My youngest is going through the UCAS process at the moment. What I hope is the last parent’s evening I may have to attend took place recently and it proved quite eventful.
At one point, one teacher gave a presentation underlying the importance of choosing a university, not on the basis of its historical reputation, but instead on recent success indicators such as the quality of training and the likelihood of gaining useful employment once graduating from there. They then displayed a list of 20 universities and next to it a list of careers. The university list included all the usual suspects (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham), many a red brick (Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol) and many of the newer institutions. The careers list included law, medicine, dentistry, veterinary studies and, interestingly, optometry. Parents were then given the task of matching the career with the university rated most highly for each career option. The point of this iconoclastic exercise was to change parental mindset about assuming some universities would be best for certain careers.
And the university considered the ‘best’ for optometry? Glasgow Caledonian. Indeed, fee-free Scottish universities did well all round. Good to see our taxes being spent wisely above the border.
On discovering I was an optometrist, I was cornered by someone who presented me with two prescriptions for spectacles, each from a different practice and resulting from eye examinations one week apart. Both had minimal plus sphere, but one had -1.50 cylinders, the other -0.50 cylinders. Both practices had recommended specs for computer use. Which, I was asked, do I suggest they use? My ramblings about the subjective nature of refraction did not assuage their concerns and I resisted the temptation to suggest they went to Scotland for a recheck. I’d love to know how you deal with these sorts of questions.