“The front page of the internet” reddit.com today featured the picture above with the following caption, “Recession finally made me its bitch.” An increasing familiar picture falls into place. There’s a student and she can’t afford to go to college so she doesn’t. She looks for work but she’s not qualified to do anything that pays enough to start a comfortable life so it’s probably not going to work out that well. She might leave, she might stay but either way things are looking a bit grim. She could have gotten a degree and if she had she would have been much more likely to earn a decent living.
She could have had quite a career but like many things that potential was “cut” by austerity.
Whether austerity is a mad man with a machete or a heaven sent surgeon we’re not sure but that knife is sticking in deep. Austerity boils down to a very basic premise: things cost money and when we have less money we spend less on things. We attempt to spend the minimum amount possible while still achieving key goals. This then prevents the troubled system from over spending to the point of collapse. It spends less until it can afford to spend more. Seems fairly reasonable on face value to this non-economist and the ESRI certainly think so which doesn’t hurt. So austerity is good right?
We enter a much grayer area when apply the basic principles of austerity to education. The simple formula evolves as we add a factor: the money spent can act like an investment in ourselves. A smart economy of degree boasting professionals combined with being the European equivalent of the Cayman Island sounds pretty good too. So we’re going for both with a system of measured cutback, reduced grants and rising fees as opposed to full fees. It’s a compromise.
The problem is many people can’t even afford that compromise and the government is doing very little to deal with that.
In fact, the long sharp blade of austerity looms down over our education system at this very moment. Cuts are coming and I’m guessing there’s going to be plenty of students like the one above who can’t take the blood loss. Prof John FitzGerald of the ESRI noted that, as education levels are much higher now than in the 1980s and 1990s, the last time unemployment peaked, joblessness should decline more sharply when recovery kicks in. He also said “the bottom 30 per cent” in terms of educational achievement are vulnerable to becoming stuck in long-term unemployment. It could be described as a conservative estimate but we’ll accept at face value as an indicator.
History tells us that this educational bottom 30% will have quite a lot of overlap with the financial bottom 30% and considering this sparks the fear. It’s terrifying that such a massive number of people will be at risk of a palpably poorer life because of austerity and it’s terrifying that most of those people will probably never have the opportunity to better their lives because the education required to unlock those better lives was too expensive. And it’s not just money being lost, every single one of that 30% is losing a chance to be an expert, a leader or to fall into philosophy for nothing more than the love of doing so. Every achievement they could have made is lost. They’re never going to face the challenges they chose, they’re not going to get the fulfillment of a professional career nor stand with their backs up extra straight with for a graduation picture and blush with pride. Life as a potential kicks in. Marriage, kids and trying to scrape enough together so their children aren’t potentials too. They’re going to resent and they’re going to wish. They’re going to regret.
I’m afraid because we’re dangling education just out of reach of more and more people. As an economy we can’t afford to leave them behind because they’ll always be our problem.
Educational success and wealth don’t go hand in hand because poor people can’t, it’s because they don’t have the opportunity to try. I’m afraid because we’re dangling education just out of reach of more and more people. As an economy we can’t afford to leave them behind because they’ll always be our problem. If we hold “ the bottom 30 per cent” back now, they’ll hold us back later, the smart economy will have a limp . That’s a good reason to be afraid. A better one is the fear of confining our peers restricted opportunities, lower incomes and menial jobs because we never viewed their fulfillment as people, as workers or providers an essential. That’s pretty scary.
