There is, to my mind, supposed to be a categorical distinction between A-Level education and University level education in that in the former, you are still taught - albeit to a much higher level than in all preceding stages of secondary education - but in the latter, you are not ‘taught’ at all - you are questioned and guided but YOU do the teaching: from your own research and reading and ideas and thoughts, to yourself and your peers while the lecturer or the seminar tutor oversees the process.

And yet… This is actually the case in very few contemporary university courses it seems to me.

My conclusion is: the academic atmosphere I have described could not continue if the university entrant numbers were to go up so university education has turned into ‘post-A-Level’ education.

This is not, to my mind, what university level education was intended or has the potential to be - and the current prevailing system is to everyone’s detriment: to employers, to professors, to the students themselves and to society at large.

Any one considering it, please don’t do it.

“I think it is quite entertaining that people, who I am assuming consider themselves to be good business people, reject an idea because of a couple of, what seem to me as being, bitter comments from a companies ex-journalists.

When a company has a high staffing level and in turn large client base then there are going to be times when people do not get a level of service they require, and maybe in some instances unfairly do not get (which my point is not arguing)”

i am glad that your experience is different, but a lot of people don’t seem to enthralled by the service. Yes the comments were bitter, as Adfero are a very exploitative employer, and so you’re naturally going to feel bitter towards them as an ex-employee. But i think the comments from ex-employees help explain why a reasonably high proportion clients are so unhappy with the customer service they’re given by Adfero, and the unremitting contracts they’re locked into.

“Are you all suddenly going to stop using Microsoft packages because for the last 20+ years they have exploited everything and everyone it touches! ask yourself that one!”

But Microsoft don’t exploit all their employees. Microsoft packages don’t get rewritten everyday and then plonked on the front page of your company’s public-facing website also, so potentially embittered Microsoft employees aren’t such a concern.

“I feel that the Adfero Direct News concept is fantastic - in order to employ a semi-decent content editor would cost me upwards of 25k and with reference to the content they produce - I dont expect them to be on the front line in Iraq giving me unique reports!!”

You can get cheaper and better alternatives elsewhere, according to a lot of people. But fair enough if you feel the service does what you want

“Back to my reference to Microsoft - do you think that Bill Gates became the power and money magnate he did from being nice, paying fairly and sprinkling everything with fairy dust!!!”

What has Bill Gates personal wealth got to do with anything? Adfero barely breaks even, so i don’t think it’s owners are quite in the Bill Gates realm yet. Also, it’s great that you judge a potential service company by how poorly it treats its employees - the worse, the better in yoru opinion?

“Wake up people - if you have been “exploited” then more the fool you, you probably didnt have the writing talents in the first place”

So everyone who works there “probably has no talent as a writer”!! I don’t have any talent, as a writer, but plenty of my colleagues had a lot of talent. Why are you trying to use some wild and moronic generalisation as justification for Adfero’s exploitational employment practices?

Your obviously someone who doesn’t care about making a reasoned argument, but rather are more interested in spewing a load of sales-oriented stupid crap, so i can see while Adfero’s content would appeal to you.

It’s true that value can be stored and specialisms exchanged in other ways - promissory notes for example: I’ll design a web page for you in exchange for delivery of 1 basket of fruit every day for 20 days - but that’s just an inefficient kind of money, isn’t it?

As is so often the case, businesses which treat their staff poorly also have contempt for their customers. If Adfero works for you, then fine - in our case, the return was nothing like 6:1, and any ‘value’ from supposedly providing unique content was negated by the amount of duplication going on in the stories.

When a company has a high staffing level and in turn large client base then there are going to be times when people do not get a level of service they require, and maybe in some instances unfairly do not get (which my point is not arguing)

Are you all suddenly going to stop using Microsoft packages because for the last 20+ years they have exploited everything and everyone it touches! ask yourself that one!

I feel that the Adfero Direct News concept is fantastic - in order to employ a semi-decent content editor would cost me upwards of 25k and with reference to the content they produce - I dont expect them to be on the front line in Iraq giving me unique reports!!

The solution is cheap - if they want to pay peanuts and employ monkeys, fair enough, as long as the content saves me time, gets me seo recognition and keeps the cost down then who am I to argue with someone who was bright enough to have the idea in the first place.

Back to my reference to Microsoft - do you think that Bill Gates became the power and money magnate he did from being nice, paying fairly and sprinkling everything with fairy dust!!!

Wake up people - if you have been “exploited” then more the fool you, you probably didnt have the writing talents in the first place, and if you are a business person that rejects the idea because you dont like the way they treat staff then you are an idiot….period!

I make a lot of money from the service that I have feed 6 websites - it costs me what it does but have a direct roi ratio of 6:1 - need i say more!!

YOUR LOSS!!

I came across your blog from A4U forum’s “Who’s attending” A4UExpo thread. I have heard your name mentioned before and the impressive things you’ve done with flightmapping. Coming from a fellow technical/programming-minded affiliate marketer, I was both intrigued and inspired.

I’m hoping to bump into you at A4UExpo and grab few minutes of your time.

As I’ve said here and on my other posts, I’m picking it all up as I go along, my key goal right now is very simple - just to build up followers, with new sites and a major re-launch for my main site, Flightmapping.com in the pipeline. I am also working to get the outline of another new site done in time for next week’s UK affiliate expo.

No doubt I’ll keep you posted on progress,

Cheers, James