What do you think about university?

No.
I think the best education teaches you how to think.
If you got a top grade from a prestigious university in the past you would have learned good cross referencing, searching, condensing, questioning and other analytical skills.
You would have learned to challenge orthodoxy and reflect on the "why" of things.

I think there are too many "high" grades these days but you still have to go the extra mile to get a 1st I think.

Do you think universities are truly beneficial?

YES

Also, if uou go on to a higher degree you don't always have instructions!

I’m a real advocate of university.

What I’m “against” are now the many careers which now insist on degree educated staff when, other training or ways to train would actually work better.

In my opinion, the previous system for training Primary School Teachers, Nurses/Midwives and Social Workers worked very well.

I think the choice of completely a degree should be there, but, again it’s only my opinion, if the study leads directly into a job and the degree is being done because it’s the main way of entering such a job, especially where the professional is one where we have a shortage of staff, Nurses, Doctors, Midwives, Radiologists, Teachers, Dentists, to name a few, then I truly believe the degree should be free of direct charges to the student and maintenance grants should be re-introduced. There could be strict conditions imposed, for example, get the student loan for fees and the maintenance grant each year, but if and when the degree is gained, cancel the debt, then another rule that means they have to spend the next 5 years working in the UK.

Universities and degrees teach so much more than just the academic qualification, but the drive since Blair’s “Education, Education, Education”, speech has resulted in pushing students into degree education that they are unsuited to and don’t help them into suitable sustainable work.

Education comes in many forms, not just with Universities.

Btw, I don’t “subscribe” at all OP to your “instructions” and “slaves” ideas.

Most degrees require critical thinking, research, brains being used. GCE’s or GCSE’s as they are now known, might match better to your described, but higher and further education most certainly doesn’t. (IMO)

When I was doing my doctorate in my fifties (on the side while working full time) I read a statement on the canteen wall: ' Education is about making your mind an interesting place to be. Or words to that effect. I've always appreciated learning about different ways to think as well as just new knowledge and understanding.

I agree with NotSpaghetti. A good university should teach you how to think. So should a good school, for that matter.

I feel it is too easy to go to university now, and standards at some have inevitably deteriorated.

Perhaps the OP isn't in the UK.

I think there are huge benefits from a university education though I do think some of the people who are given degrees are not that bright , especially recently. There is pressure on staff not to fail students, particularly overseas ones and that is not a good thing. I think the obscure degrees given out for some subjects these days are not that helpful and do not contribute to clarity of thought and capability.

Cossy What I'm "against" are now the many careers which now insist on degree educated staff when, other training or ways to train would actually work better.

I once had a long and interesting conversation with a very nice woman who had a nursing degree. She told me that received wisdom was that the old SRN qualification was a purely practical course where nurses were taught to do little more than do TPRs, bed baths and empty bedpans etc.

It was true that we spent most of our training working as staff on the wards and in the departments but we also had to do study blocks and pass quite a few written exams as well as practicals in order to qualify.

She was quite surprised that I knew as much as she did, if not more in some cases, about anatomy and physiology, pharmacology and bacteriology even though I only ever passed the basic three year SRN course and I never worked as a staff nurse.

I have no way of knowing if this applies to other courses which used to be non degree courses but I suspect it might.

There are many occupations where University is the only route so if you are a high flier with top A levels and you are committed a career that has job prospects then you will benefit.

If you are an average student forget it, go to college and train for a technical career when you get a skill there will be work, at 24 you will be fully skilled and earning good wages whereas graduates with mediocre grades are starting from scratch.

Graduate jobs this year are very scarce only the best or luckiest are going to succeed, even if you do get an introduction you still have to perform, employers know this and the demands on new recruits is intense, many dont get retained after a year.

Magenta8

Cossy What I'm "against" are now the many careers which now insist on degree educated staff when, other training or ways to train would actually work better.

I once had a long and interesting conversation with a very nice woman who had a nursing degree. She told me that received wisdom was that the old SRN qualification was a purely practical course where nurses were taught to do little more than do TPRs, bed baths and empty bedpans etc.

It was true that we spent most of our training working as staff on the wards and in the departments but we also had to do study blocks and pass quite a few written exams as well as practicals in order to qualify.

She was quite surprised that I knew as much as she did, if not more in some cases, about anatomy and physiology, pharmacology and bacteriology even though I only ever passed the basic three year SRN course and I never worked as a staff nurse.

I have no way of knowing if this applies to other courses which used to be non degree courses but I suspect it might.

I find that so “degrading” to all nurses working under and training under the “old”system.

I have a good few friends who trained as nurses back in the day. One of my oldest and closest friends did, it wasn’t “easy peasy”, it was ruddy hard work, lots of clinical training on the job, then studying and exams to pass.

University nurtures the inquiring mind, so much more than school does. Rather than the actual degree people sit, I think that is its greatest strength, having come across so many people who don’t question and spend their lives learning, most of whom haven’t had a university education. I don’t think I’ve explained that very well though.

which essentially means successfully carrying out the instructions given to us

If you are a graduate, you are a very strange one.

The purpose of university is open your mind and teach you to think for yourself, to be ready to toss out everything you were taught before and rethink everything.

At a university you have so much wisdom and information on almost a universal scale sitting begging you to search and learn.

Of course any course has it basics that you need to have to know but as Isaac Newton said 'If I have seen further than others, it is only because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.' A university , any university is not full of giants but it will contain a heck of a lot of very tall well built people.

DS is a university professor. He says one of the most difficult thing he has to do is take the sausages churned out by schools, clever, well educated sausages, but ones that are only able to repeat what they have been told, and teach them how to think for themselves, be prepared to argue points with him, to reach their own conclusions.

Magenta8
Did the same. Since the introduction of University system can't recall but guess known as P60 system standards have dropped and there is apparently a call to return to more practical education. Read this only last week. Neighbour has just taken first opportunity to retire from nursing as fed up having to battle with staff and their mobile phones. Nothing is done proactively all reactively, her words.

The students that have the most trouble free-thinking at university are those who have had to learn one correct answer and have been taught to please, heoun.

My husband found a lot of these students coming from China (in particular). They always wanted to know his thoughts and found it hard to accept that they had to readjust their thinking to be successful here.
I think this is (albeit anecdotal) proof against your "sausage machine" theory.

If you are only trained to pass tests I think adjusting is harder.

Universities are institutions that teach the future generation the high level skills needed in an advanced developed country.

It not only teaches the future researchers etc, but carries out vital research.

Without good universities a country is poorer.

I think it depends on the degree. I don't think tossing out what you have been taught and thinking it through for yourself would get my second year medical student granddaughter very far.

It’s not about tossing out what you’ve been taught, it’s using that, plus additional knowledge you gain, and using the knowledge and your own interpretation of evidence to form conclusions. Medicine is no different to any other subject.

You can’t toss out what you have absorbed as a student😄😄. What you do do however is knowingly or not use the knowledge as a scaffolding to be built on throughout life. It is never wasted. More skills are taught than just the degree content.