Friday 11 December 2015

Simple book keeping and account aggegators


Related:
Choosing a UK business bank account
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2015/07/setting-up-shop-with-uk-business-bank.html
Free, Fast and Pretty: shopping cart software for ecommerce
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2015/06/shopping-cart-software-for-ecommerce.html
Simple Bookkeeping and Account Agregators <this page
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2015/12/simple-book-keeping-and-account.html
Free Online Bookkeeping Software for Simple Accounts
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2016/08/free-online-book-keeping-software-for.html

These are just some notes-in-progress about account aggregaters considered for income tax but not VAT, and for the self employed. It's relevant if you're choosing a bank account as well, because you'll quite likely want an account that works with one of these if you're self employed and using it for business. There's another post about choosing a bank account

Making tax digital - why a lot of people are changing tax software this year

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/115895 says under "full response" that automatic quarterly tax updates will be expected by software links, and that this is part of a grand design here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-tax-digital

Yorkshire building society's version of eWise closed with very little notice, and Quickfile's service for over 1,000 lines of data a month began to charge.

Even if services don't close, it can make sense to have some card accounts on one online accounting system and one on another. Details of cards used for one purpose - like postage - can rest on one online service, used only if there is a tax inspection. The rest can rest more simply on another used for year-to-year tax returns.

When services close, there's a problem of what to do with saved data in one format when your new software wants them in another. The .qif format is something I never want to use again, but the rest are capable, I guess, of conversion. http://www.csvconverter.biz/ does some of it online. I had to use the older version to cope with odd columns in files, while keeping a total, and I had to use one of the apps on https://labs.crunch.co.uk/ to convert Santander text files to something more common.

While writing this, I discovered the world of payroll software. See the section on downloadable software below and Adminsoftware.biz
Since writing this blog post I've found the getapps site, which assumes all online accounting software is paid-for or "fremium" but lets a few free services join the list. It's possible to sort by areas of the world served, the kinds of businesses that review the app or that it's intended for, and that's it. It can't search for all the programs with bank integration. Some free-ish programs I hadn't heard of are Slickpie.com and Gemmaccounts.com. Another site lists Zipbooks.com, with its own time-tracking software built-in. Odoo.com is over my head because it offers so many apps, as is Inexfinance.com that's something to do with import export. There are probably others, but I started by looking at ways of downloading UK bank data easily and free, usually via Yodlee, so I will stick to that.




Account downloading software overlaps with free online book keeping and accounting software, with programs like Waveapps here at the overlap, followed by more account downloading software.

There is more about accounting software near the bottom of this page, but for neatness I've started a fresh blog post about it - https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2016/08/free-online-book-keeping-software-for.html . It's a shorter blog post listing the free online accounting software that cropped-up in a search for a UK freelance business.



Waveapps

    https://www.waveapps.com is one I'm trying to use now.

    It is more than an app for downloading bank statements; it can write invoices, keep track of bills, run accounts for both of those, reconcile the bank statement lines with different categories, and more. It has a nifty system for accepting bills by email too.


    Good points:
    • It can log-on to UK banks., and can eventually classify this data into its own categories, such as "computer services" for money that comes via Paypal.
    • Invoices can be sent from the program to integrate with it.  They can work with its 1.9% stripe card processing account. When I told waveapps that I had a limited company, the upselling link changed from "save money" to "business deals", and the stripe rate fell slightly.
    • It can split lines of data between categories. This takes a while to find but it's there (put another way, the interface is deceptively simple). If you have a card that you usually only use for paying bribes, which are a business expense, but one day you use it for buying drugs, which are private, then you can label that line as split between two headings.
    • It has heard of VAT and has boxes for itemising input taxes or output taxes on each record of money in and money out. I think it can calculate backwards from the total how-much of a payment is VAT.
    • Payroll in the US or Canada with US or Canadian taxes applied
    Bad points:
    • Payroll only works in the US or Canada according to the menus.
    • It can't be taught how to recognise lines of data from the bank statement and categorise, as can Yodlee and even some of the banks themselves like Starling Bank.
      Waveapps has some system, but this system can't change; paypal income will always be "computers and internet", rather than "sales". I wasn't sure but this more detailed review by Katherine Miller reaches the same conclusion after checking discussion threads and forums.
    • Slow rendering of old data. The program discourages checking of balances in order to reduce the need. Balances are only shown if you display one single account like a bank account in date order. Then if you see that that balance is wrong, and want to go back by screens of 50 or 100 lines over several screens'-worth of data to find the mistake, you have to wait five minutes at each search. Entering dates to narrow down the search in another way is just as slow. As a result, you need to check your data before sending this to an accountant; nobody at an accountants' office can charge you a low fee while waiting five minutes for each screen to load just to check a mistake.
    • No keyword or number search. You can order a period of data by date or amount or I think by name, and you can sort some of the columns, but I have not found a Control+F function or anything more subtle; it's designed to discourage strains on its database
    • Jeremy Marsan's review from the USA compares waveapps to similar products that cost so-much-a-month. It also has a comments section for the disgruntled. These features and integrations are cut-and pasted from his review.
    • Features

      Features it has                            
      Features it Does Not have
      5 Types of Accounts
      Categorization/Automation Rules
      Auto-import Bank Statements
      **Payroll
      Invoicing
      Time Tracking
      *Payment Processing
      Inventory Management
      Multi-Currency

      *Payment Processing available via Stripe integration
      **Payroll software available as an optional add-on

      Integrations

      Integrations it has
      Integrations it does not have
      Payment Processing (Stripe, Paypal)
      Cloud Storage (Google Drive, DropBox)
      Etsy
      Project Management (Basecamp, Asana)
      Shoeboxed (receipt scanning)
      Time Tracking (Toggl, Harvest)

      CRM (Zoho, Salesforce)

      eCommerce (Shopify, Big Commerce)

      Tax Prep Software

      Digital Signature

      Zapier
       
    • Glenn Martin reviews the most used so-much-a-month products from a UK accountant's perspective, leaving out waveapps altogether but including some price breakdowns for the others.

    Wonderbill new 2017

    This has just come-out mid-2017 and isn't reviewed here.
    https://www.wonderbill.com/ - "enjoy all of your bills in one place". It logs-on to the bill providers' web sites and not banks, apparently. "We make money by recommending better and cheaper deals." - "a One-Stop-Shop when it comes to managing your bills and saving money."

    Yodlee

        • moneydashboard version of yodlee

          Moneydashboard is set-up to monitor your personal spending, and is worth comparing with Buxfer further down the page.
          Moneydashboard automatically logs-on to your bank accounts and backs-up a few years' data for free.
          It gives you the odd spending graph and anticipated regular payment on a screen if you want.
          It can remember budgets and tell you if you are over-budget or under-budget.
          It learns to categorise transactions if you want.
          With practice, you can download data for one bank account or all of them into a .csv file.

