I’ve read Allister Heath’s op-ed in The Daily Telegraph .
I, for one, am glad that someone has written about this – this seems, for my
generation, to be the elephant in the room – the subject not broached, almost a
taboo in certain contexts – for the US government has published data, which
suggests that just one out of the
top ten areas of employment actually require a degree. Just one. Not five, or seven. One.
To tell the truth, I’m not shocked. I’m not even vaguely
surprised at this. I think “the collective we” have, since at least John
Major’s education reforms in 1992 (which began the process of creating a new
wave of universities out of polytechnics and other institutions) have started
to believe that university was a universal right within our national education
system – in the same way that hospital admission is under the NHS. Tony Blair’s
radical (and reasonably hollow) promise to get “50% of 17 to 30 year olds into
higher education” (Labour conference pledge 1999), whilst great for those whose
educational limits had been curtailed in previous eras by background,
upbringing and geography, really set it all on fire.
I remember being in a classroom, at the time of UCAS
applications, being told by our Head of Sixth Form that University was the
ticket to a better life – it was what would give us the best opportunities –
and that, as a school in Wales, we should all be going to Cardiff, as that was
the pinnacle of academia. I thought it was just misplaced “alma mater-ism”: it
wasn’t – it seemed that local LEAs, Sixth Forms and the Welsh Assembly Government
were colluding to get as many Welsh students into Welsh universities - it was a
political stunt by Cardiff Bay in order to keep the aspiring lower middle
classes of the Valleys happy, whilst covertly supporting Cardiff as it headed
towards becoming a member of the Russell Group and breaking up the University
of Wales. Out of twenty four pupils in my sixth form who went to university in
2005/7, only four went outside Wales.
For the first time, tens of thousands of eighteen year olds,
like me, were going to universities – some were going to places that people had
heard of: Oxford, Bristol, Durham, London – but many of them were heading to
institutions that no one had ever heard of such as the University of
Wolverhampton, or London Metropolitan… and reading for degrees that sounded
like they had come straight out of Private Eye’s “University of Neasden –
formerly North Circular Polytechnic”, coming out three years later having had a
great time, landed with a tonne of debt (the best kind, as promised by later to
be “Prime Mentalist” Gordon “Prudence” Brown), and a degree. Well – sort of…
This is where I take issue. For I have been employed in
several jobs since leaving – my first recognised my degree as it was within a
university. My second was working in Musical events management (degree specific
– how lucky is that!?), but my third was Events Management. I didn’t need a
degree to do the third job – but they expected me to have one. My line manager
certainly didn’t have one – but he expected me to have one, then couldn’t
understand how/why I was able to do my job in a different way. I remember being
told once that “a degree is the same as any other – doesn’t teach you anything
about real work”.
But a degree isn’t the same as any other. My undergraduate degree
is from a well-known college of a larger Federal university – I ‘share’ my
degree award with one of the greatest conservatoires in the world, and share a
degree ‘family’ with colleges that represent some of the best thinking in human
rights, politics, medicine, science and technology, economics – the list goes
on.
My mother says I’m an academic snob. I reply that I am. I
went to a university that had a reputation for outstanding academic research,
of producing graduates of high quality. I look at school friends who come out
with a Thora (a third) from one of the Welsh ‘new universities’ in Sports
Science … that’s not an equal footing. I’m above that. I’m not a snob in saying
that: Oxbridge has always looked down on Durham, London and the redbricks, and
now the spiral in higher education continues to descend.
I’m being fairly flippant and facetious but this really
wiles me: I worked hard. My degree isn’t the same as someone else’s from a new
university. I didn’t only have to get
three Cs and “Key Skills” to get in, and before you all shout that it’s an
achievement for some people to get that – I agree with that, but are those
people best served going to university?
I feel duped. It’s not Blair’s fault – he needed to do keep
his base. It’s not Major’s fault – he has no clue and was trying to make things
fairer (he thought). It’s all our fault. My generation’s for believing- our
parents and guardians for being taken in. If I really wanted to point a finger
of blame, personally I would blame my teachers – but even then, did they know?
They’d been out of university and training for twenty plus years: it was
different then. It was different once – and it needs to be again.
The Prime Minister, the Education Secretary and the
Secretary of State for Business (as that’s where H.E matters now live!) need to
look at Higher Education provision in this country. Stop messing around with
GCSEs and A-Levels – start with universities: stop giving awarding powers to
institutions who have failed. Stop encouraging smaller institutions to go it
alone – they can’t really afford to and they can’t offer the breadth of faculty
specialism. The amount of degrees
offered needs to be scaled back – tourism studies shouldn’t be a B.SC, Event
and Venue Management should not be awarded a B.A. These areas – “Soft Degrees”
as certain academics and Universities refer to them, should be awarded
certificates or papers by assessing groups representing that particular trade
or profession. When did a bunch of left-leaning, Guardian reading, sock and
sandal wearing academics become experts in these fields?
We need to acknowledge the role of trades and professions
again – a university degree isn’t everything. Most of all – we need to educate
employers that one degree isn’t the same as another: and that they had better
remember that when the healthcare assistant comes around to change their
catheter twenty years hence.
