Higher Education in the UK: Challenges Encountered in the Educative Process

Higher education in the UK refers to the level of study being taught at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries and institutes of technology. Higher education also encompasses collegiate-level institutions such as vocational schools, trade schools and career colleges that award either academic degrees or professional certifications. Lately, higher education in the UK faces many challenges resulting from the pressures of increasing government expectations and impending budget cuts due to the state of the economy. The fiscal crisis has brought about reductions in public service budgets. This, together with the growing demands that institutions of higher education face has been the greatest challenge to the educative process.

Below are other issues in the educative process in the UK that deserve to be examined:

1. Tuition Fees – Should it be raised or lowered? Should it be unlimited or should there be any at all? Why is it that there is no tuition fee in Scotland for European Union members, except for those who are English?
2. International Students – It is a known fact that they pay more to higher education institutions. Is this a disadvantage for native UK students?
3. Funding – As with tuition fees, the important questions are do learning institutions have enough to support the educative process? Where does it come from? Do we have alternate sources of funding from the private sector in case public support is not enough? If we have to forego certain services in the educative process to accommodate budget cuts, do we risk lowering standards and the quality of education that students will subsequently get?
4. How valuable is higher education in the entire educative process? Are the costs associated with it worth its benefits? Are there too many graduates with too few job prospects? Are there too many graduates in several degrees and too few in others?

Educative Process Principles You Can Learn and Apply

The educative process, ideally, starts with the interest in the material to be studied and learned. Genuine interest is the best and ideal stimulus to learning and education. External goals like grades and future competitive advantage are also good stimuli, but they are not as good as genuine interest. The principal agents of instruction and learning are not teaching devices but the teachers.

1. Purpose of Education – Having a purpose in the future is the primary purpose of any act of learning in the educative process. Secondary to this is the pleasure that learning gives people. Learning should take us to a better position and it should enable us to take ourselves to better positions more easily in the future when we want to do so.

2. Evolution of Knowledge – Knowledge should involve mastery of the fundamental ideas and general principles. The educative process continues as the knowledge progresses towards fostering of an attitude toward learning more and inquiry. It further develops into an attitude leaning towards educated guessing and informed hunches. Furthermore, it should grow into the ability to solve a learner's own problems and the society's in a larger scope.

3. Retention of Learning – To be able to retain learnings, a learner should remember details of the knowledge structure. Persons in different stages of development have different characteristic ways of looking at the world and rationalising it to the self. Thus, a teacher or educator should introduce and present a learning subject with the same way a person views or group of persons view. The third is the evaluation which is checking whether how we used the information is sufficient or appropriate to the task.

4. Processes Within – The process of learning a subject appears to come in three nearly simultaneous processes. The first one is the acquisition of new information. Most often, this information runs against or replaces what the person has known beforehand. The second process of learning can be referred to as transformation which is the process of using knowledge in doing tasks.

Educative Process Principles You Can Learn and Apply

        The educative process, ideally, starts with the interest in the material to be studied and learned. Genuine interest is the best and ideal stimulus to learning and education. External goals like grades and future competitive advantage are also good stimuli, but they are not as good as genuine interest. The principal agents of instruction and learning are not teaching devices but the teachers.

• Purpose of Education – Having a purpose in the future is the primary purpose of any act of learning in the educative process. Secondary to this is the pleasure that learning gives people. Learning should take us to a better position and it should enable us to take ourselves to better positions more easily in the future when we want to do so.

• Evolution of Knowledge – Knowledge should involve mastery of the fundamental ideas and general principles. The educative process continues as the knowledge progresses towards fostering of an attitude toward learning more and inquiry. It further develops into an attitude leaning towards educated guessing and informed hunches. Furthermore, it should grow into the ability to solve a learner's own problems and the society's in a larger scope.

• Retention of Learning – To be able to retain learnings, a learner should remember details of the knowledge structure. Persons in different stages of development have different characteristic ways of looking at the world and rationalising it to the self. Thus, a teacher or educator should introduce and present a learning subject with the same way a person views or group of persons view. The third is the evaluation which is checking whether how we used the information is sufficient or appropriate to the task.

• Processes Within – The process of learning a subject appears to come in three nearly simultaneous processes. The first one is the acquisition of new information. Most often, this information runs against or replaces what the person has known beforehand. The second process of learning can be referred to as transformation which is the process of using knowledge in doing tasks.