          Users can download the resulting categorised transaction lines as a .csv spreadsheet or read them alongside self-set budget headings or expected regular payments on the dashboard site.
          This is the list of supported banks from December 2015: AA | Adam & Company | Amazon | American Express | Asda | Bank of Ireland | Bank of Scotland | Barclaycard | Barclays | Beta | Birmingham Midshires | Cahoot | Capital One | Cater Allen | Citibank | Clydesdale | Derbyshire Building Society | FairFX | First Direct | First Trust | Halifax | House of Fraser | HSBC | ICICI | Intelligent Finance | Investec | John Lewis | Lloyds | Marbles | Marks & Spencer | MBNA | Metro Bank | Mint | Nationwide | NatWest Bank | Nedbank | Newcastle Building Society | Next | Norwich & Peterborough | NS&I | Opus | Post Office | Principality | Royal Bank of Scotland | Saffron Building Society | Saga Group | Sainsburys | Santander | Scottish Widows | Smile | St James Place | Tesco Bank | The Co-operative Bank | The One Account | TSB | Ulster Bank |  Vanquis Bank | Virgin Money | Yorkshire Bank | Yorkshire Building Society |

          Categories are better than Yodlee for a self employed person. For a start, they come under headings.

          I've put the list at the bottom of this page as Appendix 2.

          The second part - money out - included a list of fixed headings when I first wrote this page, but now allows you to choose your own tags and apply them to all similar transactions automatically. There is a list of what each new release tries to do here:
          https://my.moneydashboard.com/info/releasenotes

          Moneydashboard produces some graphs of how you're spending compared to last month and anticipates repeated payments. It has heard of payees like Royal Mail and Ebay, and allows you to search for a few more that it knows by typing free text, if its chunky drop-down menus don't suggest one.

          When I looked at this first, it was good for what it was designed to do - tracking where your spending goes - but not good for adapting to other purposes. There was no way to have the same category for money in and money out for example. The list of release notes shows regular improvements to it's worth signing-up just to see what happens next.
        • kublax version of yodlee has closed

        • Lovemoney version of yodlee

          You have to sign-up to Lovemoney to see the option; there isn't a direct link to the account aggregator site. It only allows about five categories of spending under "business expenses", and most of the others like "dentist" and "eating out" are similar to the Yodlee ones and tend to confuse if not used for those purposes. Someone on the Moneydashboard help page commnents says that you can set your own categories on Lovemeny.
        • Ontrees version of yodlee

          You have to sign up to Moneysupermarket. This one is slightly prettier with fewer options, for use on smartphones - for example I don't see how you can split a transaction between categories. They tell me by email that a lot of people have requested the ability to re-name categories, and they might do that, but the target audience of smartphone users can't do anything fiddly.
        • Sage version of yodlee

          There was a free version of Sage One online accounts software with a "feed" for one bank account and one user, with no extra credit card account, as priced for the US market and probably others according to this review by Katherine Miller. Nothing shows under "free" if you search their UK web site. Sage is a big UK accounts software firm, so I expect they just used Yodlee's bank feed and that the rest is more like Sage. Maybe their offers are different if you search from the USA.
        • Godaddy Online Bookkeeping Basic Version

          I only know that there is a review of a free ultra-basic version ; bookkeeping.godaddy.com now seems to cost $6.99 monthly or $3 more through their old outright.com url. Maybe the offers are different if you search from the USA.
        • Yodlee version of Yodlee

          Yodlee domestic version looks american at first, but covered the UK when I tested it as a web program. It has been closed to new applicants because of technical difficulties during May 2016
          The smartphone version on another url may have taken-over from this...
          Login on https://yodleemoneycenter.com/apps/mfaregistration.retailpv.doFixed categories are in Appendix 1 below.
          (distraction: https://yodleemoneycenter.com has a business version, but you can't use it for UK banks. "Currently Yodlee Small Business application is not applicable for residents outside US region due to contractual obligation", they tell me.)

          It can log-on to UK banks. It doesn't give a full list but it's probably the same as Moneydashboard below. Smile bank was recognised for example.
          Categories look mainly domestic, but can be sub-categorised as much as you want. As an experiment I added subcategories 1-13 to one of them, all accepted without complaint, so you could pick a neutral category like "expenses" and add what you wanted as a subcategory.
          Categorisation can be taught, which is more useful than waveapps. There is a screen where you tell it that a payment including "to drug" is to one category drug dealer and "to bribe" is another, but it can only categorise into its own fixed list of heading - not the subcategories you add. The list is below. Other features exist on a "finapp" link, including some for business accounting. I haven't tested them yet 
        Not Sure what connection
        • Buxfer.com

          [I don't update this post much, but happened to get an email from Buxfer to say they cease free "synciing" of bank data this November 2017. Syncing is about three pounds a month or more if you want to pay for it, but not free. Try MoneyDashboard. So that's why Buxfer is crossed-out]

          uses something like Yodlee to do a little more than Money dashboard. According to one post online "Based on their implementation I'm guessing they are using the code Wesabe open sourced when they folded.  Pretending to be a valid OFX client and requesting the data from a FI's OFX server pretending to be Quicken or Microsoft Money.". The program also uploads .csv files but hasn't any way of downloading files to your hard disc at first glance.

          A glance at other features shows nothing for tax or accounting beyond the category tags and some pre-set graphs, but a few extras for personal accounts like emails after unusual changes, a calander, and a reminder service. There's a system for sharing information with contacts, in a kind of virtual shared project, which I don't understand and one or two extra paid-for services for predicting spending.

          The free version is good at logging-on automatically and categorising transactions.

          Tagging of bank statement lines is flexible; it doesn't tell you what category to tag a transaction, such as "Paypal: Computer Services"; it lets you tag a transaction and shows you any saved rules for you to edit.

          Editing of descriptions is possible too, and can be automated in a the same flexible way. You can teach it to change a line like "FASTER PAYMENT RECEIPT FROM PAYPAL REF HJLKJHKLJH £30" to "Paypal" if you tell it to change every line with that keyword. It keeps a note of the original so that you can un-do your change later.

          Tagging and description-editing are both better on Buxfer than on Moneydashboard, a similar service.

          eWise

          • www. ewise.com.au/accunity/aa/home.asp eWise is the one I've used before. A shortcut is http://accountunity.co.uk . The site is run a a demonstration in the hope that other companies will pay to use the technology. The demonstration site only works, I think, in Internet Exployer - not Edge or Firefox or Chrome - but Internet Explorer is still available free.

            It has a beta test version which will categorise transactions, show them on a time line, and work on several browsers including smartphones. Unfortunately it will do the categorisation for you, assuming that you have a private bank account. Maybe if enough beta-testers tell them, they will allow tweaking of categories.

            Other companies have paid to use eWise, and tidied it up a bit.
          • citybank version of eWise has closed
          • egg bank version of eWise has closed
          • yorkshire building society version of eWise has closed
          • first direct - page lists all available accounts before registering for "internet banking plus"

            Skip this if your want book-keeping aids. eWise lets you read statements, and that's it: a password storage system and a way of showing your online statement in read-only form. The original version includes some accounts from other countries outside the UK and some non-bank accounts like ebay and oyster.

            The data is not kept anywhere; it is just displayed as your bank displays it, so you are limited to the ninety days or so that most banks let you browse-back over the statements. On the other hand you are more likely to download them monthly if you can remember how to log-on, so this is good to use for downloading data for desktop accounts programs such as Grisbi below. Formats like 1201.xls for January 2012 are good, to avoid duplicates. A catch when learning to use the software is that it opens -up a window on the dashboard part of the screen for your bank, as an unexpected little icon. The pure version only works in internet explorer, although some banks like Yorkshire Building Society managed to tidy-up this fault.

