Education.

Education, Education, Education. Tony Blair famously said these words at the beginning of his premiership, he stated he wanted 50 per cent of all school leavers to go onto higher education. This sounds like a good aspiration, his view was that this would be beneficial for the economy (a more skilled workforce, earning more money, paying more tax and bringing more companies looking for skilled workers to this country). He also said it would be beneficial for individuals, as a person with a degree earns more money over their lifetime than someone who doesn't have a degree. This all sounds great but this is a very simplistic view and unfortunately not correct. The reality for so many graduates is, unemployment or at the very best low paid unskilled work. Now let me say this before you start accusing me of being negative and of being someone who is against people going onto university. I believe going to university can be one of the greatest experiences of anyones life, it can be a time when someone learns independence, learns new ways of looking at life. It can be a time when people meet many more individuals with different view points, people become more active at university, whether that be politically or get involved in charity organisations. It can be a time of learning new truths, a time of great learning. I know many young people go to university for many different reasons, not just necessarily to get a job but they just want to learn, and that is very commendable. I would say this is as true now as it has always been. I know many people who have gone to university and say it was the best 3 years of their lives, probably for all the wrong reasons, I think that is part of growing up.

So, what is the point of this post. As you can see above, I hope I have proven I am not against people going onto university. What I am against is the culture we now live in, in which you are almost seen as a failure if you haven't got a degree, or if a young person doesn't go onto higher education they are wasting their talents. In September 2009 400,000 young people graduated, that is an awful lot of people suddenly looking for employment, and unfortunately the majority of them will not end up with a good job. The reality is, we now have millions of people in this country with degrees; as you can imagine with this many degrees about, this rather cheapens this once sought after qualification. Let me use this analogy: when DVD players first came out they where very expensive, only a very few people could afford them and they were sought after. Now everyone has got one, they are very cheap and no one thinks they are that special. I would say that is true for so many degrees. When I left school in 1987 if someone went onto university, that was deemed very special and you would be pretty much guaranteed a good job, let us fast forward 23 years, the same cannot be said for our university leavers. I know many people who have degrees (probably about 40-50)I can honestly say this, anyone I know who got a degree prior to 1990 walked into a good job. Most of those who have got a degree in the past 10 years, unless it is a vocational degree have either become a teacher (because they can't get anything else)or are doing something that doesn't really require many if any qualifications. I work with someone who has a degree and they said it was a complete waste of 3 years, I could give you example after example of this, but I am sure there are many people who would say the same. There will be many people out there who will disagree with me and will say it is always worth going onto university if you can. But having seen the reality of at least 30 friends, family, acquaintances or workmates with degrees, doing something they would never have chosen to do before they went to university, or doing something that requires no university education sums up the reality to me.

As I have said already, I am not against people going to university, I just believe there are too many young people doing so (51 per cent of girls now go onto university). I also believe our education system has been dumbed down, the government would argue that because we have seen year on year improvements in results, this proves that things are getting better. I just cannot see this being true, if we are to believe the results, our young people are receiving a better education and are becoming more intelligent every year. The government would say the fact that so many young people are achieving such high grades at GCSE, A level and degree proves this to be true. When anyone like me criticises the results and is cynical about our so called fantastic education system, we are seen as trying to knock young people and their hard work and achievements. I am not complaining about our young people, I do believe that they do work hard, but what worries me is that we are seeing so many young people achieving very little after 17 years of education. When I was young if someone managed to get 10 O'levels at grade C and above they were deemed to be very intelligent, and if someone achieved 3 grade A, A levels that was almost unheard of. We are now in the position were education boards have brought in the A* grades and universities are having to set entrance exams for places because so many applicants have got 3 A's at A levels. I do not think that we have seen such a huge improvement in standards, I believe we have seen a downgrading in standards.

Let's be totally honest here, getting a good degree from a good university is a good thing and can open doors to a good career, but getting a degree does not somehow guarantee anything except a piece of paper with a qualification. Unfortunately there are too many young people going to university with no real understanding of what they want to do once they leave. We have too many young people being told by teachers that university is a guarantee of a good job. Unfortunately the reality for our young people becomes only too apparent when they leave and find there isn't an employer waiting with open arms and a job earning £30,000 a year. I would encourage every young person to get an education, but I believe it has to be the right sort of education. We need people with trades and with vocational degrees, every person I know who went to university to study for a vocational degree has now got a job in the area of expertise they studied. There are now many young people with degrees who will not earn more than me over the period of their working life and I have got 4 CSE's and 2 O' levels. Only 3 weeks ago I heard Gordon Brown in a speech saying how those with a degree will earn more over their lifetime than those who don't, again for an awful lot of young people this is not true. The problem is quite simple, as I have highlighted above, there are so many young people with degrees. An employer is looking for someone special not just someone who has a degree. Unfortunately a degree is no longer a guarantee of a high standard of intelligence or education.

I believe there has to be a change, I believe if we carry on the way we are going, we are going to end up with many, many young people disillusioned and out of work. The government have driven forward a policy without any thought to the consequences of the people they are governing. We have many young people who will leave college this year and go onto university with dreams of gaining a qualification that will get them a highly paid job. Unfortunately it won't be until 3 years later that the reality will hit them and they will go into the big bad world with nothing to show for their hard work except a massive debt and no job. Ba Humbug!!!