I think, like Thatcher, Conservatives have realised something key to their success in the long-run: lack of higher education. Thatcher knew Right to Buy and turning council renters into homeowners would turn them into Tories. University education has clearly made young people more Left/Liberal and countries like the UK where a very high proportion of young people go to university correlates with young people voting for Left/Liberal parties. Ireland is the most educated country in Europe, and also has the most sane politics in Europe (although PR-STV plays the biggest role, but it is the only European country where the majority of the population went to university). Parts of the Irish senate are elected by university students.
In the UK, for every election from 2015 onwards, the greatest predictor of voting patterns after age is university education.
University education is starting to become more predictive of voting patterns across Western countries, and within the culture wars the Right likes to play, they end up on the wrong side of university students.
>“I have long thought that in some cases, university actually degrades young people. It gives them too much freedom at a time when they don’t know what to do with it, blunts the work ethic and gets them into bad habits.”
Bad habits? Too much freedom? I guess he’s unhappy with all the student protests and activism.
More and more right-wing parties across the West will be attacking universities like Republicans are.
noodles0311 on
There’s a paywall so I don’t know what “curb” means. Are they trying to cut funding? I don’t support that. I would support telling college students upfront that we graduate more “political scientists” with a baccalaureate degree each year than there are total jobs in the field. They can decide for themselves whether that’s a ripoff.
upthetruth1 on
>Kemi Badenoch has pledged to end “rip-off” degrees if her party wins power again, with university courses that lead to low earnings after graduation set to be in the firing line.
>The Conservative leader will use her speech in Manchester on Wednesday to announce that she will funnel the savings from cutting low-performing degrees into doubling funding for apprenticeships.
>*The i Paper* understands that the party wants to focus its efforts on weak job prospects and limited earning potential, with subjects such as the performing arts, English, design, sociology, anthropology, media and psychology among those under review.
>Internal party analysis suggests graduates from these areas typically earn the least after leaving university.
>Badenoch will use her conference speech to argue that the current system leaves both students and taxpayers worse off.
>**‘Taxpayers writing off £7bn in loans’**
>She is expected to say the reforms will “protect the interests of taxpayers and students” by capping funded courses that “consistently lead to poor graduate outcomes”.
>She will say: “Every year thousands of young people go off to university… but leave with crippling loans and no real prospects. Nearly one in three graduates see no economic return, and every year taxpayers are writing off over £7bn in unpaid student loans.
>“Wasted money, wasted talent… a rigged system propping up low-quality courses, while people can’t get high-quality apprenticeships that lead to real jobs.”
>Under the plans, universities would face controls on student numbers in specific subject areas, with places allocated according to graduate outcomes and course quality.
>The Conservatives say this would save more than £3bn a year in written-off student loan losses and reduce the number of annual university places by around 100,000. This will lead to savings that will pay for the doubling of apprenticeship funding.
>A 2020 analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that around 30 per cent of both men and women see “negative total returns” from going to university, and one in five would be financially better off if they skipped higher education.
>Many graduates, the think tank noted, earn so little that they never repay their student loans, with taxpayers covering more than £7bn in unpaid debt every year.
>**Degrees ‘don’t get young people a job’**
>The Conservatives also highlighted comments from economist Roger Bootle, who, writing for the right -wing Policy Exchange think tank, said that while graduates on average earn more than non-graduates, “this does not mean that if you turn the marginal non-graduate into a graduate, their earnings will rise”.
>He continued: “I have long thought that in some cases, university actually degrades young people. It gives them too much freedom at a time when they don’t know what to do with it, blunts the work ethic and gets them into bad habits.”
>Speaking at a *Spectator* fringe event, shadow education secretary Laura Trott said too many young people were encouraged into doing degrees that did not deliver returns. “For a number of young people, they will go to university, they will do a course which they will pay thousands and thousands and thousands for, and they don’t get them in the job afterwards,” she said.
>“[They’re] trapped in debt, and they have no ability to pay it back… This is not a good outcome for those individuals, and it’s not a good outcome for the taxpayer.”
>Trott added that the party wanted to redirect students towards apprenticeships, which she described as “really positive things” that “attach people to the workforce”.
>Prime Minister Keir Starmer also used his leadership conference speech to announce an expansion of apprenticeships, claiming he wanted to see two-thirds of young people in the UK go to university or study a technical qualification after leaving school.
>Speaking at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, he said the target set by his predecessor Tony Blair in 1999 to “get 50 per cent of kids to uni” was no longer “right for our times”.
>Instead, he said the Government wanted the majority of young people to be going on to university, further education, or a “gold standard apprenticeship” by the age of 25.
