fact that most have been given false impressions by a government that thinks everyone needs a degree and doesn't tell them there are alternatives to uni.
While kids whose parents have worked and made sacrifices for their kid's get screwed over yet again by the system.
People should be judged on their ability - their background is irrelevant.
Actually I'm pretty sure universities already collect this kind of date- the signicant difference is that the people who decide whethere said people get accepted will know it. Which is definitely not a good idea. I have heard argument for positive discrimination, but they are all based around some kind of weird points system.. I don't think it's the best way to deal with discrimination.
They do collect this kind of data. I work with this kind of data! I looked at it yesterday in fact! I just feel its wrong and unrelieable, and offensive, to assume that people with parents who already have degrees are more intelligent. I'm not suggesting richer people might be favoured, but there is an assumption that middle class (money) = people who want to go to Uni (intelligence). And as Ben says, there are alternatives. :o)
Hmmm ... that's funny. Because my mum has a PhD and my dad has highschool. And my mum's parents were a steelworker and a waitress, and my dad's were a professor and a journalist. See... you just can't judge these things ...
I agree that it's distressing. Because regardless of why they're collecting data like that, it could be used for the wrong purposes.
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