Milking the Cash Cow

I first become aware of this phrase when working in Further Education and I confess to being completely disgusted by it. The cash cow in this particular case being the coffers of the LSC which of course have been filled via the treasury via your hard earned cash paid in taxes.

In this particular case it is being discussed in different terms. Milking the cash cow is now moving towards cutting out the middle man. Not taking your taxes to pay for educational establishments to deliver NVQ's but paid direct from you to Colleges and Universities as the Americans begin to move in and buy up some of our educational establishments and turn them into for profit organisations.

Naturally this will open the debate of the quality of provision. Although in my experience there is no reason to suppose that for profit organisations will compromise on the quality any more than is happening now. In my personal experience some of the best courses I have ever done have been provided both by independant educational establishments and in some cases as distance learning programmes. By contrast some of the worst managed courses I have ever attended have been those delivered by traditional colleges as vocational course or franchised courses awarded by a University.

Perhaps this is just the refresher that British Education needs. Who knows, employers might actually be able to tap into training that is meaningful and moves the workforce forward. Lord knows we need it. Perhaps we should start with training the managers in education.

Times Higher Educational