          Bankcontrol.co.uk

          Bankcontrol.co.uk doesn't let new customers open an account from a windows desktop; it could be an android-only application of I could have missed something. The web site hasn't been updated for a few years, so maybe they're looking for business offers. They claim to
          - download years' worth or the maximum possible amount of bank data over wifi (wobbly phone connections aren't recommended) and to be able to
          - translate the bank's labels on your transactions according to your own rules.

          - download NatWest, RBS, Lloyds TSB, HSBC, Santander (Abbey), Halifax, Smile (no credit cards yet), John Lewis Partnership (Waitrose) credit cards

          Beanbalance.com


          BeanBalance.com is a new program that doesn't mention any ability to download data straight from the bank, which doesn't have to be associated with online systems but would be nice. The disadvantage of a cloud-based system remains: they can turn the server off. Two advantages remain. You can use it wherever you are. So can colleagues, like an accountant.
          • Download and import your bank statements
          • BeanBalance currently supports Microsoft Money files, OFX files, Quickbooks or QBO files, Sage Line 50 files and QIF files
          • Additional file format support will be implemented soon
          The software has a good page of information about what it does, but as you can see from the table, the fancy stuff is paid-for. It and Brightbook are unusual in offering free payroll software with upload of data to HMRC for a handfull of staff  - three in this case - which is the main reason for including it on this list. Scroll down the page for downloadable free accounts software that does UK payroll.

          Brightbook: moved to the blog post about book-keeping


            Other online services - with downloadable software below

            • Money.strands.com is no longer an automatic account aggregator and although free had a nag saying "one day left of your free subscription" for a long time, and did work to classify uploaded bank statements. Now it has been redesigned as an apple smartphone app, free to download.
            • https://planner.royallondon.com/Login/ looks like something to try to sell you a pension


            Receipts to records

            http://lifehacker.com/five-best-mobile-document-scanning-apps-1691417781

            Lifehacker lists some of the smartphone apps that will email a photo of a receipt, with a few attempts at tidying-up the picture for text recognition. Some charge. Shoeboxed charges for more than 5 receipts per month per account. Others are free or have a small one-off charge.

            Wavapps have a free service that will recognise your email address and put the picture of a receipt in a form with guessesd fields filled-in for the organisation and amount

            As someone who sits at a desk with a PC, I've never felt the need to scan every invoice  or paid receipt; I just put them in a folder when they're paid. So I haven't tested any of these apps, but as more and more receipts and invoices are available online or come by email, one day it could be worth photographing the last few paper ones just to add them to the same system.



            Downloadable software: Acemoney Grisbi or Adminsoft

            Desktop software has a more stable market now.

            Quicken and Microsoft Money have admitted that they don't want to provide their paid-for downloadable personal finance software with its private formats like .qif or Quickens "sunset policy", designed to try to make you buy a new bit of software every ten years.

            Book keeping software like Acemoney, Grisbi.org, and Adminsoftware.biz can't be withdrawn back-off your hard disk by the authors; it can't be closed on a whim like the online services, it can't be stopped by a broken internet connection, and for better or worse it can't be used by anyone anywhere. Unless you put it on a pen drive, but even that only lets you use it in one place at a time till you loose it.

            The only catch is that, so far, is that they can't automatically download data from your bank statement. Acemoney claim to be able to do it in the USA, but not yet in the UK. You have to remember to do it yourself every month or three and remember what the more mysterious items were after that time when you come to categorise them on your software. You can use eWise to log-in to most bank accounts quickly for downloading.

            I know of these three examples because I used Acemoney for a bit and found it easy and good-looking. It's free for two accounts that link together; paid-for for more. Grisbi is one of the open source options at the simpler end of the market. Adminsoft cropped-up in a search just now for UK payroll software.

            Book-keeping aids are a funny bunch because their users have different needs and their authors tend to be accountants, keen to add an element of double-entry which is exactly what customers like me do not want. That's a problem for the sort of software that you download onto your hard disc. Or, put another way, users want a system that compares entries against a bank statement rather than having two sets of entries in the software. Add to that a problem that open source writers tend to go for interesting subjects, like solving world poverty or doing something artistic, leaving jobs like payroll or book keeping to a few rare efforts. One is a South African accounts program from Pink Software that used to sell on giveaway CDs on the fronts of computer magazines. Another - Gnucash - is used a lot as well. The trouble is that users' expectations are so different, and my expectation was not the same as the expectation expected by writers of TurboCash or GnuCash. Grisbi looks from screen shots to be right for the job, which is sorting lines from a bank statement into income tax categories.

            Acemoney is a pretty and easy freemium program, I found, for users of one or two accounts. The version for three or more accounts isn't free, but even two can be two many as they have to agree with each other in a kind of mental puzzle that the world does not need - there have to be out payments in one account that match in payments in another - so I try to stick to one account. The current version can even download data from some US banks, but hasn't cracked-open the UK ones yet. It's a highly international program with versions in over a dozen languages.

            While giving-up Quickfile.co.uk, I've found a list of other online programs that no longer exist, an obscure one called Brightbooks that only accepts uploaded data in certain column formats, and a thing called https://www.waveapps.com/ which more or less works. It truncates older lines of data down to thirty-something characters, so older imported files tend to have a lot of lines which read "Faster payment to paypal reference p" or some thing not very useful like that. There are also services like Xero which count your money and tell you that there is less of it than before because they charge for counting it.


            Payroll for more than ten people

            For those who pay staff, there are more hitches that can lead back to desktop software.
            Every hundred years the UK government sets-up a compulsory pension system, nationalises it, forgets that it was ever a pension system, and starts again. We are now on mark two, called "Workplace Pension", while the remnants of mark one, called "National Insurance" are still in place alongside the income tax pay as you earn contributions that employers have to manage. Gov.uk/payroll-software/free-software is a starting point to this subject that I know very little about - it looks as though you have to employ staff in groups up to nine, or maybe use HMRC's own software alongside something else, or maybe resort to desktop software from Adminsoftware.biz, who say this about their free downloadable accounts software:
            .... developed specifically for the United Kingdom. It can submit information to HMRC using Real Time Information, and we believe at this time, it's the only free payroll that will allow in excess of 10 employees. The maximum is 250 employees. However, Adminsoft Accounts is primarily an accounts system, and so the payroll is basic. While very usable, and fully compliant with payroll legislation, it does not have some of the 'bells and whistles' that some of the paid for (and rather expensive...) alternative products may have. For example, things like the amount of Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay, student loans, etc. have to be worked out by hand, where as a more sophisticated payroll would work out the amounts automatically. But I don't want to talk you out of using it! In reality, when running a small payroll, working out the odd Statutory Sick Pay payment or what ever is not really an issue.
            Waveapps software will only do anything to do with payroll if you pretend that you are in the USA or Canada, and I haven't discovered what difference this makes - certainly the deductions and reporting will be different.






            https://www.facebook.com/pandlecloud/
            Pandle.co.uk is a free basic uk service. This interview was in early 2016.


