Stop pushing young people into uni – and into debt
As part of their generous general election offer, the Labour Party said that ditching university tuition fees would cost £11.2billion. Well, so now they’ve had a bit of a play around on the Diane Abbott Special Needs Abacus, and it turns out it would actually cost nearer £100billion, if they carry out their new “ambition” to cancel out all historic student loans.no need to panic, Marjorie. Abolishing tuition fees and writing off current student debt is perfectly affordable. If we live without the National Health Service for a year, that is.
On June 8, hundreds of thousands of 18- to 24-year-olds, who will enter adult life with exorbitant debt – a policy devised by their elders who often paid nothing for their own higher education – voted for Jeremy Corbyn. I can’t say I blame them.
Corbyn may have been offering a shameless bribe, but at least his party had noticed the unfairness that is starting to poison relations between the generations. “Going to uni” – a three-year course in drink, drugs and anti-depressants which should in no way be confused with higher education – is a monstrous con trick perpetrated on young people. Few can tell that they’re being had.
You may recall Nick Clegg saying that only in “very exceptional circumstances” would universities be charging the full £9,000. Clegg got it right, except for one small word. It turned out that only in very exceptional circumstances would universities NOT be charging the full £9,000.
Under the original plan, Russell Group institutions would command the biggest fees for degrees that were a gilded calling card for the brightest graduates. Meanwhile, the University of Bugger All would ask less academically able kids for £6,000 to do Barista Studies and Further Instagram. Guess what? By 2011, almost 75 per cent of universities had opted to charge maximum fees. Who was stupid enough to think that any university would willingly acknowledge its second-class status by charging less?
As a result, I know people whose children have got £40,000 of debt on which they are paying 6 per cent interest at a time when the Bank of England base rate is 0.25 per cent. Daylight robbery! Some owe more after three years in work than when they started. And you can forget about applying for a mortgage with that 25-year millstone round your neck. I’ve talked to twentysomethings doing a job in retail which their grandparents could have got with four O-levels and a clean shirt. According to the Office for National Statistics, a staggering 46 per cent of graduates can’t find graduate jobs. Many employers are now stipulating a degree for jobs that never used to require them. Little wonder a new report found that three quarters of students will never fully repay their loans, leaving the taxpayer to pick up the bill.
Suddenly, all parties are scrabbling to come up with a solution. Damian Green, the cuddly face of Theresa May, has called for a “national debate” on student debt. Andrew Adonis, a former Labour education minister, says that the £9,000 charges should be scrapped after becoming “Frankenstein’s monster”. Lord Adonis accuses the Government of running a “Ponzi scheme” which leaves graduates with huge debts and creates a black hole in public finances.
What a cheek. It was Adonis, and Tony Blair’s government, that set the crazy target of getting 50 per cent into higher education. Dumbing-down was the inevitable consequence. Universities were under pressure to admit students who were not up to it. But failing “customers” was frowned upon, so exam questions became easier. Grade inflation blighted even our most distinguished universities. A Cambridge professor told me that his department was handing out lots more Firsts because other universities were “throwing them around like confetti”. It was felt that Cambridge students would be disadvantaged if they were only awarded the grade they had actually scored in their exams.
Apart from the collapse in academic standards, the downgrading of vocational education and the production of graduates who are less literate and numerate than a 16-yearold school leaver in 1959, all this has had a notably bad effect on students. Hardly a week goes by without me hearing another crash-and-burn uni story. At Bristol, sick of the relentless “party lifestyle” that is fuelled by heavy borrowing, a friend’s depressed daughter abandoned her degree and got a job. Almost immediately, she felt better. Look at the shocking suicide statistics at that university. Now ask yourself how higher education, which costs a fortune for minimal “contact hours” with teachers, is working out for thousands who would probably be much happier (and wealthier) in work.
No politician will say this, so let me say it for them. We need to drastically cut back the numbers who go to university. Overall participation in higher education has increased from 3.4 per cent in 1950, to 8.4 per cent in 1970, 19.3 per cent in 1990 and 33 per cent in 2000. A total of 532,300 people entered in 2015, the largest number recorded.
For those who pursue heavyweight courses such as medicine, law, economics and STEM subjects, a £40,000 debt is definitely worth it. For bookish kids who are passionate about the humanities, it may well be worth it, although not financially. For rich kids who believe they’re entitled to a hedonistic rite of passage, it won’t be worth it, but they’ll be too stoned to notice and their parents won’t care. For kids from poorer homes who aren’t particularly academic but who would shine in an apprenticeship, it absolutely isn’t worth it.
For anyone else, it’s likely to be a financial disaster which they could regret for the rest of their life.