What is Ed?

27/3/12

Guest speaker - Professor David Warner Vice-Chancellor of Swansea Metropolitan University

I was really looking forward to this lecture as I had met the Vice-Chancellor the Tuesday before this in our Varsity Presentation in the Dragon Hotel the night before Varsity, and he was very amusing to listen to and giving a speech. He had some very funny one-liners. So anyway, I went in to this lecture with a very positive attitude!

The lecture was mainly about Higher Education and what it involved. Some of the things Prof. David spoke about where:

× What is education for?
× What do Universities in Higher Education institutes have to offer us?

After much discussion about these two questions he then went on to talk about the biggest benefits of Higher Education. They are as follows:

× Transferable skills
× Allows the learner to find information for themselves – not to be spoon fed by teachers or lectures
× Learners learn to support themselves
× Ability the manage social and professional life successfully
× Learn how to argue appropriately
× Work as a member of a team effectively
× Learn how to draw accurate conclusions and evaluations
× Increase the amount of work done independently

He finished off the lecture with a brief discussion about the future of education and then two questions:

1) Why go to university, and

2) Student fees.

I thoroughly enjoyed this lecture, and I was very glad to see that Prof. David was the same funny, easy to listen to man that made a speech in our presentation.