Giving more people degrees doesn’t make us a more educated society.
Certain politicians in Australia, Britain and America have set a political goal of increasing the number of students at universities.
The Australian Prime Minister has mentioned a target figure of 40 per cent of the population to have bachelors’ degrees by 2025, at a cost of more than $5.2 billion in public money over five years.
This is presented as a Good Thing.
In fact, there is a very strong argument that it is not a Good Thing at all. It may be a very Bad Thing indeed to encourage our young people to waste years of their lives and a vast amount of public money acquiring worthless and useless degrees.
When one looks at some of the theses undertaken for higher degrees, the waste becomes even more glaring (I recall one thesis on that less-than-vital subject, homosexuality among Chinese pirates).
All this is costing money taken from the taxpayer, and which might be spent on welfare, medical research, infrastructure investment, national defence or wildlife conservation, to name but a few alternatives.
It is taking from young people and their families years they might have invested in getting more solid and useful qualifications.
Further, once the idea that this is an entitlement is settled in the public mind, it will be very difficult to take it away, however ruinous to the public (and private household) economy it becomes.
Further, while we already have a surplus of unemployable Arts graduates, we have a desperate shortage of skilled tradesmen. Much of the tertiary education budget could be better spent on technical training.
Even within the tertiary education system, the money could be spent much more discriminating.
For all the thousands of people in Australia doing Creative Writing course how many really good poets and novelists does Australia have? My guess is in the vicinity of two or three per million of population.
Teaching discriminating reading might be more beneficial to the individual, even if it does nothing for the national economy.
Poor neighbourhoods do not need universities turning out literary critics, though some good librarians might be useful there (incidentally, I think one year of philosophy is a very useful part of a university course, but not as preparation for a lifetime career in the subject, except in the most rare and exceptional cases).
Obviously, those degrees which demand a high standard of intellectual rigour – such as medicine, physics, mathematics and law – will largely select their own students, or at least I hope they will. Who wants a community filled with bad doctors? It is the softer subjects that need greater scrutiny, and where the saying “more is better” needs to be challenged.
There is a riddle regarding what graduates say to their customers:
Law: “I’ll need to obtain senior counsel’s Opinion.”
Medicine: “I’ll need to consult a specialist.”
Arts: “Will you have fries with that?”
Parents trying to push their offspring into ‘Uni’ at any price might do much better to get them into technical training or an apprenticeship. Unless things go very seriously wrong, they will never want for employment.
If they have a personal interest in some more academic subject they can, in most cases, obtain fulfilment by studying it privately. This may, of course, lead them to university studies later.
Of course, there are the rare geniuses who can, and must, do only one thing, the sort of people higher degrees were originally intended for. But they are not a problem in this context.
Einstein and AE Houseman, a famous poet and during his life perhaps the most learned Latin scholar in the world, began working as clerks in patent offices. Shakespeare was a theatre-manager, John Masefield a sailor and bar-keeper. It did them no harm.
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Unqualified as I am to write a proper appreciation of the career of Mgr Sean O’Shea, recently retired as Rottnest Chaplain (and before that chaplain at the Stella Maris centre), I would like to place on record a memory of the delightful times my wife and I spent with him on Rottnest, enjoying his famous homemade (and I think home-grown) fig jam.
“Wit and wisdom” is an over-used phrase, but it well describes his conversation. How fortunate he was to enjoy the beautiful island in all its moods and seasons, not least the unforgettable full Easter moon over Thompson Bay, with the lights of the mainland twinkling along the horizon, and the still, calm early mornings!
He was part of the spirit of Rottnest, to my mind one of the loveliest islands in the world, and he will be deeply missed.
A footnote to his ministry which may not be widely known is the work he put into restoring the old pioneer cemetery there.