            This blog comes from
            Veganline.com, the online shoe shop for vegan shoes boots belts & T shirts mainly made in the UK

            Appendix 1: Yodlee categories

            Advertising
            ATM/Cash Withdrawals
            Automotive Expenses
            Business Miscellaneous
            Cable/Satellite Services
            Charitable Giving
            Checks
            Child/Dependent Expenses
            Clothing/Shoes
            Dues and Subscriptions
            Education
            Electronics
            Entertainment
            Gasoline/Fuel
            General Merchandise
            Gifts
            Groceries
            Healthcare/Medical
            Hobbies
            Home Improvement
            Home Maintenance
            Insurance
            Loans
            Mortgages
            Office Maintenance
            Office Supplies
            Online Services
            Other Bills
            Other Expenses
            Personal Care
            Pets/Pet Care
            Postage and Shipping
            Printing
            Rent
            Restaurants/Dining
            Service Charges/Fees
            Taxes
            Telephone Services
            Travel
            Utilities
            Wages Paid

            Income

            Settings for Income Categories
            Show Category Name New Name SubCategories
            Consulting
            Deposits
            Expense Reimbursement
            Interest
            Investment Income
            Other Income
            Paychecks/Salary
            Retirement Income
            Sales
            Services

            Transfer

            Settings for Transfer Categories
            Show Category Name New Name SubCategories
            Credit Card Payments
            Savings
            Securities Trades
            Transfers




            Appendix 2: Moneydashboard fixed categories

            From 2017 or 18 they allow users to invent new categories and subcategories which can be more work-related such as "bar takings" or "wholesalers". I don't see a way of removing the more domestic headings, but the combination of headings you choose and an ability to recognise transactions makes this a good bit of software for income tax. It doesn't make any tax suggestions, and it won't write an invoice, but the main bit.

            There are help pages which can be read without logging-on
            http://help.moneydashboard.com/entries/22326296-List-of-Available-Tags


            Transactions: IN - scroll down for Transactions OUT for tax return headings

            GROUP NAME TAG NAME
            Benefits Family benefits
            Incapacity Benefits
            Job Seekers Benefits
            Other benefits

            Credit funds received Credit Card Cash Advance

            Mortgage release
            Payday loan funds
            Secured loan funds
            Student Loan funds
            Unsecured loan funds

            Employment Bonus
            Employment – other
            Expenses
            Overtime
            Salary (main)
            Salary (secondary)

            Investment Bond Income
            Dividend
            Interest income
            Investment income – other
            Winnings

            Miscellaneous Bursary
            Child Support
            Divorce Settlement
            Gift
            Inheritance
            Miscellaneous income – other
            Rewards/cash back
            Tax Rebate

            Pension Lump Sum
            Pension – other
            State Pension
            Work Pension

            Property Property – other
            Rental income (room)
            Rental income (whole property)

            Refund Refunded purchase

            Sale
            Clothes
            Electrical Equipment
            Property
            Sale – other
            Vehicle

            Transfer from other account Credit card payment
            Current account
            Gambling account
            Investment – other
            ISA
            Paypal account
            Pension
            Share dealing account

            Transfer from savings Car savings
            Electrical item savings
            Holiday savings
            Other goal savings
            Property savings
            Rainy day savings
            Savings (general)
            Wedding savings

            Transactions: OUT
            GROUP NAME TAG NAME
            Administration Administration – other
            Advertising
            Business Accommodation
            Legal
            Office supplies
            Postage/Shipping
            Printing
            Software
            Staff costs
            Stationery
            Web hosting

            Children Childcare Fees
            Children – other
            Childrens’ Club fees
            Clothes – children
            Nursery fees
            Toys

            Clothing Accessories
            Clothes
            Clothes – other
            Clothing hire
            Designer clothes
            Dry cleaning and laundry
            Jewellery
            Shoes
            Work wear

            Credit Repayment Credit card repayment
            Hire purchase repayment
            Mortgage payment
            Payday loan repayment
            Secured loan repayment
            Store card repayment
            Student loan repayment
            Unsecured loan repayment

            Education Books & Course materials
            Course & Tuition fees
            Education – other
            School fees
            Stationery & consumables

            Financial Bank charges
            Child support
            Divorce settlement
            Financial – other
            Fines
            Interest charges
            Penalty charges
            Tax payment

            Gifts, Charity & Religion Birthday present
            Charity – other
            Christmas present
            Donation to organisation
            Flowers
            Gifts – other
            Religious celebration
            Religious donation
            Sponsorship

            Going Out Caravan/Camping

            Cinema

            Concert & Theatre

            Dining & Drinking

            Going out – other

            Holiday

            Hotel/B&B

            Museum/exhibition

            Social club

            Sports event

            Zoo/theme park

            Hobbies & Sports Art supplies

            Club membership

            Cycling

            Gym Equipment

            Gym Membership

            Hobbies – other

            Hobby Club Membership

            Hobby supplies

            Musical Equipment

            Personal Training

            Photography

            Sports Club Membership

            Sports Equipment

            Home and Garden Antiques

            Art

            Communal charges

            DIY

            Furniture

            Garden

            Home and garden – other

            Home electronics

            Kitchen / Household Appliances

            Lighting

            Soft furnishings

            Tradesmen fees

            Household Broadband

            Coal/Oil/LPG/Other

            Council tax

            Device rental

            Domestic supplies

            Electricity

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            Transfer to other account Current account

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            Vehicle Tax


            Friday 20 November 2015

            Star courses

            the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK - the lowest paid graduates - the worst degree for getting a job - the most boring degree

            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates

            Related: Bad Economics Teaching for the twenty-teens from data on Unistats, 2015 Better Economics Teaching: some off-the-cuff suggestions based on being a 1980s student The British Economic Crisis - a similar book to Robert Peston written in the 80s - Star Courses: the least satisfied, most bored and lowest paid UK graduates, written 2015 Boring Economics Teaching is interesting: how someone managed to teach economics from memories of an old textbook at the peak of the worst recession since the 1930s, and tried to cover-up for government causing the recession. Journal Articles by Professor Les Fishman - unbelievable beliefs - 1980s recession explanations I wrote - UK unemployment 1980s from the Begg 1984 textbook


            Comments and links to Unistats reports were made in 2015. The links still work, linking to more recent data.

            A search of subjects called blank at blank or * at * on unistats a brings-up a list of all higher education course combinations. The first result is local but the second attempt can get all courses if you cancel the suggested area. On the same left-hand menu you can reduce the search from over 27,000 degree course combinations and make your home-grown and improved league table. Results can be sorted again by some review questions on a drop down menu, with some trial and error changing the question to try to make the "data only" box work and then searching another time with a different question. Unfortunately, cost isn't one of the selectable questions but most of the courses over-charge by the maximum amount: £9,000 a year for tuition and management fees alone to UK students outside Scotland.

            I discovered this stuff while writing about economics degree courses, and have another page about their recent scores.

            I started writing about a 1980s economics course. You sometimes read that economics teachers didn't predict the banking crisis in the 2000s and that this was the worst economic crisis for 30 years. I disagree. There was another long manufacturing crisis at worst in the early 1980s, and UK economics teachers couldn't give a damn about that one either, so journalists don't know much about it.

