Education Vs Elitism

Everyone deserves an education - a formal degree-level education at the very least. Well, not everyone but only those who want it. Education is long, tedious, deliberate, repetitive, slow and sometimes boring. If you are lucky enough to be in an area of study that fires you up emotionally and you feel really passionate about it, then it becomes none of the above but exciting. Not everyone feels passionately about their area of study and as a result cannot go through with it. Even if they do, it will always be a struggle. You have to really want it bad or find it interesting to be able to submit to the demands of a slow, tedious and boring education. In an ideal world, one can afford this education and one is free to choose a field of study that suits one’s intellectual curiosities and passions. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world. We live in the real world where education is expensive. It leaves us with only 2 options. It is either one is rich enough to be able to afford it or the state is rich enough to pay for the education of its citizens. In fee-paying states, it is either one is rich enough to pay his way or bright enough to be awarded some sort of academic scholarship. Where the state is rich enough to pay for the education of the citizens, the freedom to choose a field of study is not always available. Of what economic value will one’s passionate field of study be to the state? Employability and practicality have to be factored in. There is no point for the state to spend all that money on education that has no economic or political value. In fact, the state should only sponsor certain fields of study which it considers nationally profitable or useful. As more and more citizens opt for degree-level education, the state has the right not only to set the fields of study which it will sponsor but also set the high academic standard it will be willing to sponsor. Once again, no need mass-producing 2nd and 3rd rate graduates that will not be of creative use to the state. Only those citizens, who demonstrate academic brilliance above and beyond an acknowledged average, deserve to be sponsored by the state. As ruthless as it sounds, this is the only way the state can reap rewards from sponsoring the education of its citizens. These above-average students stand better chances of gaining useful employment and contribution to society. With this format of state sponsorship of higher education, waste due to unemployment is minimal. Besides, more and more students will be willing to take advantage of state sponsorship and will be motivated to improve their academic standards to sponsorship levels. This way, the highly sought standards in graduates, which seem to be suffering in this country at the moment, will be restored. Today what we have is a situation where the average graduate employer is finding the average graduate lacking in basic skills and intelligence expected of a graduate. I personally blame the socialist free-for-all model that has been in place in this country for so long. In its wake, it has created biggest graduate bubble since the 1940s. The socialist format was suitable for those times as there were plenty graduate positions and very few graduates to occupy them. Today, the opposite is the case – very few graduate positions in relation to the number of graduates produced by our universities. Higher education funding is due for yet another review. If high standards are to be maintained in higher education and graduates to be of the standard expected of them, higher education has to be elitist.£

Come September 2012, it will cost the average British student £9,000 a year to attend university. For the cost of university tuition to jump from £3,000 to £9,000 for a year’s tuition has huge implications both for the students and for society at large. For starters, that is a 200% increase and majority of our students depend on student loans already. There is no reason for that trend not to continue. Most significant here is the fact that bigger loans have already been made available via the same student loans company to cater for the economically-disadvantaged students who will need the financial assistance. Many expressed fears that increasing tuition fees will serve as a huge deterrent to students willing to go to university. I disagree. How can it be a deterrent if loans are available to those who qualify? Also most young people today already believe that it is better to have a degree than not to have one - despite the cost. It only means that the average student debt upon graduation will increase correspondingly. As at 2010/11 average student debt was between $10,000 and $25,000. Come 2015/16 it would increase to between $30,000 and $50,000 for the typical 3-4 year degree course. Being in a severe recession, the coalition government was right to shake up the higher education funding format. However, I think they went about it the wrong way. What they have done effectively is try to solve one problem [trying to cut down the huge amounts spent on higher education] by creating another one [higher graduate debt] – which in comparison is a much bigger problem. What we will end up with are more unemployed graduates with even more debt. For British and EU citizens, gaining a place at university automatically qualifies one to a student loan to cover tuition costs. Even though there was a 9% decrease in applications to universities this year compared to last year’s figures, student numbers are still very high compared to available graduate jobs. Youth unemployment is currently very high in the UK so going to university – no matter the cost - is still seen as a better option. Better be an unemployed graduate than being young and unemployed with no skills or qualifications. Besides, one in five recent graduates is currently unemployed. Repayment is not demanded until one’s earnings exceed £21,000 per year. As I said earlier, what the coalition government has done here is to create another problem. The original problem was that the higher education funding format was unsustainable. The government could not afford to sponsor all students that gained entry into universities. As a result, they lowered government funding for each student which meant the amount each student had to pay increased from £3,000 to £9,000. The only problem was loans are being provided to cover these increased costs just as before. Only a foolish student will be put off by increased debt accumulation. No student is forced to pay back until they start to earn over $21,000 a year. This is a recipe for disaster. It will only further inflate the graduate bubble which is already very large.

