A Degree in Selling Cars

The ripples of the Leitch Report spread far and wide, and it seems universities are not immune to its influence. That, and of course the drive for universities to generate funding, has no doubt led in some small way to the idea that universities need to provide more training to meet employer's skill shortages.

This BBC article talks about Loughborough University's collaboration with Ford to create a BSc in Car Dealership. Going, it seems, are the days when multinational corporations were capable of training their own staff to meet the needs of their business, from the expertise held within the company.

While some may chuckle at the idea, doing it this way does have some advantages for the individual, not least of which is that their training, while useful to the company, will also be a formally recognised qualification.

From the government's point of view this is great because it means more people are getting university degrees (one of their other priorities along with basic skills for the under achieving), but I will talk more about this and the magic growth in favour of the "Foundation Degree" over HNDs and L4 NVQs in another post.