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A child’s guide to #university: Once upon a time, most school leavers started work as trainees, apprentices, or office juniors. The pay was rubbish. They made tea. Got sent for long stands, big weights, pots of tartan paint. They weren’t paid to think or explore ideas! 1/9
Only the academic elite went to uni. They read & thought, complained about their measly grants, protested, explored ideas, “discovered themselves”, & experimented with drugs & sex (basically they did the things they’d neglected to do at school on account of being swots). 2/9
This wasn’t fair. Why shouldn’t everyone get to explore ideas? So when the govt said they wanted to expand HE to the masses, few people studied their motives. They wanted a workforce for the “knowledge economy” & a new class of consumers. Soon there were new unis, including ours!
But the govt couldn’t afford so many people exploring ideas & discovering themselves. Grants became loans. Then students had to PAY for their own courses. £3000! Then £9000! It was awful! Students rioted! Still, at least more people got to explore ideas & discover themselves so…
Uni became a consumer service. Students could buy 3 years of exploring ideas and discovering themselves, but they’d be burdened with debt for decades. So they were urged to use those years, instead, to boost their "employability" so that maybe one day they could repay their debts
But some “low-quality” courses didn’t do enough for employability. People were wasting time reading & thinking & discovering themselves (best left to the elite). Students at new unis weren’t paying to think big thoughts or explore ideas! That wouldn’t drive economic growth! 6/9
In the 40 years since this story started, the economy had trebled in size. After decades of growth, this strange planet was going through a mass extinction event, yet its society was too poor to afford education or to pay its trainee workers. 7/9
In 2020, a time of storms and pestilence, the system was collapsing. But the Vice Chancellors, who now believed themselves to be capricious Greek gods, charged students £9000 to undergo online employment training for jobs that no longer existed. 8/9
One student had a vague idea that once upon a time companies had paid their own trainees. There had been grants & books & things called ideas. She wanted to know more about this strange past, but nobody remembered it, & of course the history department had long been shut. THE END