            I think the most interesting information is on the worst UK degree courses for jobs or satisfaction, because those faults are most obvious. The bad courses are not always the worst-explained; staff do their jobs on courses that are hard to explain, like economics taught from algebra and textbooks, and can still score 77% at Keele for being good at explaining things. Also, staff don't get a chance to state how boring their thick lazy students are and how much of the budget goes to managers, buildings, libraries and student unions before teaching departments get a cut to pay for enough staff time. Out of this cut, they have to pay for preparation, teaching and marking time and try to avoid meetings and admin jobs that their managers try to pull them into, such as discussing this blog post.

            Generally, teachers suffer when judged by their colleges and not judged by their courses. Judgement-by-college encourages college managers to reduce the budgets for paid teaching, preparation and marking hours in favour of college-wide spending. The salary for college managers is an example of college-wide spending. The rule is that claiming grants is low-paid if you are on the dole, but high-paid if you run a quango. People who teach and grade essays are paid between these two rates, but closer to the rate for people on the dole than the rate for people who run a quango. Boss-people might argue that their job is hard. I have never done it or been in the running so I don't know. Certainly a lot of good people are forced-out of the career path or choose to leave the career path that would qualify them to apply. Apply to be stared-at by colleagues, to be lobbied, to sit in meetings, to make decisions, and to make sense of a meeting cycle and a library of policies aims and objects that filled the predecessor's office before the unfortunate incident and before flowers were sent to the family while newspaper reporters camped at the gate.

            Specifically: if you want to study, check the course on the prospectus and unistats.
            If you are college manager, encourage prospects to check the course.
            If you invite students to interview, you might drop a hint like "interview about the course on the prospectus", because at age 18 this isn't obvious.
            If every prospective student looked at the unistats scores for each course, and checked the prospectus to find-out what the course was, that would help everyone including teachers, who's worst employers would close and who's best employers would have more vacancies.

            I have a dim memory of trying to research some some colleges before I knew my flunked A-level results. I even went to an interview at one. I asked why the college wasn't better ranked. In hindsight, I should have asked about the syllabus of the course, just to show that I had read the prospectus, which I hadn't. If current applicants learn from my mistake, they will help pass-on concerns about bad economics degree courses, even if like me they flunk their A-levels and have to skip uni or choose the only course(s) on offer. They might say "I have read Robert Peston and want to know more". If the person on the other side says "We start with the most basic assumptions and gradually build-up to Walrasian Equilibrium alongside brown-nosing the presumptions of Wall Street". They might think "maybe we should tweak what we offer", and the student might think "maybe I should give this one a miss".
            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            the courses that got 0%: the worst degrees in the UK on the league tables

            £4,000 a year for four years should buy you part-time coaching from Barnsley College towards a degree called "early years", if you deal with small children. 0% of students thought the course was well organised or smooth. A much more positive 8% thought they got advice, support, or at least notification of changes. Assessment and criteria are organised by Huddersfield university, and are the only aspect to score just over 50%. Nearly a quarter of students thought the staff were enthusiastic or made the subject interesting, and a third thought that there was a subject worth study, or "intellectually stimulating", behind the verbiage.

            No quote is available from the college because none of their student quotes or job descriptions get to the point. The page that should be about the course is about a student who did the course. Maybe the college took legal advice and decided not to make any claim of any kind about what they do to future students. Instead they write a lot about their other work as a sixth form college. In defence of Barnsley College, the unistats web site doesn't rank degree courses by all questions; this was a chance discovery. There may be several UK degree courses that scored 0% on one or more student survey questions.
            Higher education providers produce information for their intended audiences about the learning opportunities they offer that is fit for purpose, accessible and trustworthy. - Quality Assurance Agency expectation
            Leeds College of Health, a mental health service based in the old High Royd Asylum buildings in Leeds, used to coach for degrees awarded by Leeds University in the 1990s. Most of the customers were from certain health trusts in Yorkshire or in Pakistan. Courses were by post and phone - faxes were refused - and tutors were not available to speak to students, even during agreed contact times. Instead a health service worker would try to make sense of what the tutor had decided and whether he had really read an essay or had any idea what the job was other than his own importance. The tutor dissappeared half way through the course, just to complicate things further. After complaints through the system at Leeds University, it looks as though they no longer offer these degrees.

            Reading Uni's Theatre Arts degree was taught one year alongside Education and Deaf Studies. This degree scored 0% for organisation, 10% for time-tabling, advice and support, and 30% for fair marking, feedback on work, and news of changes to the course, which is no longer on the college web site. Presumably they started by thinking "cutting edge - never attempted before", as people with input funding tend to do, and then they discovered that deaf people can't hear very well. Reading Uni web site used to say
            "Our BA Theatre Arts, Education and Deaf Studies is the only degree of its kind in the world. It offers you the chance to study theatre arts, education and deaf studies together, with a focus on sign theatre. Your learning will benefit from our strong links with specialist deaf schools and professional theatre companies."
            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures

            Staffordshire Uni's 15 students of music journalism and broadcasting were 6% satisfied, making it the worst-reviewed course for that overall heading for which statistics are available, although the college site quoted a minority view from a real graduate, stating that he is deputy editor of Base Music Magazine, which isn't real on sites like bing or google or linkedin or journalisted.

            "In what were easily the most exciting and productive three years of my life I can safely say that Staffordshire Uni developed the skills and the attitude needed to succeed as a journalist"
            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            the least remembered course - a question not asked for university league tables

            This question isn't asked, but I guess that recollection of anything about a course after 30 years is a sign that something was working in the brain at the time. I remember more faces, names, scenes, and even bits of syllabus from an arts course than an economics course done as joint honours at the same college. On the other hand I'm demonstrating skills or interests that attracted me to a technical course. Maybe the skills were made better there in ways now forgotten; maybe I pick this stuff up quicker now.


            I suppose nobody can test forgetableness of single-subject degrees because they are forgotten. For example lectures in insurance to business administration students at the University of California in 1949, Would anyone remember the lecturer? Usually nobody, but their lecturer was bounced by injustice into loosing his job and getting other jobs to teach Samualson's forgettable economics textbook by 1965. Some civil rights activists managed to camp at his home for a night:

            "we looked up Les Fishman (economics professor at the University of Colorado) .... They put us up for the night and then we toured the campus the next day.

            Fishman's first observation was the lack of ability on the part of the students to grasp ideas from a textbook. In a way, he has to spoon feed the text, but on the other hand, they won't do any permanent good if they can't develop a little independent thinking among the students"
            . [...] "The bookstore carried practically nothing but textbooks; only Gandhi's autobiography and five or six other paperbacks were available."

            The injustice was that both colleges sacked the man for being a communist, so I hoped that he had some interesting beliefs. Unfortunately, lots of americans think anything unfamiliar is witchcraft or communist, including standard economic textbooks. This man was also a member of some political party with communist in its name, so he was a scapegoat. A stupid thing to join, but there were two leftish parties in the US, one was called Communist and different for approving of war against Hitler - something Fishman volunteered to join as a squaddie for Dunkirk. Less was known about Stalin during the war, and Fishman had relatives in the soviet union; he would not want to get them added to any list by telling anyone anything that would get in the papers about any change to his membership of the communist party.

