University Education might not quite be my specialist subject, but if I could get a dual-geared time machine and wind it back so I could be in the Teviot bar at Edinburgh University discussing politics with a certain ‘future’ prime minister of ours, I would tell him exactly what I told his predecessor Tony Blair on Newsnight 6 years ago. I said then and I say again now that we have too many people going to university chasing increasingly de-valued degrees, whilst we still can’t sort out getting the basics right in school subjects such as Maths and English.
Teflon Tony liked to duck and dive his way round most people, and on that particular edition of the programme, he fended off a range of questions from irate students and their representatives, yet each time he gave his characteristic “what I say to you” or “well I’d like to help, but”.
Somehow, I managed to get him a bit more agitated, as he instantly snapped back saying that he “totally and utterly disagreed” with me. Granted, I had just compared him to a sofa salesman, by pointing out that the whole culture of study now, pay later would result in a glut of over-educated but unemployable students who were saddled in debt.
But now it looks like the government are finally realising that they can’t just spend their way out of the next education crisis. Nor can we keep pretending that having half the population go through a university course will be of benefit to the wider economy. Back then, the argument was that we needed more degrees so that we could compete with developing countries like India and China. Talk about a race to the bottom!
Now we will get the factory-farmed two year degree as standard. What should really matter in education is teaching people how to think for themselves. The best learners are the ones who want to learn and who can take their own initiative. Somehow I just don’t think that kind of entrepreneurial spirit is the sort of thing Old Labour want people to know about.