Automatic loan qualification upon securing a place at university is not only misleading but it is dangerous. As I mentioned earlier, it is better being an unemployed graduate than a young unemployed person without a degree. There is still a huge incentive for a young person to go to university and get a degree, even if it leads to nothing in the end. The esteemed graduate status is still too strong to dissuade most young people from going to university. So the 200% increase in tuition fees will not really serve as a deterrent as many feared. What we saw this year in terms of the 9% drop in university applications compared to last year was a momentary dip in student numbers. Next year’s figures will show an increase as the recession bites further. The system as it is currently will only lead to further inflation of the graduate and debt bubble. Will it not be better to change the format of dispensing loans to students? Why give a student a loan even if it will not lead to employment? Tough call but let us look at how it works at the moment.

After A levels, by securing a place at university one automatically qualifies for a student loan – if eligible. The point is that securing a place at university does not mean anything. First, it does not necessarily mean the course offered by the university is economically useful or will lead to employment. Second, it does not mean the student will go on and graduate with good enough grades that will lead to reasonable employment. Third, universities are in a racket of their own which has everything to do with central government funding and league tables and nothing to do with employment. For the average university, it is all about securing funds from students and central government and the more students they have the better. Let us say a university offers English language as a course. This is a respected and useful course and as a result might be over subscribed. For a student wanting to attend this university but unable to get place on this course, he might look for another under subscribed course. In order to attract students still, the same university might offer another course - Library Sciences for instance. As this is not as well respected as English Language, entry requirements will obviously be lower and those desperate to enter university might choose this course just to get in. This way the university manages to keep student numbers high by offering alternative courses and attract funding from government and fee-paying students. As one can imagine, just as these courses are offered primarily to lure students in, monitoring academic standards will not be a high priority on this course as – say – English Language at the same university. So it becomes very clear that the availability of student loans and the willingness of some universities to offer irrelevant courses, just to boost numbers, will end up sustaining a graduate bubble that is already too large. Clearly most of these graduates will end up unwanted both by the private and public sectors and will end up costing the state even more by being on social security benefits. It seems that the last Labour government deliberately let the graduate bubble grow by pumping so much money into universities to offer all sorts of alternative courses just to boost graduate numbers nationally. Thanks to the recession, the graduate bubble has burst and recent graduates are experiencing a harsh landing. One in five recent graduates is unemployed. For every graduate position, there are 30 to 50 applicants and current graduate debt levels are set to increase. This is the sad reality we face simply because selection [elitism] was not enforced as vigorously as it should have in higher education.

Now let us take a closer look at selection [what I call elitism] in higher education. Many people are against selection at universities as they fear it favours the well off. It is true that the well off can afford the best private tuition to meet the highest standards set by the best universities. But is it not time more money is spent on secondary education to ensure higher standards are achieved rather than dishing out loads on student loans at university level? When I say elitism, I do not mean elitism based on economic or social class. It is purely based on academic merit. If more money is spend on secondary education to raise standards, a lot less will be spent as student loans to students so below-average that makes reasonable employment almost impossible. As student numbers increase nationally, does it not make better sense to demand more from students intellectually? At the moment, many students are being deceived into thinking they stand a chance with top employers whereas employers strictly favour Oxbridge and Russell Group University students with a 2:1 or above. They engage in this practice because it is widely believed that standards in higher education are dropping. As institutions ignore rigorous selection or standards regulation, employers have found ways round that problem. This is a sensitive subject but it is only sensitive because those in charge of education are more interested in the politics of education than educating the masses. It is always better for a government to claim that there are over 10,000 graduates in a given country in a given year than say 3,000. You can begin to see the incentive to mass produce graduates. There is this common belief graduates lead to economic growth. If that were the case, we will not be in a recession right now. On the other hand, regulating the quality of graduates not only will it be difficult but it will reduce the number of graduates which is not good for politics.

Those who are against selection are misguided. They simply miss the point. The prevailing view is that selection or elitism favours the well off. They argue that the rich can afford the best private tuition or private schools to give them an unfair advantage over the less well-off. But that has been and will always be the case. The well-off will always have all the advantages. Who says life was fair? But that is not the point. The point is that fair or not, education is all about standards which have to be met. No standard, no education. No testing, no education. No monitoring, no education. If standards are deliberately over-looked to favour the less well-off, education itself suffers. Academic attainment and qualification will not be what it professes to be. Faith will be lost in the institution of education. It is already happening and that is why certain employers only recruit those from top universities – where standards are high and where selection is practiced. The good news is that with a bit of will and hard work, anyone can reach the highest of standards. Instead of finding more evidence to support the case against selection and bringing the whole institution into disrepute, disadvantaged schools should concentrate more on hard work and will power. There simply is no other way round it – education has to be elitist.