Internet Commentator

A surfeit of graduates?

I find myself in the unusual position of thoroughly endorsing Chris Bertram's thoughts on third level education and social mobility.

One objection might be that we (collectively) really need all those graduates and that without them we’ll fall behind in the "global knowledge economy". But I’m skeptical. We need some such people, but we don't need people who have spent three years ingesting hogwash lectures about the semiotics of advertising or whatever and have then emerged with their one-size-fits-all 2.1 degree. Many of the people on those degree courses are only on them because they believe they need a degree to get a good job. In many ways it would be better if we waived the credential requirements, got them into the labour market earlier, and saved them the pain of student loan repayments, years of debt, crappy lectures, and so forth.

This is particularly germane given Blair's longstanding project, to which Chris refers, to expand third level education.

Here's a post of mine from January 2004 about a Guardian hack's musings on the value of his education.

Exit and Voice

Great post by Jonathan Wilde which picks up on a (throwaway?) Insta-pinion on public schooling. Glenn Reynold's remark is depressingly familiar and aired by many in relation to education, public healthcare and, defending deception, social "insurance":

I wonder, though, if the increasing availability of private education and homeschooling doesn’t make things worse, by draining off some of the parents whose complaints would otherwise force the system to behave better. At some point, I suppose, the effects of competition will shift things the other way, but that dynamic doesn’t seem to be taking hold, yet.

According to this view, it would be preferable to force or cajole the more querulous parents into public education in order that their "voice" helps to improve the system for all parents. Yet as Jonathan explains, Exit works better:

Voice - having the opportunity to influence an entrenched organization - results in the parents of a child having $4,000 taken from them in exchange for the ability to cast a vote for a new school board every few years and go to a PTA meeting once a month to voice a complaint. This complaint is in competition with perhaps hundreds of other complaints and opinions of how the school system should be run. While compromise can lend expression to several of these viewpoints, only a single final product results.

Exit - having the power to escape entrenched organizations - results in the parents of a child being able to take those $4,000 to give to other service providers of their choosing. Compromise is largely unnecessary as the game is not fixed-sum. The number of potential final products is unlimited.

Education and Vouchers

The thread on the Kerry post below has veered into a discussion about education and voucher systems. Much of the opposition to voucher systems is based on a belief that such systems will inevitably make the education system worse overall and particularly so for poorer children. This would be fine, except that the opposite proves to be the case! Abiola Lapite unearths a World Bank study which concludes:

Some opponents object that vouchers will destroy the public system, aggravate the poverty problem and encourage segregation. Others fear that voucher-receiving independent schools will be regulated out of recognition. Evidence collected in this paper of 20 countries, provinces or states, so far offers no clear support for the negative predictions. The typical voucher system, which is one in which governments subsidize " schools of choice " in strict proportion to enrollment, appears to be contributing to the growth in quantity and quality of schooling.

Mixed Competition

Great post by Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolution, discussing a report on gender differences in competitive environments. The report appears to show that women tend to compete harder when they are only competing with women. Men compete slightly harder in a mixed competition.

One implication of this tallies with a gut feeling of mine, and one which would inform choice of secondary school for my kids. That is, boys may be at a slight advantage attending mixed schools while girls probably do a good bit better in single-sex schools.

Myopic Solipsism

Claire Phipps epitomises the obtuseness of the Guardian pundit who only complains of excessive government interference when it is into something which affects her personally. In this case: women who drink.

Young women have got the government worried. Our drinking is, apparently, out of control. And so the No 10 strategy unit report on alcohol misuse, due this month, is expected to recommend a public information campaign aimed at the "Bridget Jones generation". Concerned department of health officials will back this up with a new Hello!-style magazine, Your Life!, packed with celebrity-endorsed, cautionary tales about the dangers of binge drinking... If it is indeed "our life", may I suggest the government leaves us in peace with our G&Ts?

This wouldn't be the same Claire Phipps who encourages students to protest for greater government interference in the lives of non-graduates, to force them to pay for the students' education?

The Humanities!

Sometimes a Guardian pundit, emulating Tantalus, gets so agonisingly near to the point but still fails to get it. The week before last it was Polly Toynbee with her astonishingly effective polemic for the abolition of all public spending..

why should those without children pay for schools? Or those without cars pay for roads? Or the great majority who never use trains pay for the 4% who commute by rail? Or those outside London contribute £1bn a year to the tube? Or southerners pay for the Angel of the North, while ballet-haters pay for Covent Garden? And why should the majority pay for social housing or tax credits they will never use?

..that somehow managed to conclude with the opposite recommendation. Today sees Stephen Moss ask what he imagines is a rhetorical question:

Was my degree - in modern history - worth £9,000?

Of course the only way to know the answer is if he actually had to pay the £9,000. Moss is evidently unembarrassed by his dilettantism as he explains exactly what he got up to, while "studying" for his degree:

I learned to play crown green bowls, until someone used the bowls to bombard the neighbouring college. I became expert in table football, with one of the most feared forward lines in the junior common room. I had a beer with Ted Hughes and Seumas Heaney after a poetry reading and was hugely impressed by their leather jackets. I saw a lot of Fassbinder films, none of which I can now recall. But £9,000?

Of course, it doesn't seem to occur to him that somebody paid for his education, it just wasn't Moss himself - for the three or four years he idled away his time, watching and forgetting Fassbinder's oeuvre, a plumber was working away fixing boilers so that his taxes could subsidise this layabout.

The best response to the government's plan to create a market in university education is a mass boycott by would-be humanities students

Now, he's edging towards the point,

..some of the most interesting, thoughtful, well-read people I've met since I graduated 25 years ago have never been near a university. The University of Life is free - and has much the boldest and broadest degree courses. Its alumni have read for themselves and learned to think for themselves - for no better reason than they wanted to.

and

Humanities students don't really need to go to university, and if the government wins the day over tuition fees I hope most will save their money - or, rather, spend it on travel, the novels of Henry James and Joseph Conrad (hands up those 20-year-olds who have read both widely), a Nietzsche (typical that I had to look up the spelling) omnibus, histories of ancient Greece and Rome, language courses, theatre and opera tickets, perhaps even the films of Fassbinder.

Of course, this perfect example of common sense isn't a serious proposal. Moss imagines that such a "strike" would force universities to reconsider what he asserts is their utilitarianism and embrace education for its own sake instead of a means to an end. To paraphrase John Holbo: Doubts about the correctness of non-graduates subsidising graduates' education do not fall within the scope of the article, as it were.