            More about this forgettable economics teacher on another post about Keele Economics teaching when there were three or four million people unemployed because of a manufacturing crisis in the 1980s. Twenty years later he still hadn't realised that you ask the students what they already know and discover the more obvious material, tell them lots of facts about what they don't already know, then pick a problem and try to solve it with real data and the right button on free software, while explaining a bit of maths to say how the software works. A lot of them mess-up embarrassingly, and get feedback, and that's OK, and students learn how to talk about evidence and disagree. Twenty years later, Fishman had become a better comedian; he liked to interrupt himself with some gleefull thought in class, and he knew his strengths as a paternal-looking character, but he never learnt his job as I saw it. He didn't even hold a tutorial.
            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            the cheapest or lowest-paid graduates in the UK who give figures

            Teenage colleges that coach for degrees among other work with sixth-formers and apprentices tend to score lower for wage rates than colleges that teach 20-odds. Colleges in low-pay low-rent areas tend to score lower. There ought to be some way of weighting the figures for both of these.

            The cheapest graduates are the ones who do stage work in 4 hour shifts as stage hands and actors in low-paid areas for £11,000 a year after paying £7,500 a year to Blackpool And The Fylde College, a college for teenagers which drama students give 100% for satisfaction. Their course was only 9% boring. Hereford College Of Arts students earn an average of £11,000 a year but people from the Blacksmith course might start on £12,000 a year, so fine artists earn less. About fine art at Hereford:

            "A significant number of our graduates go on to undertake further study at postgraduate level in areas such as film, book arts and painting, or a post graduate teaching certificate. Most graduates also continue to practise and exhibit their work nationally, with artist commissions and gallery sales common place."

            Photography crops-up in a lot at the same low-pay colleges, with the same problems of intermittent low-paid work doing an hour or two at a time. These arts departments may suffer because so many bad-pay courses are taught together, so graduates who have got to know each other do not hear of ways to earn more, and then graduate employment statistics are averaged together across the department on unistats if they are small courses. A department of economics or accountancy and photography might do better on the league tables, and give economists and accountants a chance to do some photography. Some Hereford photography and blacksmithing graduates seek self employed work with their own web sites - one part of being able to enjoy life more later-on, so there is a benefit beyond the rate of pay. The blacksmiths also get a chance to hit things.

            Photographers who carry-on working working freelance are probably better paid, because advertisers quote higher rates on job-ads aimed at people with photography degrees. Adzuna.co.uk's job search engine estimates that the worst-paid jobs advertised for specific degrees are hospitality and tourism at just under £20,000 on average, business studies at £20,746, sports science at £21,406, photography at £25,109, and health or social care at £25,194

            Accountancy isn't often seen as a hobby and is generally a good qualification for getting freelance work, but graduates don't get freelance work. At some colleges, not enough accountancy graduates submitted income returns for employment figures or wages to be published. Otherwise, the places to put your gumtree add or advertise to students are Ulster, Queen's Belfast, and Hull where qualified accountant wages can be £14,000 in the year after graduation. One web site tries to chart pay difference by location for accountants, with Northern Ireland as the cheapest place to hire an accountant and Aberdeen the most expensive. Figures are unclear because some courses do not qualify graduates to sign accounts for limited liability at whatever turnover under the companies act. Another measure of graduate employment prospects is the number of accountants signed-up to work remotely with customers of accounting.waveaps.com or quickfile.co.uk or Xero or whatever online software people use (more about online accounts software for free in the UK here). The first site - waveapps - lets you search for accountants by region. Only four of their accountants based in Northern Ireland, so something prevents unemployed accountancy graduates from doing online accounts for Waveapps customers. Maybe the problem is searching by area - maybe other software lets customers search at random or by price, and works better for Northern Ireland accounts graduates. Or not.

            One thing in favour of accountancy courses is that the students are less bored than economics students.
            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            the worst UK degree course for getting a job

            Graduates who are not part of the labour market, like people in prison who do distance-learning degrees in astronomy come bottom of the unistats list because they put "other" as their occupation. The figures are bad at reporting other courses with a distance-learning element, like the cheap courses at Derby and Staffordshire Unis, because a lot of graduates write "other" on their forms. Even product designers from Derby.

            The worst degrees for wanting a job and not getting one are hospitality and tourism courses at University of East London at Stratford. An update, accessed in 2017, is on https://unistats.ac.uk/subjects/employment/10007144FT-SD0412/ and shows better figures.

            They say...

            Hospitality is a growth industry, employing 1.9 million people in the UK alone. Our BA (Hons) Hospitality Management degree will give you a head start in forging a career in this dynamic, exciting sector.

            We began the course in 2013 in response to high demand for a first-class education in hospitality to complement our popular courses in events management and tourism management.

            In your first year, we’ll give you a broad understanding of the culture, leisure and creative industries. Then, in your second and third years, you’ll be able to specialize, with a wide-ranging choice of modules.

            The course will prepare you for all aspects of the hospitality business - managing people, resources and events, as well as mastering the marketing, finance and innovation areas of the industry. Graduates with the knowledge and skills gained on this course are in demand in hotels, restaurants, clubs, cruise liners, airlines, casinos and anywhere else where hospitality skills are valued throughout the world.

            To boost your career chances, we run a dedicated employ-ability programme for business and law students, called Employ. It includes employ -ability workshops, skills training sessions, guest speaker events, voluntary work, student ambassador roles and work experience opportunities.


            Other bad degrees for job-seekers include a lot with "fine art" in the title, and those in related departments with averaged-together statistics like the photography and product design graduates of University of Derby, who paid £6,750 a year part-time. Half the product designers put "other" as an occupation, which I don't understand - maybe it's a placement working somewhere, or maybe they're designing a product. This looks like a degree that I'd quite like to do if I wanted to do a degree, but I don't understand what graduates do next.

            Salford's physics degree has 60% of recent graduates clearly unemployed in 2015 and most of the rest doing admin jobs or ones not related to physics.
            https://unistats.ac.uk/subjects/employment/10007156FT-S_P_F

            I think there's a pattern of degrees studying shorthand formulae leading nowhere, except, if you find maths a form of meditation, towards teaching the next generation. Each letter of algebraic shorthand on the wall of a lecture theatre might match one penny off the average salary of last year's graduates, and I hope someone does an MA to test that theory. This is dispute a rapid decline in studying of pure maths and science degrees that might be addressed by The Nuffield Foundation's q-step  and taxpayer cash.

            Petroleum engineering graduates did not strike oil near Portsmouth, which leads to the next question.
            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            least helped at freelancing: a question not asked for degree course league tables

            Freelancing doesn't get mentioned as a way for recent graduates to earn money, which is a pity because, age 20-something, nobody cares that you have just come out of a university, they just care that you haven't done the job before, so you end up doing odd jobs like shifts for employers that need shift workers or anything you can find. A system that helped graduates to risk freelancing, with supervision to catch mistakes, would be great for the ones who are qualified to do something specific. Maybe a rota by which graduates could try to do freelance jobs that came-in to a college or students' union scheme. I might even hire a graduate economist to tell my why Oxford Economics statements about London Fashion Week are wrong.

