My review of The Browne Review: what a f***ing disgrace

The long-awaited Browne review is out and it is not good. You can read a summary of the main points at The Guardian. Only an "industrialist" with no sense of the purpose of education could write anything quite so uncomprehending of the breadth of impact higher education has. The call for government only to fund courses that provide a "closer fit between what is taught and the skills needed in the economy" is a blatant middle finger to the idea that knowledge and culture are what contribute to a country's development, not the ability to screw things together and balance a spreadsheet. Only someone who slept through the last couple of years of economic strife could fail to recognise that it wasn't our ability to make money that got us where we are, but our inability to learn from history, and our lack of compassion. These are things that university should develop, not mindless hunts for profits at the expense of real people's quality of life.

Edward Gibbon - Lord Browne needs to have a bit of a readI'd suggest Browne look at his copy of Gibbon, but suspect he's never read it (but that's okay, because our future central source of knowledge, Wikipedia, is here to save him from embarrassment). If only he'd done a degree where understanding why the Roman Empire fell, and why we might learn from that, was seen as important. Sadly, he seems to think such things have no value at all. We are doomed to repeat history because this man, and those who agree with him, think it contributes nothing to our society to study it.

Every single person in Britain benefits from higher education, whether they have a degree or not. A graduate workforce improves the country’s economy, competitiveness, health, education and more. Why should the graduates who contribute to society in that way be fined for doing so? 

In the same way that every tax payer pays for schools, even if they do not have children, and for hospitals, even though they may never set foot in one, so it is right that every tax payer pays for universities - indeed the argument could be made that it is even more important that they do so. The advances in cancer research, for example, happen in Britain’s universities. The advances in our understanding of how children learn happen in Britain’s universities. The advances in engineering that produce fuel-efficient transport and lead to cheaper and more sustainable energy production happen in universities. Every single person in the UK is touched in some way by our university system. It is only right that everyone contributes.

The argument that graduates earn more, and therefore should directly pay for, their education makes no sense. For one thing they already do this through income tax. If a graduate earns, say, £20,000 a year more than they would have done if they were not a graduate, they would pay tax - much of it at a higher rate - on those earnings under the existing tax regime. Adding an extra tax on top is in effect a fine for being a graduate. Why should doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists and engineers, not to mention artists, designers, journalists, actors and company directors and Marks and Spencer store managers be asked to pay a penalty because they had the wherewithal to gain a degree to enable to them to enter careers that make use of their talents?

If you support this plan, why not explain to your child’s teacher why you think they should pay more tax because they are a teacher? If you support this plan, why not explain to your oncologist why you think they should pay more tax because they are curing your cancer? If you support this plan why not explain to the actors who keep your town’s cultural life intact why you think they should pay more tax for the privilege of doing so.

If you support this plan, explain to me why I should pay more tax because I struggled for years to gain a qualification that means I now am able to educate your sons and daughters so they can go off and be taxed more in turn. That's right. It makes no sense. If you support this plan you are an idiot. 

But maybe you think all graduates are privileged, earning far more than you do, and you think they deserve to be punished. That’s a point of view, but it’s stupid. Only a backward country penalises its talent and gives an incentive (lower taxes) to those who lack it, or are happy to waste it. Graduates who earn more already pay more. Many graduates do not go to university to earn big salaries (and if they did, they’d be disappointed) but because they want to contribute to society. And society, everyone from unborn children through to the elderly and infirm, benefits from a graduate workforce.

Let me repeat. We all benefit from higher education, we should all pay. This is what is meant by "progressive politics".

These proposals are simply a means to allow central government to give up responsibility for funding higher education and place the burden on the relative few who choose to undergo post-compulsory education. It is like asking soldiers to pay for their own training, then taxing them more when they go off to fight. We wouldn’t do that, so why do we plan to do it for our doctors, our teachers, our artists and our entrepreneurs?

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