COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN
'...despite having
gained much better qualifications..."
Aye, there's the rub.
It is only superficially true that they have better
qualifications.
What has really happened is that Britain followed the American
approach to education along many lines, producing a value-eating inflation into
much of higher education.
Among other things, this means that you can get a degree now
in almost anything you care to name - film, sports, television, women's studies,
black studies, even circus (yes, in the United States) - subjects many of which
offer no prospect of a profession or serious career and amount to little more
than hobby interests.
Well, I’m not speaking against hobby interests, just saying
that anyone who associates them with rigorous education is seriously misguided,
and just so anyone who gains credentials in a hobby and expects to rise in the
world.
Many of these courses of study are not academically
challenging, so kids graduate without much effort. They also gain entrance far
more easily since standards of acceptance are lowered. This last becomes even
more serious when the public schools feeding the universities and colleges
gradually reduce their standards by giving easy grades, inflating the grades of
everyone applying. In most American high schools, for example, you cannot fail
if you try.
The universities and colleges move away from rigorous
academics and in a sense treat their swollen student populations as piggy banks
to break open. Even at the graduate level, the impact of all this is felt. Once
accepted, you will graduate, short of never handing in assignments.
It’s all a great game for a while – more university jobs,
more public schools with “improved” records of success, more students at
university – but we all know what happens when you inflate anything, such as
money, enough – it simply loses value. While it takes a while to see the
results, in the end the results will become clear, as in this study.
The system has the added negative, especially in the United
States, of leaving young adults with huge student loans to pay with low or
non-existent job prospects. And, remember, in the real world of making things
and making a living, genuine talent or exceptional ability count perhaps more
than ever. Also, for such talented people moving from one to another country is
encouraged by governments and corporations, so apparent prospects are even more
reduced for others.
Now, add to all that an economy which is in in serious
trouble and one where machines keep replacing people, and I think it is fair to
say our senior educators have been “out to lunch.”
