Listen to this debate from the Battle of Ideas festival 2019:
More people now attend university in the UK than ever, but there is much less clarity about what university is for. For many, it is simply a step on the career ladder between school and work. For others, higher learning is about pursuing knowledge for its own sake. Do universities even do a good job at preparing people for jobs, or should we make more use of on-the-job training for that purpose? Do vocational qualifications merit the same prestige as academic degrees? Does everyone deserve the opportunity to spend three years at university – or is it an evasion of the ‘real world’?
Speakers include:
KIRSTIE DONNELLY MBE
group managing director, City & Guilds Group; commissioner, Labour Party Lifelong Learning Commission
DENNIS HAYES
professor of education, University of Derby; founder and director, Academics For Academic Freedom (AFAF); co-author, The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education
JHANELLE WHITE
student, King’s College London; founder and chair, Political Sweep
PROFESSOR ALISON WOLF
author, The XX Factor: how the rise of working women has created a far less equal world; cross-bench peer
CHAIR: DAVID BOWDEN associate fellow, Academy of Ideas
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#BattleFest2019: Interrogating anti-Semitism with Deborah Lipstadt and Frank Furedi
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#BattleFest2019: Education culture wars - what should be the role of schools today?
#BattleFest2018: Tearing up the rule book - the end of the new world order?
#BattleFest2018: The moral case for abortion
#BattleFest2018: The crisis of diplomacy in the era of Trump
#BattleFest2018: Feminism - in conversation with Camille Paglia
#BattleFest2018: Can we revive Britain’s ’Rust Belt’?
#EconomyForum: How can we revive UK economic growth?
#BattleFest2018: Culture - who pays?
#BattleFest2018: From robots to UBI - is capitalism digging its own grave?
#BattleFest2018: Do the right thing? The moral responsibility of the artist
#BattleFest2018: From anti-vaxers to Alfie’s army - have we lost faith in medical science?
#BattleFest2018: Understanding anti-Semitism today
#BattleFest2018: How fear works
#BattleFest2018: Automatic lovers - should we be worried about sex robots?
#BattleFest2018: Does our DNA define us?
#BattleFest2018: Democracy under siege?
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