Each year in Britain, scores of intellectually average people graduate from intellectually average institutions for no better reason than that they think they should. Emerging from graduation ceremonies, they proudly wave an expensive piece of paper above their heads, which in many cases is worth little more than the Munich Agreement. And months later, when the euphoria abates, they wonder out loud why they are no more employable than before. Given the promises of milk and honey that have been made to them, this is apprehensible. But those promises have always been laughably misguided. The late Labour government’s promise to send 50 percent of British children to college is based upon a staggering failure of logic, which has not yet been exploded. It was, until a few years ago, possible to draw a direct line between the possession of a university degree, and a better paying job. This was not the product of a timeless ironclad equation, but because the default was not to go to university; to have a degree thus set one apart from the crowd. But if everyone has a degree, then nobody does. We are now caught in a spiral in which a master’s is the new degree and, soon, a Ph.D. will be the new master’s. Would that economics classes had given our children an understanding of the importance of adding value. You don’t pay your plumber more because he has a degree in physics.
In the West, we are hard at work establishing a culture that fetishizes education, and instills the belief that college — regardless of its content or application — will, and should, inexorably lead to a better job, or a better life, or even a better America. Worse, that one has a right to these things. In doing so, we have created a Potemkin aristocracy, one based upon the erroneous and tragic conceit that having letters after one’s name intrinsically confers excellence. We are happily encouraging our children to join its ranks, regardless of whether there is any evidence that to do so will be in their interest.
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