IF HALF OF US HAVE DEGREES WILL WE BE A BETTER COUNTRY?

At the 1997 Labour Party Conference Tony Blair announced his ambition to have over 50% of young people going to university.

Tony Blair! You once looked like this

In 2019 his ambition was fulfilled but the current Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has reversed this as a laudable aim saying there was an inbuilt  snobbishness about higher as opposed to further education.

Although in general  it goes against my nature to agree with Gavin, on this occasion I think he may have a point.

A model of the Lewes Road development – wall to wall student accommodation

In Brighton there are two universities with just over 38,000 students representing nearly 15% of the population.  New student housing blocks are beginning to dominate the city. Over 4000 apartments in such blocks have been built already with many more planned. But rentals of £1000 a month seems quite pricey for such tiny spaces.

A local resident – a Disgusted-of-Brighton is quoted in the Brighton Argus:

“The area has too many students already who, at such a number, do not add to the community and increase the amount of anti-social behaviour such as drinking and creating late-night noise (already a problem).”

Eureka!

He too has a point.

But something has changed owing to Covid. A sixth form college which has a brilliant record especially in obtaining Oxbridge entrants currently has several young people saying they won’t bother with University possibly ever but at least until after a gap year or two. 

Learning by road as opposed to by rote

It’s time to reflect seriously on what education is for. What’s the point of doing a three year course in Psychology and Politics and then working in a Call Centre? Is the 72 weeks at university and the £27,000 tuition fees plus living expenses (say a further £50,000) worth it? If your answer is “I learnt loads about myself and life; I met inspiring people who’ll be lifelong friends; I learnt how to do research; I learnt how to meet deadlines; I also learnt how to busk my way concealing what I didn’t know” then university will have been good for you and for society as a whole. Even better still if you learnt enough to know you can become an advancer of knowledge. 

But I worry that the academic ambition of universities is diluted because too many of that magic 50% shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.

Whilst for some, university opens doors in their minds and builds their resilience and confidence, for others it should enable them to learn how to be useful.  As teachers, nurses, care workers, architects, and engineers. Whatever.

But universities have become big businesses focused on scale. It’s never been easier to get into a university – good for their income - which leads to many providing a less than fulfilling experience.

University should be either the most thrilling and inspiring experience imaginable. The process of intellectual osmosis whereby the smartest kid in their school finds they are suddenly only average but then discovers talents they didn’t know they had is only found in good universities where the community of minds creates this joyful chemistry.

Or it should be useful.

"I hope we get jobs"

I believe in the virtues of academic education but not for everyone. The problem we’ve created is to presume “higher” is all that matters when “wider” for many is what they want and need.

Universities can do both.  Create geniuses and people with brilliant craft skills. They must do both to justify their existence and growth.

HOW POPULAR ARE YOU?

When I was in Kindergarten many years ago our formidable Headmistress Miss Parry told us “unless you stop worrying about people liking you you’ll get hurt later on in life”. She was very smart as well as being formidable.

One of the Patagonian Surf Ambassadors (Patagonia being one of the world’s most likeable brands) Mercedes Maidana who’s also a life coach, said:
“I have a client who has trouble marketing her business because she is worried about what those who are currently doing better than her in that field will think of her. So what has she done? Nothing. She’s stuck in situations she doesn’t like because the fear of not being liked by others is controlling her life.” 

Which inevitably brings me on to Donald who is the post-truth king, the most ethically incontinent of prospective world leaders.  (Malcolm Gladwell, incidentally, is convinced he’ll be in gaol before the year is out.)  Well Donald doesn’t want to be liked. And he’s “winning bigly” in that mission. When he won the US election he was pretty unpopular but in a few weeks he’s slipped to just 37% having a favourable view of him (Obama is currently at 55% in favourability rating.)

I think Donald would get on with Gambian President Yahya Jammeh who having lost a recent election decided he didn’t like the result so he’s refused to stand down and is demanding a new election (…”and we’ll carry on until I get the result I want.” I seem to remember masters at school saying things like that.) So Yahya will, if necessary, legislate to be liked.

One of our most popular Britons is Richard Branson. He’s done brilliantly in building a personal brand and a huge, but allegedly fragile, fortune. In Tom Bower's biography of Branson, he describes him giving a lecture at Oxford University in 1999.  Asked what his great hope is for the new century he replied "to run the national lottery." In the scheme of things when he’s being invited to say something game-changing this is not it. Yet he sails on grinning, cuddling lovelies and being liked.

But my favourite story of a desire to be liked being thwarted and derided is about stand-up comedian Joel Douglas, the less famous son of the now 100 year old actor Kirk.  He was performing at the Comedy Store and was getting increasingly frustrated by the audience reaction.

He started shouting: "You can't do this to me, I'm Kirk Douglas's son!" At which point some wag stood up and said: "No, I'm Kirk Douglas's son." Then someone else stood up, and so on.
Wonderful … I really like that.

