November 30, 2010
Windbag
Nick Clegg appears to be descending into a world of fantasy and illusion.
Last week he delivered a seriously confused lecture on how raising university fees and slashing higher education budgets – as well as abolishing the Education Maintenance Allowance – will boost social mobility.
He also had the audacity to suggest that opponents to the Browne review haven’t understood it, because if they did they’d know supporting Browne’s proposals is unquestionably right. Call me elitist, but I can’t help thinking Cambridge professor Stefan Collini possess the analytic acumen to analyse the Browne proposals and come to a valid – hostile – conclusion. Ditto the numerous distinguished academics recently condemning the report in a letter to The Telegraph.
Yet Clegg is already back up on his patronising high horse, insinuating that student protestors themselves are a threat to more equal university access:
“However, I also believe that all of us involved in this debate have a greater responsibility to ensure that we do not let our genuinely held disagreements over policy mean that we sabotage an aim that we all share – to encourage people from poorer backgrounds to go to university.”
Put aside Clegg’s apparent inability to grasp the causal relationship between the policies he’s supporting and the substance of the opposition they’re arousing. Ignore the rather insulting implication that poor students are so stupid they’ll just rule-out university because they saw some protests on the telly.
Focus instead on what connects today’s statement with earlier ones: Clegg’s repeated insistence that everything that’s going wrong is everybody else’s fault, and that if they just listened to him they’d see the light.
Now also recall his response to the Institute For Fiscal studies condemnation of the Comprehensive Spending Review as deeply regressive. Namely, to accuse the independent and highly respected IFS of using the wrong (i.e. non-Cleggist) understanding of regressivity in the tax and benefit system.
A pattern, it seems, is emerging. One that has precedent.
By the end of Tony Blair’s time in power – particularly after the full nightmare of Iraq was under way – he had clearly descended into a world of fantasy. One in which the Mesopotamian Adventure had been a triumphant success. Where Britain was safer – despite the heightened risk of domestic terrorism. Where the Middle East was stabilised – despite increased Iranian bellicosity and justified regional paranoia. Removing Saddam was A Good Thing; those who didn’t agree were moral hypocrites merely using Iraq as a beating stick.
For Blair, this was clearly a psychological coping mechanism. Living in his world of fantasy, he remained the champion of Goodness and Light. Outside that world he was the man responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Nick Clegg appears to be treading a strikingly similar path. The problem, he insists, is students and an unreasonable public. He correspondingly shut-outs the fact he has systematically betrayed his party grassroots and (former) principles. He ignores the fact he’s reneged on core, vote-winning promises with the likely result of electoral decimation and a return to the political wilderness for his party.
He pretends he’s not the man enabling the most viciously right-wing and socially-destructive government in Western Europe; a Government now launching a drastic programme of enormous, ideologically-motivated cuts far removed from liberal democratic principles. Cuts which Lib Dem voters expressly did not vote for.
What perhaps differentiates Blair and Clegg’s trajectories is the sheer speed with which the latter has descended into fantasy and blame-gaming. But, ultimately, they both come out as pathetic – if increasingly damaging – political figures. These are men who, as Max Weber put it so well, lack the true calling for politics; a calling which depends upon taking self-reflective responsibility for one’s actions. They parse the maxims:
“ ‘The world is stupid and base, not I’, ‘The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity and baseness I shall eradicate’. ”
They are “windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensation”.
Ronald Collinson said,
November 30, 2010 at 9:43 pm
This is all very amusing, and I agree that Clegg’s previous statements do not stand up to scrutiny, but on this point he’s right.
It’s no more patronising to assume that protest will deter poor students than it is to assume that higher top-up fees will deter poor students. Many people – people I’ve met – don’t apply to Oxford or Cambridge on the mistaken assumption that it is more expensive [for undergraduates - obviously, for us, it actually is]. That’s not necessarily idiocy – it’s a belief that ‘our kind of people’ don’t go to Oxbridge, and so the truth is never revealed.
This applies yet more strongly to university application with higher fees. If people assume that university is too expensive for them, not only will they not apply, they’ll also not make the effort to discover that everybody can afford to go to university if they want to.
