Have we arrived in a place where cash is king?
\nOK, so when did the purpose of education become a hard-nosed process of steering as many students as possible in the direction of loads of money? Climb aboard at the age of five and head straight for the door covered in pound signs. Your path will be marked with numbers and equations and scientific experiments, but the fat financial reward will make it all worthwhile.
\n
\nWill you lose a few things on the way \u2013 music, art, languages, a sense of history and the global perspective of geography?\u00a0 Yeah, well, maybe, but what the hell…The price of progress? As EmCee sang so convincingly in Cabaret, \u201cMoney makes the world go around\u2026\u201d does it not?
\nCertainly a lot of people \u2013 influential, powerful souls \u2013 seem to believe it. And perhaps who can blame them if the life that the nation would like to lead \u2013 great NHS, trains on time, decent roads, care for the growing army of the elderly \u2013 is likely to be horrendously expensive?\u00a0 And if earning a lot of money is the real goal, then it\u2019s no wonder we now have very public and positively forensic examination of how that might be done.
\nThe latest answer is to confine your studies as rapidly as possible to science, mathematics and engineering.\u00a0 These are the star performers in the money-stakes. And when you\u2019ve done that, then find out which is the best university to help you on your way.
\nIn our information-rich age, you can find out what new graduates earn in every discipline a university offers and in every university in the land \u2013 and beyond, because if you had the time and inclination (and perhaps an intern?), you could find the numbers for every university in the universe and it would be no surprise to find that American universities score pretty highly in employment figures for their fledgling graduates.<\/p>\n
“When did the purpose of education become a hard-nosed process of steering as many students as possible in the direction of loads of money? “<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A headline in today\u2019s (British) newspaper: \u2018Within a year of graduating, dentists earn \u00a331,000 a year.\u2019\u00a0 It\u2019s quoted not so much to encourage everyone in Year 13 to start practising with mini-drills, as to offer an indicator of what young people should study if they want a good salary. Which, of course, they will need if they are to pay off the enormous debt a degree will generate even in this country, thanks to every university deciding that a degree is a degree wherever it is won, so they all charge the same fees, even though the likelihood of an Oxford degree earning you a better salary than a nominally similar degree from, say, Wrexham University seems, to me at least, quite remote. It is, as they say, complicated.
\nBut you can\u2019t complain about lack of info.
\nWhat is the price of university?
\nIn my own headship days, I was the last resort for an American father whose daughter had been with us just a year and wanted to go to a British university. She was severely dyslexic \u2013 not a problem today, I know, but in the not too distant past a real stumbling block, universities not then having discovered that dyslexic students might actually be very bright indeed, often in surprising ways.
\nAnyway, I explained that she was unlikely to find a place. Father was furious. He ranted, \u201cWhat is it with you Brits?\u00a0 Everyone goes to college \u2013 she has to go to college. In America, dozens of colleges would take her. I know she\u2019s not academic, but she deserves a place just like the next kid!\u201d
\nAt the time, in Britain, academic expertise was the sine qua non of going to university \u2013 you could not get in without passing quite tough A-level exams at the end of a two-year course, no course work. Tasks like five essays in three hours on some very big books \u2013 try The Mill on the Floss, all of it, without a handy exam board-produced study guide.
\nI said going to university was about, you know, studying \u2013 for which his lovely daughter was ill-equipped.
\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s not,\u201d he replied. \u201cIt\u2019s about graduating. And every kid should be able to do that.\u201d
\nMaybe he talked to his MP, because in due course the British government adopted the same view. If the old universities could not accommodate all students, then create new ones which could, with courses on wild and wonderful disciplines such as golf course management. But always \u2013 in an almost sinister fashion \u2013 the government talked about money. Graduates in the old days earned more than non-graduates.\u00a0 Everyone wanted more money. So let\u2019s make everyone a graduate \u2013 bingo! More loot! Just like that! Because earn more is what graduates do. And because they will earn more for the rest of their lives, they can afford to pay for the privilege of going to university! And in a wonderfully egalitarian, not to say monopolistic, way, the universities will all charge the same fees, because to do otherwise would imply a hierarchy of universities and you can\u2019t have that, can you?
\nDon\u2019t answer that. But note that we do seem to have arrived at a place where cash is king and it\u2019s all wonderfully Tom Cruise and showing us the money.<\/p>\n“It\u2019s not really all about the money. It\u2019s about playing to your own strengths, and fulfilling your heart\u2019s desire.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Or telling young people where to find it \u2013 for instance, an Imperial College London graduate is, after six months, likely to be earning \u00a330k, whereas an Aberystwyth graduate is likely to be bringing home \u00a316k. The dentists in the headline I quote are followed with a list of who is best paid six months after finishing their studies: chemical engineers, economists, other graduates of science and maths-related subjects. The article quotes The Times Good University Guide, which also tells us social workers get about \u00a326k a year, and \u2018Arts graduates are notorious for being badly paid.\u2019 Apparently dance, drama, art and design, and music account for seven of the bottom 10 courses for earnings. \u2018Dance, drama and cinematics graduates had the lowest median starting salary at \u00a312,000.\u2019
\nI could weep. No wonder schools are adapting to the commercial pressure.\u00a0 Teach what they need \u2013 does Gradgrind come to mind? And yet, and yet… I remember a heaven-sent trip to see Cabaret at Washington\u2019s Kennedy Centre this summer. The performance was magical and memorable, as was the building itself \u2013 I know, a grand and glorious product of the efforts of mathematicians and architects and engineers.
\nBut never mind the performance, read the very walls of the Kennedy Centre, and you will find inspiration \u2013 and ammunition \u2013 if you want to rally to the cause of the arts, in schools, in universities, in life itself. Kennedy said, \u201cI look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all our citizens\u2026an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength, but for its civilization as well.\u201d
\nYou see, it\u2019s not really all about the money. It\u2019s about playing to your own strengths, and fulfilling your heart\u2019s desire and becoming Billy Elliott instead of Bill Gates if that is where your talent lies. It\u2019s about the arts as well as the sciences. And in the end, it\u2019s about civilization itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have we arrived in a place where cash is king? OK, so when did the purpose of education become a hard-nosed process of steering as many students as possible in the direction of loads of money? Climb aboard at the age of five and head straight for the door covered in pound signs. Your path\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[134,183],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ie-today","category-independent-education-today","tag-money","tag-salary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}