I know that this is primarily a business blog and I try to keep things on topic in the hope that I can build a reader base or genuinely interested people. In the last week however I have been having a lot of heated discussions about the UK student riots in London and and I am intrigued by the differing viewpoints on this issue.
One voice I keep hearing from the liberal media, left leaning parties, the students themselves and some apologists that I have associated with during the period of these mass civil disobediences, claims the following.
1. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are having their hopes of attending university and therefore the better prospects for social mobility, crushed but a totalitarian, oligarcist regime that is only interested in maintaining Britain's "unfair" status quo.
2. The police are to blame for the violence by perpetrating violence against the rioters.
3. The students behaved in this way because they feel that they have no voice and are being oppressed.
4. It is the duty of government to redress the imbalance in UK society and to therefore fund "social mobility".
I take exception to all of these points.
I don't believe for a second that the Met ever escalated the violence at any of the marches. I can clearly remember the incident where just 12 non riot equipped members of the MET held off thousands of students attempting to storm Tory headquarters. During this engagement, the students behaved disgracefully, throwing potentially lethal projectiles at the police who were a model of restraint. In the same vein, what had HRH Prince Charles done to escalate the violence so that he was seen as a legitimate target for malicious attack.
The students do have a voice, not only are they all of voting age and therefore able to make use of the democratic system in place in this country. There is the e-petition system in place that no doubt many of them are aware of. Each student union would have contacts in the local and international press who would also be only too keen to have a real story with which to hold the government to account. Students of the UK, you are not oppressed! I don't even think you know what that word actually means.
Under the new system, no one will be deprived of an education, student loans will still be in place and the threshold of when they need to be paid back is also being raised to £21,000 per year. Education will not be unattainable, just more expensive. The government has also put in place bursaries and a number of other schemes to make university more attractive to people from less privileged back grounds.
This I am sure is partly because of my upbringing in a very conservative society and also because as a tax payer and someone who has worked with lots of different people and companies during my career, I have learned the one most vital lesson that the screaming left are being deprived of.
"Hard Work Pays"
Now my own views on socialism and benefit culture are probably somewhere right of centre but I am also not immune to the injustice in the economy of this country. It does make bile rise in my gullet every time I hear of the obscene treatment that superstar top end executives get in banking and media. I would like to see something done about the levels of top end executive pay however I believe this action should be taken by boards of directors and the shareholders who should be taking them to account over these issues.
This does not I believe condone the fact that we have a generation of people in this country that have been brought up to believe that the state owes them a living. From the worst case scenario of a teenage girl deliberately bearing children to scam the benefit and housing system to the lower middle class who object (Violently!) to paying a market rate for their education.
This makes me think, what is the point of a University education? A number of friends and colleagues who have attended Uni in the UK freely admit that the university experience is mostly messing about, drinking too much and very, very little learning.
If you have people graduating without a clear vocational course ahead of them of what benefit is it to the UK taxpayer to fund the higher education of someone who works as a shop assistant in their local TopShop. To put a cost to that, at current rates, university tuition costs £5,000 per year plus living costs of easily another £5,000 annually. That's a direct cost of £10,000 per year so for a three year course a student loan of £30,000 would be required. This for the moment, is money from the government purse.
Another cost to the UK taxpayer, is the top up funding to universities which can be conservatively estimated at another £5,000 per year per student and over that same 3 year course so add another£15,000 to the bill.
That leaves the taxpayer picking up a bill of £45,000 per graduate.
The next step in how we lose out is what if, that student took a useless degree like Golf Course Management at the University of Birmingham or David Beckham Studies at Staffordshire University. Not that I am picking on the Midlands, I am sure they are a wonderful place full of interesting and friendly people however, I can't see anyone getting a well paid job in a hurry with one of these degrees. In this case, the student goes on to work in retail or as a golf caddy earning about £12,000 a year if they manage to find full time work at all. This means that the student loans they took out (using the word "loan" loosely) never get paid back, ensuring that the UK government has to write-off their entire investment of £45,000 in the tertiary education of this citizen.
It is not however the young people of Britain who are to blame. The media, educational institutions, and the HR profession have convinced everyone that the only way to get ahead in life is to have a University degree. In the last 20 years we have seen a huge rise in the amount of jobs requiring a person to have a degree or be a "graduate". Very often, there is not even a requirement that the candidate hold any relevant qualification just that they are a "graduate level" candidate. This is a very unhealthy situation for the UK economy because as we have previously established, the taxpayer bears the burden of funding these excessive qualifications.
I think it is time that we considered weather or not a University education is in fact the best way to encourage social mobility as degrees become more prevalent they also become less useful as a means of differentiating between job candidates. Perhaps we should look to the example of other developed nations such as Sweden or Holland where it is true that the government does fund education at least as generously as in the UK. In these countries, the education is much more targeted and multi tiered. In a nutshell, you will not leave the Dutch education system without the skill required to be gainfully employed.
An example of superfluous education is the requirement of a Nursing Degree. Nurses are valuable members of society and no one would refute the need to have qualified able people employed in the nursing profession. Surely there are much cheaper, faster and less exclusive ways of getting people to a standard where they can safely and confidently work in this profession. Ditto for school teachers, accountants, engineers etc...
I suppose to sum up my thoughts on this matter are, if you want to be a doctor , a lawyer or for the time being a teacher and this is your genuine ambition, please go to uni, enjoy it, work hard and I am sure you will find it a good investment in your future, whatever it costs. If you want to drink and hang out with your friends while you study art, you'd do better going on holiday to Thailand with your mates and not making the government pay for it.
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