A personal anecdote here. I shared an office with a bog-standard unionised Marxist sociology lecturer. He ran an Access Course for people to have a second bite at the university cherry - mainly youngish mothers who had missed out on A levels and now wanted to get back into education and the job market. The students would learn all about oppression, exploitation, social class, racism, sexism, etc, etc.
Later, having been promoted into a management position, I would advertise for lecturers in one of my departments, and we would see a lot of these ex-students coming back to the college to apply for lecturing jobs. They had gone off to Portsmouth Uni to do sociology courses, and a job teaching it would, for most of them, be a big step upwards.
What was amazing was how few of them were remotely employable. They could explain the oppression, sexism, racism, etc. in more detail and with greater sophistication, but had acquired no other discernible skills. Very limited IT, poor social skills, minimal self-organisation, and allergic to admin.
Sam - interesting, it's weird isn't it? If James Lindsay is right, those people who weren't remotely employable will over time lead to their university acquiring a negative image with respect to the employability of their graduates. Presumably the trend may be exported over here too.
It may be happening already, as Lindsay suggests it is in the US, but we won't necessarily hear much about it until some kind of turning point is reached and it has to be admitted more openly.
I am long retired and I am glad that my working years were when they were. Now, does UK actually produce, and export anything? Thus requiring qualified, experienced, clever, people. Scotland flogs a lot of whisky, but other than that it is a theme park. Somebody in a nation has to produce something that other nations are prepared to pay for. That is how we pay for all the stuff we need but cannot produce ourselves. There must be a named curve, - See Laffer, Law of Demand - for the viability of a nation and the ratio of non-producers (I am trying to be tactful here) and fettlers. In the UK we must be reaching the point where the whole system seizes up. And it is not funny.
Doonhamer - I'm in much the same position, long retired and pleased to be out of it. We need to move towards a situation where a 'job' doesn't consist of messing up the way somebody else does their job.
Where we'd start I don't know, because we have reached a stage where politically there is too much to do without a drastic change in outlook. I don't see it happening, although the widespread ridicule of Starmer and his rabble does feel encouraging.
4 comments:
A personal anecdote here. I shared an office with a bog-standard unionised Marxist sociology lecturer. He ran an Access Course for people to have a second bite at the university cherry - mainly youngish mothers who had missed out on A levels and now wanted to get back into education and the job market. The students would learn all about oppression, exploitation, social class, racism, sexism, etc, etc.
Later, having been promoted into a management position, I would advertise for lecturers in one of my departments, and we would see a lot of these ex-students coming back to the college to apply for lecturing jobs. They had gone off to Portsmouth Uni to do sociology courses, and a job teaching it would, for most of them, be a big step upwards.
What was amazing was how few of them were remotely employable. They could explain the oppression, sexism, racism, etc. in more detail and with greater sophistication, but had acquired no other discernible skills. Very limited IT, poor social skills, minimal self-organisation, and allergic to admin.
What, I wonder, was the point?
Sam - interesting, it's weird isn't it? If James Lindsay is right, those people who weren't remotely employable will over time lead to their university acquiring a negative image with respect to the employability of their graduates. Presumably the trend may be exported over here too.
It may be happening already, as Lindsay suggests it is in the US, but we won't necessarily hear much about it until some kind of turning point is reached and it has to be admitted more openly.
I am long retired and I am glad that my working years were when they were.
Now, does UK actually produce, and export anything? Thus requiring qualified, experienced, clever, people.
Scotland flogs a lot of whisky, but other than that it is a theme park.
Somebody in a nation has to produce something that other nations are prepared to pay for. That is how we pay for all the stuff we need but cannot produce ourselves.
There must be a named curve, - See Laffer, Law of Demand - for the viability of a nation and the ratio of non-producers (I am trying to be tactful here) and fettlers.
In the UK we must be reaching the point where the whole system seizes up.
And it is not funny.
Doonhamer - I'm in much the same position, long retired and pleased to be out of it. We need to move towards a situation where a 'job' doesn't consist of messing up the way somebody else does their job.
Where we'd start I don't know, because we have reached a stage where politically there is too much to do without a drastic change in outlook. I don't see it happening, although the widespread ridicule of Starmer and his rabble does feel encouraging.
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