Jon's Third Guest Post

(Editor's note: I asked Jon to write a response to either David Brooks' New York Times piece "It's Not About You" or to the controversy about the recently announced New College of the Humanities.  [See the Guardian for a leftist slant on the latter and the Telegraph for a right-leaning opinion.]  Please do feel free to comment on this post with your views; I might even write my own take on the situation!)

Every now and again, Betsy sees something she finds interesting and asks me to write a commentary on it; today, though, I have a choice. I can voice an opinion about how well students are prepared for university in reaction to David Brooks’ rather nihilistic article in the New York Times basically telling graduating students that they’re screwed because they’ve been taught to ‘follow their dreams’ rather than just knuckle down and fit in like a good unquestioning citizen, which is why they’re going to struggle in today’s hideous jobs market. (Funnily enough, there little mention of the disastrous fiscal policies that have left west’s economy in tatters as a contributing factor to youth unemployment, but I guess that didn’t fit in with the journalist’s particular political point of view- nope, it’s all because those pampered students have the wrong attitude, apparently. Ho hum.)

The other thing I could talk about is the new totally private university, the ‘New College for the Humanities,’ being set up by philosopher A.C Grayling and other illustrious bigwigs such as Richard Dawkins. It offers intensive one-to-one tuition, and dubiously claims to offer ‘the finest minds available’ as teachers. And so it should, given that they’re going to charge £18k per year to give the offspring of the rich and the powerful the privilege of hearing an egotistical collection of pseudo-academics explain why they’re better than the students. As you can see here and here, it’s already created a bit of a shitstorm - Oxford is dead against it, and someone actually let off a flare in a meeting on the topic yesterday. Yikes.

There was quite a lot of anger in my somewhat left-leaning office about this today, but luckily the only thing that did flare was people’s tempers (geddit?). If you’re an American reading this you might be thinking, "What’s the big deal?  It’s only one private college," but the idea taking root right now is that the UK is on a slippery slope to a system that charges students a similar amount to what they pay in the US as more private institutions end up choking the state ones and deprive lower income families a shot at a decent education. Now that is serious, and for many the idea that money should be an impediment to education is abhorrent. I, and most of my office I guess, happen to be among them.

However, I’m actually not particularly worried about it, because if it does scare some of our established institutions into becoming more competitive then so much the better. This new university has a right to exist, and people should be able to choose attandance as an option if they really want intensive teaching (even if it is from people I can’t stand). Education does cost money and it has to come from somewhere. That’s a fact, and I am unfashionable in believing that it is unfair to demand the public to subside students to a greater extent than they already do. People hark back to the days of extensive grants with rose-tinted nostalgia, when most people went through university for free, but what they’re really remembering is a time when working class people, who were not encouraged to attend university in those dark ages, were paying taxes that went towards giving the middle classes a free run. Those graduates then went on to make much more in earnings because of their complimentary degree, leading to a systematic cycle of exclusion - not exactly the level playing field some politicians have made that time out to be. 

Those days are long gone and I am up to my eyeballs in student debt, but I don’t resent that. Like most, I did my degree (in Engligh literature) not because of its benefit to society but because it was what I wanted to do; I would feel deeply selfish about asking others to cough up more than they already do to get me through it. Eventually, I’ll pay it off, and that will be because my degree has helped me get a job that enables me to achieve a decent income. The rich kids going to this new place will never need to worry about any of that, but if they had gone to a state institution they would end up being subsidised by a country that can’t really afford to foot the bill any longer.

As far as the risk of having the best lecturers lured away - again, I’m not worried. The ‘New College’ has secured its teachers because it’s offering more money, yet in my experience the best academics are never the ones who follow the money (in the UK, at least) - they’re not the ones on  TV chasing ratings, they’re the dedicated individuals interested in teaching the best minds in the country. Evidence of this was shown when the academics of Oxford overwhelmingly passed a motion of ‘no confidence’ in the government’s plan to increase tuition fees to £9,000 in state universities. That plan would have netted them higher salaries and more money for Oxford, but yet they still opposed it. Why? Because they don’t want the private system and the wealth-based exclusivity it brings. And that’s why the New College, in my opinion, will remain an isolated anomaly, drawing in the rich so that we don’t have to pay for them, whilst those with merit rather than wealth can receive the better degree.