What's worse is that the article is stuffed full of hyperbolic crap about Maoism and misses some of the more valid criticisms of UK education system (the transformation of technical colleges offering effective vocational training for non-academically inclined people into degree awarding bodies which felt the need to adjust their course content to match; the objective of the previous administration to get 50% of school-leavers into university which inevitably resulted in the reintroduction of fees to pay for it, skewing the entrance pool)
in favour of arguments that are dubious at best. In effect, he's blaming the government for flaws that sit squarely on the shoulders of the academics themselves.
If you believe the author, the worst thing that has happened to the education system is the requirement that lecturers actually produce academic output (due to the "envy" of the taxpayer subsidising them). As the author points out, some of this is less than seminal, but frankly I don't find the implicit argument that the same academics would miraculously produce more valuable contributions to the world if not shackled by the requirement they actually justify the money being thrown in their direction. I've read some decidedly mediocre papers written before academics were obliged to get things published on a regular basis.
Also he complains about modularisation, because apparently higher education students aren't smart enough to choose their own areas of specialization. Sorry, but if the University of Leeds' course on webdesign in the 1990s was too easy, it's because the academics running the course were slow to embrace and understand the potential complexities of the web, not the fault of the bleddy gubment. Just be glad they didn't make it a "core" subject that everyone gets high marks on.
If your talking about polytechnics being converted, they were never 'technical colleges', sounds like you've been reading too many tabloids.
Polytechnics could always award academic degrees(Up to phd) as-well, the main difference was they had their courses set by a central body. You could also study sub-degrees(Hnd) which are a bit like associate degrees in the US.
If you believe the author, the worst thing that has happened to the education system is the requirement that lecturers actually produce academic output (due to the "envy" of the taxpayer subsidising them). As the author points out, some of this is less than seminal, but frankly I don't find the implicit argument that the same academics would miraculously produce more valuable contributions to the world if not shackled by the requirement they actually justify the money being thrown in their direction. I've read some decidedly mediocre papers written before academics were obliged to get things published on a regular basis.
Also he complains about modularisation, because apparently higher education students aren't smart enough to choose their own areas of specialization. Sorry, but if the University of Leeds' course on webdesign in the 1990s was too easy, it's because the academics running the course were slow to embrace and understand the potential complexities of the web, not the fault of the bleddy gubment. Just be glad they didn't make it a "core" subject that everyone gets high marks on.