Tony Blair gets it wrong on university enrollments

And I thought the problem was primarily an American one....but it is not just us.

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair has done more harm to the British university system than any other political leader in modern times. So it is no surprise to see him attempt to do further damage. This time, he is calling for 70 per cent of young people to go on to higher education, in order to tackle the UK’s productivity crisis.

This is not the first time that Blair has promoted increased participation in higher education as a way to meet economic objectives. Back in September 1999, two years after New Labour’s first General Election victory, he said he wanted to see 50 per cent of young adults going into higher education in the next century, in order for Britain to succeed in the ‘knowledge economy’. Successive governments have supported this attempt to cram more and more young people into higher education. And in 2019, Blair’s target of 50 per cent was finally met.

Turning universities into a means to solve the UK’s economic problems – in this case, the productivity crisis – perverts the raison d’être of higher education. Universities do not exist to raise productivity levels, or improve a nation’s GDP. Their purpose is to develop and disseminate knowledge, and to stimulate young, eager minds in the process.

Moreover, the idea that increasing university participation rates will lead to an increase in economic productivity is fanciful. If there really were a direct causal relationship between increasing the rate of participation in higher education and raising productivity growth, then Britain would surely be undergoing an economic miracle by now. That is clearly not the case.

Only four per cent of school leavers went to university in the 1950s. That figure rose to just 14 per cent by the end of the 1970s. Today, of course, participation rates stand at over 50 per cent. Yet despite the massive increase in the undergraduate population, productivity growth was more impressive in the 1950s and 1960s than it is today. In 1960, for instance, Britain had the highest level of productivity in Europe (measured in gross domestic product per hour worked).

Just as the canard that "more college graduates means higher productivity," today on WHBY I heard a local economist say he wanted immigrants so "they can pay my Social Security," which is related to the equally inane rhetoric, "immigrants do the jobs Americans won't do." More years in formal education or more diplomas do NOT equate into more productive, happy or civic-minded individuals, regardless of race, gender, or sexual identity.

Productivity requires skills, not just "book learning" or the naive not on that more years of formal education equates to more knowledge, any particular skills or the ability to think critically. While IQ is a good predictor of performance/productivity, knowledge itself or educational credentials are not good predictors. And while the level or number of degrees has historically been positively related to lifetime income, those income figures come from degrees earned forty years ago and not from people graduating today. And all this "education" and degrees does not predict wealth; age is a better predictor of wealth than is education. And once the $1.5 trillion of college debt today (up from perhaps one-tenth of that figure just twenty years ago) is factored into the equation, a very large number of recent college graduates have negative net worth, worse than comparably aged high school-only graduates.

A few more thoughts from the article:

A significant proportion of undergraduates are bored out of their minds. They would rather be playing with their phones than attending a seminar or listening to a lecture. Many of my colleagues in academia estimate that around 30 per cent of their students lack any academic interest. They are just hanging in there until they receive their degrees. It would be much better for this unmotivated group to enter the world of work instead, where they might acquire some useful skills.

The large number of intellectually unmotivated students has a negative impact on the entire academic community. Lecturers are often under pressure to accommodate these students’ lack of interest. So they adapt their teaching methods to ensure that these ‘hard to reach’ students will not drop out. This often entails lowering standards and creating an intellectually undemanding environment. And to what end? Many of those who endure such an impoverished academic experience end up in jobs where their paper qualification is irrelevant anyway.