Archive for October 12th, 2010

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

Cost of University Education

There is something not right here.The generation writing reports and recommending higher tuition fees were the beneficiaries of free higher education. They have managed to screw up the economy, run up the national debt and run out of money. First high profile casualties were the children of the higher earners. Now come students, upon whose education in a competitive world a great deal in the future depends. 

It is perhaps early days yet, because we have only headline figures in a report, not a White Paper of government policy, so the workings of any plan are not clear. It does point up, once again, that not only are our tax revenues out of kilter with our expectations and, more important, too much money is being spent on things we do not need and cannot afford and too little on things upon which national prosperity will in future depend. 

At the opposite end of the educational scale, those whom society needs to maintain civilisation and who require practical skills on top of basic education are being failed dreadfully, let down by the current education system. Comprehensive schools have been blamed for failure and for eclipsing the Grammar schools. In fact it is the practical contribution of the old Secondary modern that is now most lacking and causing most harm.

We cannot have a country operating a sucessful economy with a closing gap between rich and poor if all we do is churn out corporate lawyers, bankers and and market researchers.