The government lauds its egalitarian credentials, but encouraging everyone to get a degree undermines other important skills needed in the workplace
One of the many effects of our current economic woes has been a record number of applications to university this year. The government will probably put out some fatuous press release about how this represents great progress for the country and how their long-held and oft-stated target of getting 50% of people into university is within reach. Is it time for us all to engage in a round of hearty backslapping, or does this news actually have rather worrying implications?
That huge numbers of people are now entering university is not actually particularly good news for the country. A glance across the channel ought to have provided ample evidence of the pernicious effects of a bloated university system. In France anyone who has passed the equivalent of A-Levels can enter university, resulting in hugely oversubscribed courses and a lower quality educational experience for everyone involved. At least, however, university is free for our Gallic cousins, whereas graduates in the UK can now expect to rack up debts upwards of £20,000 for their troubles. The fact that some are incurring this debt to ‘ride out the credit crunch’ is both bizarre and concerning.
What’s more, universities are now geared towards something that they can no longer provide for the majority of students, a well-paid job. Institutions themselves must shoulder some of the blame for putting out adverts with extravagant claims about their graduates’ employment. Thames Valley University, for example, boasts on its website that it is the UK’s ‘No. 1 University for Graduate Employment’. This strikes me as somewhat odd, given that it is also the UK’s number 112 university in the Times University rankings. How this apparent conundrum arises is perfectly simple; many graduates are simply ending up in jobs for which their degrees are unnecessary and for which a university education does not necessarily prepare them. This is all the more galling because of the large levels of debt that those emerging from university can expect to face.
What is the way out? Clearly there is no panacea that will solve the problems of skills shortages, fierce job competition, and congested universities. What needs to happen in the broadest sense is a cultural shift away from the idea that academic prowess is the only way to get on in life. Academic ability is just that, academic. A degree, even from a respected institution such as this one, is merely an indicator of a person’s ability, not a confirmation of it.
The reification of academic ability at the expense of other skills has led to a cruel paradox. In order to ‘succeed’ you apparently need a degree, yet when almost every other person has one, having a degree becomes nigh on meaningless. This is precisely why organisations have things like interviews and assessment days, because a degree itself tells them nothing about potential employees. A reorientation towards more vocational training is essential if we are to find our way out of this black hole. This means not only funding more training courses that actually equip people for the demands of the world of work, but also acknowledging that these skills are every bit as valuable as those honed on the campuses of our universities, if not more so.
John
Ashmore
