Press Release

GuildHE responds to Tax Payers Alliance

22 August 2007

Responding to the Taxpayers Alliance report "The Non-courses Report 2007", a spokesperson for GuildHE said:

"GuildHE strongly disputes the outdated and inaccurate ideas promulgated in this report about what modern higher education can and should deliver. This is a direct attack on employer-led and vocational degree level studies and especially those supporting newer industries like tourism and leisure which are fundamental to the UK economy. These industries deserve to have well educated and skilled graduates to deliver their business just as much as professions like law and engineering, that may have longer histories and appear more “academic”. These courses are no different from any other degree programmes offered in our well respected institutions of higher education. They are fully tested as they are created, to ensure they have the same academic rigour and they frequently make more stringent demands on their students in terms of higher levels skills. 

More research would show that the students leaving many of these courses, especially those run by the specialist agricultural colleges and those HEIs working with the food-based services, have some of the highest rates of employment and are clearly valued by the industries they serve. Proposing so called “on the job training” as an alternative fails to recognise the more complex world that current graduates have to operate within. They need to be able to join theory and practice – opportunities which these degree level courses in modern higher education are offering successfully.”

Alice Hynes Executive Secretary of GuildHE said “The authors of this report have clearly failed to find out their facts “from the horse’s mouth” so perhaps they might benefit from the rigour of one of the Equine Studies courses they are so keen to denigrate”

She added “ We wholeheartedly agree with our UUK colleague who suggested that "This is academic snobbery, as predictable as it is unfounded."
GuildHE shares the view of the Universities that ”Graduates on these courses are in demand from employers who are looking for people with specific skills alongside the general skills acquired during a degree such as critical-thinking, team-working, time-management and IT skills - a point lost on the authors of this rag-bag of prejudices and outdated assumptions. Students know this - which is why these courses are often over-subscribed…”