The United Kingdom’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham may imagine that the best way to solve his underproductive country’s many economic woes is to go on a spending spree as, to the alarm of penny-pinchers in the Treasury who worry about such things, he would very much like to do but when it comes to education, his approach is rather more realistic. Days after taking office, he said schools would have to change their curricula to make them meet the needs of local business concerns and, while about it, try to see that technical and vocational skills become as highly regarded as the traditional academic qualifications used to be. It seems he has in mind something akin to the dual German system in which most youngsters are enrolled in apprenticeship schemes, with only a smallish minority going onto university where they devote themselves to less plebeian concerns.
The UK is not the only country whose most influential politicians have come to the conclusion that encouraging as many young people as possible to get a standard university degree was a big mistake. Unfair as it may seem, most are simply unable to cope with the more demanding subjects so, to overcome that little problem, many courses had to be dumbed down. While this was going on, pressures from well-organised campaigning groups led to a proliferation of what would be ridiculed as “grievance studies” and “Mickey Mouse” degrees.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the mercifully short period of university expansion and the grade inflation accompanying it appears to be approaching its end. The reason is straightforward – it cost a great deal of money. Beguiled by the opportunities they assumed they were being offered, huge numbers of people went into debt by taking out student loans only to discover, as time went by, that in the labour market their degrees were worth little.
In the United States, it is estimated that the outstanding student loan debt totals approximately US$1.8 trillion while in the UK it amounts to an equally onerous US$433 billion. Though most of it is unlikely to get repaid, large numbers of people have seen their prospects ruined as a result. Attempts by governments, such as Joe Biden’s, to placate former students by writing off their debts have come to nothing – degree-less working-class folk are understandably against having to hand part of their earnings to those among the better-off who spent their college years dabbling in gender studies or even a respected branch of the humanities that, rightly or wrongly, most prospective employers believe is irrelevant to their needs.
Something like this was always bound to happen. Basing their proposals on the “blank-slate” hypothesis according to which virtually anyone can master a difficult subject such as higher mathematics if given a decent chance and it is reactionary to suggest otherwise, the people who wanted a far larger share of the population to acquire university degrees thought they were striking a blow against privilege. They refused to recognise that if degrees became plentiful, they would be less valuable than they were when barely five percent of the population managed to get one. They also opposed proposals to make the best universities fiercely meritocratic in order to replace dullards from wealthy families with talented but hard-up students. What the social engineers wanted was equality and they were prepared to go to just about any lengths to reach it.
Burnham, who (as it happens) has a Cambridge degree in English Literature but makes much of his gritty “northern” provenance, evidently appreciates that it would be far better for millions of young people to learn a trade and the work ethic that goes with it, than to waste their time either studying a subject that does not really interest them or, as some disgruntled souls say is frequent nowadays, letting themselves be indoctrinated by a political commissar posing as a university lecturer who is determined to tell them that the UK is essentially evil.
Whatever his motives, Burnham has it right. For most people, making or repairing things, and doing it increasingly well as time goes by, can be a source of pride and therefore of self-respect and social prestige. This has been true for thousands of years and it will surely remain so, especially if, as many now take for granted, technology continues eating into still well-remunerated professional occupations and providing more and more people with far more leisure than most would like to have. What is more, educational authorities not only in the UK but in most other countries, including Argentina, are finding themselves obliged to take into account the difficulties caused by a severe shortage of men and women with the skills that would enable them to fill the many jobs available in industry or related activities. Though it is true that, as we are repeatedly told, in the long run a country’s economic performance will depend on the educational attainments of its inhabitants, this does not mean that all disciplines are equally valuable: a surplus of lawyers, say, or psychologists, will contribute far less to the general welfare than a similar number of entrepreneurs or scientifically-minded farmers.
Throughout the world there are millions of people, many of whom are now middle-aged or on the verge of retirement, with university degrees of one kind or another who, to their despair, have found out that they do not guarantee them a well-paying job. After letting themselves be persuaded that, as had been the case several decades earlier, having one would make them members of an élite, they belatedly discovered that, by becoming commonplace, the diplomas they had worked hard for and got into debt for would be worth far less. Had they decided 10, 20 or more years ago to take up a less prestigious but more useful activity, they would now be far more comfortably off and, if so inclined, could spend their spare time studying Renaissance art, philosophy or whatever else really matters to them.
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