《英语流行话题阅读:语境识词3500》Unit 34 我不会让儿子上大学

　　Unit 34

I Won't Let Our Boy Go to University

I've refused to allow my stepson Jim to go to university  because it will be too expensive and a waste of time. People think I'm  selfish or uncaring. But I think more parents will come to accept my  way of thinking. Britain's university system is failing to serve  either society or our children.

I can't remember when I began to change my mind on education.  Like many middle-class parents, I had assumed that going to university  was what children should do. It's one of the reasons we sent im to an  expensive private boarding school with a good academic reputation,  rather than a weak  but free local one. Education was more important  than nice cars, new kitchens, or skiing holidays.

Jim is a teenager of whom any parent would be proud. He's  charming, considerate and helpful; he's a genius at things like  hanging pictures and mending door handles; he's good with children;  he's handsome. But he's shown little interest in study.

It's not Jim's intellect 1 that's the problem, but an inbuilt  reluctance 2 to do any more work than necessary to get by. We've tried  every method to make him work harder: blackmail 3, bribery 4, threats.  None of it has worked. For his final exams, Jim got a D and two Es.  Even allowing for our low expectations, this came as a shock to his  mother and me.

"Surely", I suggested to Jim's teacher, "the course Jim got on  with such low marks would be the sort of course that wouldn't be worth  doing anyway." "Not at all," the teacher insisted, and then named a  string of universities I'd barely 5 heard of, claiming they'd be perfect  for Jim.

It was at this point I realized how completely out of touch I  was with the current educational thought. In the early 1980s when I  was at school, a student with such poor grades as Jim's would never be  considered university material. Since then the percentage of eligible  population in Britain has risen from 14% to an astonishing 44%. The  educational system is cramming 6 even the most mediocre 7 students into a  degree curse.

It affects the sort of the courses that universities offer:  undemanding ones such as film studies and surfing; it affects the way  universities advertise themselves -- with student bar sizes and local  clubs given priority 8 over the quality of the courses.

Another fact is that when I went to university, a degree still  counted for something. These days, the degree is so devalued that you  are far better off going straight into the job market than spending  three years treading 9 water, running up big debts.

Maybe it would be worth it if, as a result of his or her  degree, your child would have a well-paid career. But there are now  too many graduates running after too few graduate obs, and employers  are becoming suspicious 10 of the value of degrees.