Fighting in the Streets (part 1)

GM HQ has been reverberating to the sound of well spoken demonstration and anger this week as we've been watching the student demonstrations with a mix of amusement, anger and jealousy (they have so much hair and free time!).

Having been chatting about the why's and where-fores, its become apparent that this issue has caused a minor split in Camp Chrome - a split that highlights the subtle differences between C-Bomb and I. While we are united on drum machines, a decent pint and girls that aren't afraid of their brains - we do not always speak with one voice. Personally I'm a little french in my opinions on the relationship between violence and democracy...

C-Bomb will be loading up his thoughts shortly - in the meantime here's why I think the whole mess happened and what we can do to ensure further education that is both free and worthy.

Blair’s penchant for the double triplet was never more famously illustrated than in the run up to the 1997 general election he promised that his "government's passion" would be "education, education and education. Then, now and in the future."

This was followed by huge investment in infrastructure teachers and most fundamentally what higher education meant in the UK. Vowing that half of all young people should receive a University education, the number of universities and degree courses exploded and I feel created the circumstances that lead to thousands of current and future students pursuing the democratic process directly to every branch of government (including the future head of state).

The effort to bring much needed egalitarianism to the academic world seems to me to be have been confused. Its legacy has been the dilution in the quality of courses and inevitably that of graduates, as well as a grossly over weight system which we can no longer afford.

The increase of the numbers of people who can (with hopeful embarrassment) place a BA or BSc after their name has not been reflected in an increase of graduate jobs or in the lowering of standards and requirements in the world’s best businesses, research centres and academics.

The net result of this experiment is that we now have the most qualified and indebted (if sadly not most educated) call centre operators in the world…

It has created a situation akin to the evil machinations of Buddy Syndrome in The Incredibles – “If everyone’s super then no-one can be.”

I find the word everyone to be interesting in the context of further education and perhaps offers a solution to the funding issues that have created the need for fees.

Even the most hardened of left leaning ideologues must realise that there are differences between people, their backgrounds and potential contributions to society. The efforts in the 20^th Century to treat people as equal homogenous units failed and lead to the almost unimaginable horrors of modern totalitarianism. The challenge for those that wish society to be fairer is now in creating equality of access and opportunity. In simple terms University should be available for anyone not just provided to everyone.

Piling higher education high and selling it on cheap credit solved neither the funding issues that universities had nor created any meaningful equality. The cost of the increased fees as well as living expenses while not working will simply put off many from attending. Their decision to go to university will not be based on ability or ambition but on grubby economics.

I understand that the loans will not need to be repaid until they are earning a “reasonable” amount at a time later in their lives. This will be the time when they will be hoping to start a family and buying their first all-too-expensive house. The prospect of a debt, second only to a future life-long commitment to bricks and mortar will be too much for the children of many ordinary families – who often will not have an older sibling or relative who has already been to university and whose parents may never have finished school. We have reaped the whirl wind of an economy based on debt – what will the provision of knowledge and understanding based on debt bring?

The personal result for those ordinary children that are still brave or smart or ambitious enough to go to university will be to push them into choosing “practical” courses with well defined and reliable earning potential. Thus securing the most regarded but more esoteric subjects in arts, philosophy and sciences, as well as the joy of learning for its own sake, to the elite where they are already over subscribed.

An alternative would seem to be to focus the funds available on quality not quantity. Understand how many good standard courses and graduates we actually need and provide them for free to all.

There are cultural barriers to having equal access to higher education and I have no idea what we can do to alleviate these. I think we can however start by removing the economic barriers and make the joy and benefit of higher education available to anyone who has the chops to take advantage of it.