Because the job market is currently so feeble, there has been an increase in university applications which could see a shortfall of some 200,000 places this year. I was astonished to read that there are half a million university places going begging in the first place. Are there really that many bright youngsters lusting to study Poetry or Latin or Rocket Science?
Then I caught the start of the BBC One O’Clock News and all was revealed. Some female administrator was wheeled on to explain that many applicants for nursing would be disappointed. I was unaware that nursing had become an academic discipline. You just need to be taught how to do it: it requires simple job training - no more. No wonder you can’t get nurses to empty bedpans any more – they no doubt consider it beneath them, what with their “university” education and all. What next, Cambridge Chairs in street-sweeping, refuse collection and lorry-driving?
Don’t get me wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these jobs. They are very proper jobs indeed. They desperately need to be done, and they need to be done well. But they don’t need the sort of intellectual stretching or the broadening of cultural horizons that a university course should ensure.
The BBC report provided further enlightenment: interviews were conducted at a “formerly” university – i.e. a polytechnic. It happened to be one that I’ve had some dealings with, and, while admirable in many ways, the institution resembles a traditional university about as much as I resemble Brad Pitt. Its main aim seemed to be to keep potential “problem” kids off the streets.
Come to think of it, that may be Labour’s new Higher Education philosophy in a nutshell: perhaps “universities” have become the equivalent of youth clubs in the Sixties – a place where children who might otherwise be driven by boredom resulting from a lack of “facilities” into a life of vandalism ,violence and petty crime can gather under the watchful gaze of some kindly, mildly left-wing vicar who has their best interests at heart:
“You know, Constable, Terry isn’t really a bad kid. Oh, a bit of tearaway I admit, but he has a good heart.”
“That’s as maybe, vicar. But he’s gone too far this time. He’s stolen something that don’t belong to him.”
“I promise you it shall be returned forthwith.”
“What about the next time, vicar? What do I tell his next victim?”
“There will be no next time, Constable. You have my word on it.” He pauses and glances at the supiciously old-looking teenager with the oily quiff beside him. “And you have Terry’s word on it as well.”
Mind you, these days, the teenager would probably call the vicar a nonce and stab him before letting the cop have it with an automatic weapon.
But you get my drift.
Let’s be honest: he crisis in “university” places is, in reality, a crisis in job training places. The kind of people who opt for higher education because the job market’s bad for school leavers shouldn’t be going to a university in the first place. Get rid of photography and media studies courses and suchlike folderol – if there’s a genuine need for them, the private sector can provide – and bring back polytechnics and specialist colleges to train people for vital but non-intellectual jobs.
And let’s stop pretending that training to be a nurse is the same sort of activity as studying ancient Greek or Medieval History or Philosophy. And leave universities to produce an elite of genuinely well-educated and culturally well-rounded people who can go on to do whatever they like with their lives.
Mind you, if I were that Great Leveller, Ed Balls, I’d solve the problem at a stroke and achieve my aim of socially re-engineering society at the same time by refusing a university place to anyone who can actually pronounce the word “government” correctly – “Gumment, init?”
That would get rid of all them privately-educated toffs for a start. Problem solved!
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