            Job stats are self-reported by about 80% of students; more objective guides by year and state are very general http://www.slc.co.uk/media/5365/slcosp012013.pdf  Government projections suggest that only 45% of students will earn much over the £21,000 threshold for long enough to repay all their student loans; too many will earn below that figure, which is in the middle of the wage range, for too long to repay the grant that becomes a loan if you earn over that wage.
            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked for degree league tables

            The worst-paid pot graduates are worth a mention because there's a Staffordshire theme to this post and the economics one. Cardiff pot graduates award 38% for clarity and satisfaction while earning a £13,000 graduate salary. I guess a second problem after teaching a technical course is tooling. As a graduate you can't afford a hydraulic press and mould, you wouldn't have anywhere to put it, and you are no longer allowed to use the college one. Small workshops are hard to find. If you rented one, you'd have to sell as well as make just to pay the rent, which is too many jobs to do at once. That could explain another sad fact that the best paid pot graduates weren't anywhere near the factories. Staffordshire Uni pot graduates earn £17,000 in an area of low housing costs while the oddballs who study it with an arts subject at Bath Spa, or at University of the Arts in London, earn a bit more. There is no moulding machine to borrow in London but there is Createspacelondon.org , which might get one in future. I guess that access to a moulding machine makes a big difference to the wages of a potter. Lower housing costs in the potteries might balance-out the higher graduate wages in Bath and London but I still think there's a problem for technical graduates who don't have a ceramics factory or a steel works or a ship yard or a car body press or even a welding torch or a night a week at a restaurant or a day a week on a stall to test their ideas and prove they can do the job.

            The problem could be solved by making sure that machine time, restaurant time, stall time, is available by the hour or by the shift somewhere near the college, just as there ought to be some self-help system for graduate freelancers.

            A course on animal behaviour looks like a bad idea, because anyone could get an animal to do it more cheaply and perhaps better.
            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students

            10 financial mathematics and business studies graduates were 92% bored, 36% clarified, and only 27% advised or supported, and had to try not to be jealous of interested economics students studying yards away at the same address. This is quoted student feedback on the maths course, from the colleges Orwellian web site.

            "As a university, it was a high ranked university in my field. I found the course very well organised and structured, staff and lecturers were always being very helpful and friendly. ... Finally, as a student who has being in Kingston University for eight years, I can say that I am very happy and glad to be here and if I could go back in time, I would have made the same choices again " - quote from a graduate.

            The quote doesn't mention that this graduate is now a teacher on the course: "Teaching Assistant / Demonstrator, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing, Kingston University, London. Provide support during Laboratory Sessions and tutorials, prepare necessary material, support students, any other related work assigned by Module Leader."
            The college management may be Orwellian but they have learnt that university league tables for economics are important, and so decided not to put "economics" in the title of this awful course.

            One of the most interesting-looking economics courses is held a few yards away at the same college and is 85% interesting even to Kingston university students

            There's more about economics teaching on another post - about how it often goes wrong and why this course looks worth a shot of you think of the subject as a bit like politics but more specific.

            Shall I go off the point?
            There was another good science course I did called Nuffield Physics A level. I didn't realise that other science teaching is just awful and that nobody cares. In Nuffield Physics A level, we discovered patterns of events by ourselves with weights and springs and things. Nuclear physics was a bit difficult, but the Nuffield Foundation has commissioned some special polystyrene ping pong balls the rights size so that we can pretend to discover nuclear physics using microwaves more easily than the likes of Rutherford did a few years ago. Frankly the teacher had to help us a bit with nuclear physics. And schools don't like teaching it because of the cost of the ping pong balls. But it was good. No greek shorthand and laws discovered by geniuses needed. No need for traditional physics teaching to continue at all, but apparently it survived because cheaper in ping pong balls and I doubt the Nuffield exam is available any more. The Nuffield Foundation is still going and it looks as though they've had a grant to write teaching materials for economists.

            http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/q-step
            The only discouraging thing is that one of their collaborators is Glasgow University, which has a 45% score for "staff made the subject interesting" on economics courses, so their great physics A-level may be better than their 21st-century statistics teaching.

            Anyway, that was interesting so it can't be good for us. We are here to learn about boring things because they must be good for us if they are boring.

            Electronics engineering at Leicester. is the second most boring course at 20%, so it must be second best for us after the first most boring degree course, dispite a good footwear degree in Leicester and cheap housing.

            Events Management at University of Wales comes third at 21% satisfactory or interesting - "This exciting programme prepares students for a career in the rapidly expanding Events Management Industry" , says the web site. The course is better for job prospects than Tourism or Hospitality at University of East London; 95% of graduates are employed within a year, but at salaries around £16,000.

            Nearby at Swansea University there was an 80% interesting Economics course, run by their School of Management, with graduate wages around £20,000.

            The college states that it no longer fiddles figures and no longer employs mad professor Piercy, who in turn hired his son and spouse to teach, and photographed them next to a symbol of a political party in order to gain alliances. He was interesting for the wrong reasons; this is politics or psychology, not management science. You would expect a rational manager to be interested in students, teachers, and benchmarks at least as clear as the standard ones copied at the end of this other blog post for each subject. You would expect a manager to give or take job security, student places, and degrees in some fair and graded way, rather than fiddling the figures. An external examiner wrote in 2014 that this had been discovered in an earlier visit, but an official report published on the quango web site doesn't mention fiddled exam results or  bullied staff.

            "The University's award-winning approach to staff recognition and development seeks to recognise accomplished teaching and the promotion of student learning. The Academic Career Pathways, aligned to the UK Professional Standards Framework, distinguish career progression routes based on teaching and management from those based on teaching and research, defining core and enhanced criteria at every grade.There is a progression path to professorial level for staff whose main focus is teaching and scholarship and management and student support. External examining is also a criterion for promotion. This approach is clearly understood by staff who value the evidence-based approach to promotion and the flexibility to redirect their career pathway over time."

            The reality of how Professor Piercey operated was different. "The Piercys vowed to drag the school into the 21st century", where it already was. Professor Nigel Piercey's memo stated that the job "is not a rest home for refugees from the 1960s, with their ponytails and tie-dyed T-shirts"; in a blog post he described trades unionists, including staff he line-managed, as "unpleasant and grubby little people" distinguished only by their “sad haircuts, chewed fingernails and failed careers”. Only after loosing thirty staff, including one who said her office was cleared without consultation and her name removed from the college web site while she was teaching a course of 200 students, did he state he had "reached the position where I have differences with the university regarding implementation of the school’s future strategy".

            You would think that the people who hire and fire quango managers would ask them whether they can judge colleagues by ability to do the job as defined by documents like benchmark standards but no: life is not like that.

            They quote:
            "The thing I liked best about my course was the variety... My degree taught me essential skills such as ... how to think analytically. ... Before I started at Swansea I had no clue what to expect, but it was beyond what I could dream of."
            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job?

            I don't know. There are two Piercys, father and son, and they left-off the "mad" bit of their names when applying to work at Swansea University. Instead they sent-in CVs so full of success that you wonder if they had ever failed at anything, and why they did so many different things if each succeeded. Members of the Welsh Assembly also wondered why Nigel Piercy wasn't sacked sooner. The line manager was called Hilary Lapin-Scott and is still working for Swansea University.