3 Comments
I think, like Thatcher, Conservatives have realised something key to their success in the long-run: lack of higher education. Thatcher knew Right to Buy and turning council renters into homeowners would turn them into Tories. University education has clearly made young people more Left/Liberal and countries like the UK where a very high proportion of young people go to university correlates with young people voting for Left/Liberal parties. Ireland is the most educated country in Europe, and also has the most sane politics in Europe (although PR-STV plays the biggest role, but it is the only European country where the majority of the population went to university). Parts of the Irish senate are elected by university students.
In the UK, for every election from 2015 onwards, the greatest predictor of voting patterns after age is university education.
University education is starting to become more predictive of voting patterns across Western countries, and within the culture wars the Right likes to play, they end up on the wrong side of university students.
>“I have long thought that in some cases, university actually degrades young people. It gives them too much freedom at a time when they don’t know what to do with it, blunts the work ethic and gets them into bad habits.”
Bad habits? Too much freedom? I guess he’s unhappy with all the student protests and activism.
More and more right-wing parties across the West will be attacking universities like Republicans are.
There’s a paywall so I don’t know what “curb” means. Are they trying to cut funding? I don’t support that. I would support telling college students upfront that we graduate more “political scientists” with a baccalaureate degree each year than there are total jobs in the field. They can decide for themselves whether that’s a ripoff.
>Kemi Badenoch has pledged to end “rip-off” degrees if her party wins power again, with university courses that lead to low earnings after graduation set to be in the firing line.
>The Conservative leader will use her speech in Manchester on Wednesday to announce that she will funnel the savings from cutting low-performing degrees into doubling funding for apprenticeships.
>*The i Paper* understands that the party wants to focus its efforts on weak job prospects and limited earning potential, with subjects such as the performing arts, English, design, sociology, anthropology, media and psychology among those under review.
>Internal party analysis suggests graduates from these areas typically earn the least after leaving university.
>Badenoch will use her conference speech to argue that the current system leaves both students and taxpayers worse off.
>**‘Taxpayers writing off £7bn in loans’**
>She is expected to say the reforms will “protect the interests of taxpayers and students” by capping funded courses that “consistently lead to poor graduate outcomes”.
>She will say: “Every year thousands of young people go off to university… but leave with crippling loans and no real prospects. Nearly one in three graduates see no economic return, and every year taxpayers are writing off over £7bn in unpaid student loans.
>“Wasted money, wasted talent… a rigged system propping up low-quality courses, while people can’t get high-quality apprenticeships that lead to real jobs.”
>Under the plans, universities would face controls on student numbers in specific subject areas, with places allocated according to graduate outcomes and course quality.
>The Conservatives say this would save more than £3bn a year in written-off student loan losses and reduce the number of annual university places by around 100,000. This will lead to savings that will pay for the doubling of apprenticeship funding.
>A 2020 analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that around 30 per cent of both men and women see “negative total returns” from going to university, and one in five would be financially better off if they skipped higher education.
>Many graduates, the think tank noted, earn so little that they never repay their student loans, with taxpayers covering more than £7bn in unpaid debt every year.
>**Degrees ‘don’t get young people a job’**
>The Conservatives also highlighted comments from economist Roger Bootle, who, writing for the right -wing Policy Exchange think tank, said that while graduates on average earn more than non-graduates, “this does not mean that if you turn the marginal non-graduate into a graduate, their earnings will rise”.
>He continued: “I have long thought that in some cases, university actually degrades young people. It gives them too much freedom at a time when they don’t know what to do with it, blunts the work ethic and gets them into bad habits.”
>Speaking at a *Spectator* fringe event, shadow education secretary Laura Trott said too many young people were encouraged into doing degrees that did not deliver returns. “For a number of young people, they will go to university, they will do a course which they will pay thousands and thousands and thousands for, and they don’t get them in the job afterwards,” she said.
>“[They’re] trapped in debt, and they have no ability to pay it back… This is not a good outcome for those individuals, and it’s not a good outcome for the taxpayer.”
>Trott added that the party wanted to redirect students towards apprenticeships, which she described as “really positive things” that “attach people to the workforce”.
>Prime Minister Keir Starmer also used his leadership conference speech to announce an expansion of apprenticeships, claiming he wanted to see two-thirds of young people in the UK go to university or study a technical qualification after leaving school.
>Speaking at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, he said the target set by his predecessor Tony Blair in 1999 to “get 50 per cent of kids to uni” was no longer “right for our times”.
>Instead, he said the Government wanted the majority of young people to be going on to university, further education, or a “gold standard apprenticeship” by the age of 25.