UK needs a better developed vocational higher education system with higher apprenticeships says AoC’s rep

Universities are trying to fit a “square plug into a round hole” by attempting to “tack on” employability skills to a three-year academic degree, a college representative has said.

Nick Davy, higher education policy manager at the Association of Colleges (AoC), argued that England instead needed a better developed vocational higher education system, including a growth in higher apprenticeships.

Speaking to Times Higher Education at the AoC’s annual conference in Birmingham on 21 November, Mr Davy said that one of the “core principles” of traditional universities was that they were not about preparing students for work, except in some professions and academic research.

Employability was not part of the “culture” of older universities, which were “trying to tack something on to a discipline-led academic degree that doesn’t really work”.

He stressed that this was not a criticism of universities, which played an “absolutely critical part in our society and higher education system”, nor was it to suggest that academic, three-year degrees did not teach skills that were useful in the workplace.

However, he added that “these degrees are not about employability but acquiring an in-depth knowledge of a subject discipline. You can’t fit a square plug into a round hole.”

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Employment skills don’t fit with academic degrees | News | Times Higher Education.