            This is the CV of Mad Professor Nigel Piercy. This is mad Niall Piercy.
            Neither CV says they ran a stall or a business - or not near the top of the CV anyway - it goes on a bit and I haven't read the whole thing. It's worrying because so many quango managers have done masters of public administration courses before becoming unfit bosses in public-funded organisations.

            More generally, management science graduates are below-average at getting jobs after graduation, suggesting that management science training by people who are not in business is unhelpful. I hope that there is more employee-involvement in decision-making in large organisations in future, so that the next generation of mad professors gets found-out sooner in their careers.

            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            Employment by subject source: Guardian, 2011
            Medicine & dentistry and veterinary science 99.6
            Education 95.0
            Subjects allied to medicine 94.3
            Law 92.7
            Agriculture & related subjects 91.6
            Biological sciences 91.1
            Languages 90.9
            All subjects 90.4
            Historical & philosophical studies 90.1
            Social studies 89.8
            Mathematical sciences 89.6
            Combined subjects 89.6
            Physical sciences 89.1
            Business & administrative studies 88.9
            Creative arts & design 88.2
            Architecture, building, and planning 87.8
            Engineering & technology 87.7
            Mass communications & documentation 86.0
            Computer science 84.7

            Employment by subject source may be re-hashed in a slightly different way: Forbes, 2013
            Medicine & dentistry and veterinary science 90.6
            Education 89.8
            Subjects allied to medicine 88.1
            Law 67.6
            Agriculture & related subjects 71.2
            Biological sciences 69.6
            Languages 68.9
            All subjects 90.4
            Historical & philosophical studies 65.9
            Social studies 75.1
            Mathematical sciences 89.6
            Combined subjects 67.5
            Physical sciences 63.9
            Business & administrative studies 80.1
            Creative arts & design 77.7
            Architecture, building, and planning 85.0
            Engineering & technology 77.2
            Mass communications & documentation 80.0
            Computer science 75.7
            Star courses: the least satisfied, most bored & lowest-paid UK graduates - the course that got 0%: the worst degree in the UK - the least satisfied graduates in the UK who give figures - the least remembered course - the lowest paid graduates in the UK who give figures - the worst UK degree course for getting a job - least helped at freelancing: a question not asked about degree courses - least access to tools and clusters after graduation: a question not asked - the most bored students in the UK can sit close to the most interested students - Management science question: who gave Mad Professor Piercy the job? - Graduates employment or further study by broad subject, 2011 and 2013

            Which university league table is most reliable?

            Unistats is much the most reliable league table for comparing the courses you want by the criteria you want. The Times, Guardian, and Complete University Guide fiddle the figures, or weight the figures, against good courses at bad colleges and in favour of bad courses in good colleges. They iron-out the oddities so that their university ranking looks tidy and random changes year-to-year don't make too much difference. The result is the opposite of what a student would want. If you want to go to a terrible course at a sought-after college, you should do it deliberately and not discover your decision, as I did, while sitting in the lecture theatre.

            the next post will be about simple book-keeping and account aggregators
            the previous post was about post-crash economics teaching, and the manufacturing crash caused by monetary policy that killed a fifth of UK manufacturing in five years without the professor at my college noticing. We were in a manufacturing area at Keele and there were 4 million people unemployed including about a million on government schemes. I don't know why he thought we'd turned-up to spend years of our lives as students. His first job was lecturing in insurance to people seconded to a college from work, so I suppose he didn't ask himself much why students were in front of him.

            Problems with unistats

            I overheard part of a conversation about this in a restaurant. I went something like "all it reveals is that people are doing their job. Most of the top ranking colleges on league tables are only a tiny fraction away from each other in feedback scores". "Of course there is a long tail, with one or two colleges failing. Blackburn is one".

            Moving on a stage, here are some answers even if they don't make the world better.
             
            • Most of the work of form-filling is done for college managers rather than for the national student survey. If they have a rational reason, it is to anticipate bad scores before they reach the national survey too often, and to avoid hiring badly-scoring teachers. It would be nice if there was a way to do less form-filling for proven teachers, but that's a job for college managers to sort. They also have to sort the problem of students giving over-loyal or over-critical feedback, and of teachers dumbing-down a class rather than risk telling students that they are wrong, or thick, or lazy. I don't have a clear answer for this 
            • Exaggerated differences between good-enough colleges are a feature of league tables in The Times and The Guardian. It's a silly idea. The tiny difference between two colleges might not apply to particular courses at the colleges, and, if it really is a difference, is probably outweighed by things like whether the rent is lower in Leicester than Westminster. The problem is already being solved by colleges promoting Unistats' own web site, which deals with these points. It compares courses rather than colleges. And if gives some kind of score rather than a rank, so you can see that most of the colleges are about as good as each other. So, if you are a teacher and someone asks you about Unistats in a restaurant, tell them to avoid league tables and look for a nice course on Unistats' own web site, bearing in mind that most score pretty well.
            • Most of the worst-scoring courses have changed or ceased because of the survey. I went on one that was something to do with social services, for people who were working in that trade. Similar to the Early Years course at Blackburn. It was labelled as a Leeds University diploma but turned-out to be Leeds College of Health, also known as the asylum there, with various consultants marking essays, and nurses answering the phone. People very much like the ones taking the course. The problem was that consultants could be unreasonable, irrational, pigheaded, and know that the embarrassed nurse would have to cover-up for them. Even while I was on the course it began to break-down; staff left without replacement. It might have closed even sooner if the first group of students had been able to warn the second.

              Related posts

              ukgovernmentconsultations - migration advisory committee call for evidence on the effect of international students
              International students' effect on providers in expensive areas who provide the worst courses

              International Student Course Satisfaction
              Table of feedback scores for the economics degrees for the universities that take most international students. Most of the courses are at the bottom of the league table for student feedback



            Mona from Life Enhancement

            Afterthought
            I wrote
            More about this forgettable economics teacher on another post about Keele Economics teaching when there were three or four million people unemployed because of a manufacturing crisis in the 1980s. Twenty years later he still hadn't realised that you ask the students what they already know and discover the more obvious material, tell them lots of facts about what they don't already know, then pick a problem and try to solve it with real data and the right button on free software, while explaining a bit of maths to say how the software works. A lot of them mess-up embarrassingly, and get feedback, and that's OK, and students learn how to talk about evidence and disagree. Twenty years later, Fishman had become a better comedian; he liked to interrupt himself with some gleefull thought in class, and he knew his strengths as a paternal-looking character, but he never learnt his job as I saw it. He didn't even hold a tutorial.

            After doing a road-to-nowhere degree in another town, I eventually found work in something called the voluntary sector for grant artists, where, once in a blue moon, under-trained and struggling staff are sent for communal "training", if they're not the temps who most needed training. By the end I used to dread it. Nobody in the room has a clue what works, but everyone pretends they already know. We are formed into small groups of people who have never met from different parts of the organisation usually doing different things, and asked to brainstorm. The first question was often something like "what is it that we do?" and someone in the small group - maybe Mona from Life Enhancement - would say "holistic". I used to dread the holistic moment. Any sensible person would be struck by how little we know what works and what for, but Mona wants to get a brownie point by saying we do everything for everyone under the sun as "holistic". Sadly or optimistically, she is part-right: people do lots of things and can do lots of things, but don't know lots of other things and fail at other things.

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