Kim Kardashian is famous but not especially likeable yet to acquire her kind of salience of status is mission (probably-impossible) for many and most millennials are desperate to get more “likes” on Facebook. Meanwhile, however, we are voting for the most tawdry bunch of unlikeables in history. Apart from Yaha. He’s still waiting and waiting.

WE ARE IN CRISIS (AGAIN)

A friend of mine is over from China where he works in the business I once tormented (advertising - yeah, you probably noticed the resemblance between me and Don Draper.)  He said something I’ve heard a lot recently.

“The industry’s in crisis”
“Yes” I said, “it always was.”

It was in crisis when the young Turks with ideas took over, it was in crisis when the Brits took over the US agencies, it was in crisis when the media men like Kraken awoke and plundered the business and it is in crisis now digital is the story. Someone asked recently what a client’s social media strategy was. That’s rather like asking for a conversing-with-friends strategy.

As the lovely lady exclaimed in Smiths today - “bollocks” as for the second time her purchase of some magazine was double-counted by the DIY self-service till. She said “sorry” but I explained consolingly this was the word I’d been seeking to describe “a social media strategy”.

(By the way what a dreary, ill lit and drab place WHS is. And Kate Swann, their ex CEO, left with £13million for the job she did for them?  Astonishing.)

Recently I met someone with whom I was at Oxford. I haven’t seen much of him over the many intervening years but discovered he was so positive, so different from the many Meldrew “just-typical” figures of our generation, so inspiringly hopeful that we were not in crisis but that in fact we’ve, to quote a Prime Minister of my youth - Harold MacMillan, “never had it so good.”

The fact is markets change because technology changes but human beings don’t. I’m struck by how similar marketing ideas and advertising strategies are to those used a century or half a century ago. Our passions for strange football teams remain solid. (And what a great observation that those stunning crowds that Jezza Corbyn drew in his campaign were smaller than 2nd Division Accrington Stanley gets.) We love, we live, we row, we laugh, jokes we laugh at live forever - and we want the same things - safety, comfort and companionship.I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.  - Thomas Jefferson

And one other thing - a bit of rebellion - Thomas Jefferson one-time US President and a genius said a “little rebellion now and then is no bad thing”. The Corbanista and Trumpeters have brought a sparkle back into politics, some real arguments and besides anything else, how lovely to see the looks of confusion on the faces of the establishment.

So the industry is in crisis. Martin Sorrell is, I hear, intent on “horizontalising” (means “integrate”) the marketing services business. If I’d offered to “horizontalise” that young lady in WH Smith they’d have arrested me.

Sorrell wants to re-invent the one stop shop. It was always a lovely idea but it doesn’t work that well. Stick to your knitting and be the best at what your great at.

Because there is no crisis except in our heads and that’ll never go away.

AM I PART OF THE ESTABLISHMENT?

I’ve been worrying about this all week. In the wake of the resignation of Fiona Woolf as Chair of the Abuse Enquiry the question as to who knows whom and what this “establishment” actually is has been preying on my mind. Fiona, when asked if her successor would be difficult to find, suggested yes,  it might need to be a hermit.

So I thought about my own track record. Grammar School - good; Oxford - bad; Balliol - really terrible; live/have always lived in London and the south east - oh dear; friends include lawyers, civil servants, politicians, high rolling business people - all very, very bad.

But I regard myself as a bit of a rebel which is, of course, not just bad but dangerous. It defines me as a kind of Che Guevara figure - establishment gone a bit mouldy.

The issue is a sensitive one. Fiona Woolf antagonised the survivors of abuse by describing them as the “victim community”. These are not just victims, they are very angry and at last they see an opportunity to achieve revelation, reprisal and reform.

The agenda is changing from an enquiry into an issue into a broad based scrutiny of British Society’s attitude and behaviour towards children in the mid-20th century.  This will dig deep into public school education, the church, charities and any institutions which “helped” young people. It will tangle with issues of privilege, loyalty to colleagues and concepts like giving people a second chance.

The idea of whistleblowing, abhorrent to most of us when I was young, is now required behaviour. The idea of making a fuss however much you suffered used to be regarded as unmanly or unseemly. Lips were upper and stiff.

Today we live in a better, kinder and cleaner world. Young people today are bemused by what seems a conspiratorial and violent past. Yet as a country we remain rather grumpy. Research at Warwick University shows the Danes and Dutch are the happiest whilst the Brits and Americans are genetically under-provided with serotonin, the happiness chemical. Only the French are gloomier than we are.
C’est la vie.

But how do you choose the right  people for important jobs? At Google executives face a barrage of interviews - up to 25 of them with, accordingly, plenty of opportunity to uncover flaws.

Yet at many places the process of selection seems to be more light touch.

Interviewing to uncover a candidate’s defects is a pretty inexact science, let’s face it, but I loved the story of the executive who at the end of an interview which had gone really well was asked “And finally Mr Hall can you tell me what your biggest weakness is?”

There was a silence while the candidate thought and then said.
“I suppose it’s my honesty”.

The Chairman of the panel smiled and said.

“I don’t think that’s a weakness Mr Hall.”

To which the candidate replied.

“I don’t care what the hell you think.”