I never got the chance to go into higher education, I tried, decades ago, as a teenager to get into the London College of Printing to do a degree in photography but although my portfolio was excellent my A level grades were not up to it*. That said if I won the lottery tomorrow I’d go into higher ed and do a degree in Government and Politics just for the sheer fun of it because with the sort of ‘fuck you’ money that a lottery win would give me I’d be able to buy myself in, maybe with a hefty donation to the university of my choice. However how long I’d last on a Government and Politics course with my views is debatable, I can imagine the anti-Zionist and far left nutcases in both student and faculty bodies would treat me like a vampire would treat a crucifix.
But that doesn’t mean that I do not respect or appreciate higher education of academia. I do and think that it’s a vital part of a civilised society. But the problem in the UK is that this sector of society is in a complete mess. There’s no space for learning for its own sake and the commodification of higher education has resulted in colleges and universities pandering to the students who pay the bills. This as far as I can see has resulted in a dumbing down of degree course material because the student or rather the customer needs to be given what they want even if what they want is something much less than they would be academically suited for.
The commentator Capel Lofft has pointed out on X that Britain is not being well served by its academic establishment and that we have been landed with the worst of all worlds, the marketisation of everything to do with higher education coupled with faux egalitarianism.
Mr Lofftsaid:
The interesting thing about the disaster zone that is modern British Higher Education is that it has artfully combined the worst of the modern right - an obsession with marketising everything - with the worst of the modern left - the sham egalitarianism of dumbing everything down
Also it has managed to combine the most toxic parts of private and public sectors. Bullshit commercialism and a failed attempt to impose consumerism on education AND 99 shades of Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Plus the DEI/HR nonsense you find in both sectors, for good measure
Add a good measure of part mad speculative bubble, part debt-fuelled Ponzi scheme- plus the fact that propping up second rate provincial universities is the nearest thing governments of both parties have had to an industrial policy for 30 years - and result…utter clusterfck
It's also a disaster that is structurally impossible for either Lab or Tory to fix. Neither could or would do what is necessary to repair the damage, for political and ideological reasons. Even sane decline management is not realistically going to happen. It's a perfect shitstorm
We need to acknowledge that only a small minority of people are academically able enough to do a meaningful degree. We also need to accept that a market mechanism doesn't work, education is not a consumer good. Lab won't accept the former, the Tories won't accept the latter
The whole sector needs to be slimmed down and consolidated. The Mickey mouse universities should be closed, worthless degrees abolished. Student numbers need to be reduced substantially, fees abolished and everything funded by grants from general taxation…...In short, the whole thing needs to be a mixture of good elitism and good egalitarianism, i.e. give people from all classes a good chance, if they are bright, to be academically excellent. Instead we get dumbed down slop for all*
There’s more from Mr Lofft on this vein if you visit his X account and it’s worth reading. Mr Lofft is correct in my view. Both sides, the market enthusiasts and the DEI nutcases have done immense damage to higher education in the UK.
He’s also correct in saying that not everyone is suited at 18 to go to university. I probably, no, definitely wasn’t (maybe more suited now) the right fit for university when I was 18. I should have gone off and done an HNC or an HND in photography and gone on from there. However I was so pissed off at getting turned down by the London College of Printing that I went straight out in to the industry and learned on the job, which probably, looking back on it, did me more favours than I might have thought at the time.
I think that his suggestion of basically going back to the old system of restricted access to university for the top 10-15% of the most academically able students with students supported by full grants from the taxpayer is the way to go. Provided that the dross and slop courses based around DEI or women’s, race or gender studies are not funded by the state, going back to the old system could do a great deal of good for high performing students, for elite universities and for the nation and its economy.
I disagree to a certain extent with Mr Lofft about how impossible this system change would be. After all we’ve changed already from a grant based system to a market / fees based system so it should be possible to change it back again? These changes could be achieved over time with a cut off date for accepting students on dross and slop courses coinciding with grant aided courses for needed and high quality subjects coming in.
I can imagine universities bringing in special courses and staff to teach the high quality subjects to academically able students who would be on grants whilst simultaneously, over the medium term, reducing the number of fee paying students choosing the dross and slop courses. For a while we could have some sort of hybrid system but eventually we could do away with the dross and slop courses altogether. I also believe that money saved from putting on dross and slop courses at universities for those who are not suitable for degree level study should be redirected towards further education in vocational subjects. A successful country needs high end academics and also it needs plumbers, vehicle engineers and electricians and these could be supplied by a beefed up further education system.
I want to see Britain have a very high quality higher education system that will turn out our future doctors, engineers, computer scientists, biologists, linguists and humanities specialists but what is clear is that the current system isn’t providing these for us. A change needs to come before the whole sector collapses under the weight of its own contradictions and failures. We need an higher education system that serves the nation and we clearly are not getting that.
- I managed to get some of my photographs exhibited in a major London gallery along with other young photographic practitioners and this eventually got me entry into the fields of photojournalism, court reporting and eventually freelance work and teaching. I might not have been able to do that if I had been accepted for London College of Printing.