This obviously isn’t a particularly good reason not to raise fees, as a concerted public awareness campaign could reverse this perception. In fact, that is a public awareness campaign that the NUS and University SUs ought to be involved in – whatever other damage they might do, the government’s proposals actually won’t make it harder for poor people to go to university. And yet, several people – supposedly studying at University – have appeared on television and expressed precisely these sentiments: that the poor will be priced out of higher education. And that’s just wrong.
I am actually opposed to the government’s proposals, largely for the reasons Collini outlines. And if I could find a protest that was solidly and solely behind his particular objection, then I might even join it. But so long as the question of marketisation is conflated with the question of higher fees, and so long as the relevant campaigning organisations – even in Cambridge! – continue to trot out the lie that higher fees will disadvantage the poor, I do not see how protest is possible in good conscience.
Torquil MacNeil said,
December 1, 2010 at 9:46 am
“‘The world is stupid and base, not I’, ‘The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity and baseness I shall eradicate’. ””
Hmm … this looks like one of those mirrors wherein we see every reflection but our own.
cim said,
December 1, 2010 at 9:49 am
Collini is right – it’s the move to a “free-market” system for UK undergraduates that’s got the potential to be a very big shock. Might be good, might be bad, very hard to say. Of course, it doesn’t have convenient big numbers attached to it, so it’s hard to protest about. “Retain government control of university size” doesn’t really make a good chant or banner.
The high tuition fees and cuts to teaching grants are a necessary consequence of that decision but mostly amount to moving money around on paper than any actual cuts or increases in graduate contributions, as the net effect for most will be minimal – though the perception of university as increasingly expensive even as the levels of support for students increase is I agree something that will discourage people from attending.
The fact that the current proposals extend financial support, and remove up-front tuition fees, for part-time students is also huge, has the potential to massively improve HE participation from people who might not otherwise have gone, and if the NU[Full-time UK undergraduate]S has commented on in it in a “this is good, but scrap the rest of the idea” way, no-one’s noticed.
Clegg’s in a bit of a bad position (of his own making, so I’m not actually sympathetic here): he has a proposal that if you changed the names of bits of it would be a fee-free graduate tax that wasn’t significantly different in repayment terms to the NUS graduate tax proposal. But he can’t change the names (though he’s giving it a go, if you read the BIS statement they’re called “graduate contributions” rather than “tuition fees”), firstly because it’s too late for that now and secondly because the Tories wouldn’t vote for it if he did.
Torquil MacNeil said,
December 1, 2010 at 10:30 am
Good comments in here, I agree with all of them (including my own). I have been a bit disgusted by the cynicism of some university staff urging protest from one side of their mouths while supporting fees from the other (much more quietly). Most academic staff as far as I can tell believe that there must be higher tuition fees, but they want cuts to teaching grants to be opposed so they are happy to give students they idea that they have their support when they march against the fees. A bit low, really.
cim said,
December 1, 2010 at 10:42 am
Torquil: Most academic staff as far as I can tell believe that there must be higher tuition fees, but they want cuts to teaching grants to be opposed
Hah, well, yes, that would be very good for universities, but not something the government is willing to pay for. At the moment the plans give only marginally more net funding per student – if you charge full £9k fees – than the current situation, because what you get in extra tuition you lose in the removal of the block grant (except for the lab course supplement). Raise the tuition fees and keep the block grant and it’s a huge increase in funding but not something the government is willing to pay for.
Funding per university, with the deregulation of student numbers, will of course vary a lot more, with some up and probably some down. (There are more people wanting to go to university at the moment than there are places, so it’s not inevitable that any uni loses out, though it is very likely)
Tom N said,
December 1, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Hey Paul,
Slightly more generally, isn’t there a contradiction between your position that the Labour policy of having 50% go to university is ludicrous and your opposition to much of what the coalition is doing? I mean if you were serious about doing something about the current state of affairs then surely many of the current ‘universities’ would close, which would make it easier to give the kind of places you’ve studied at the kind of money they need. That would be much more dramatic than much of what will occur.
After all, many of the current student protestors or potential students wouldn’t even get to go if that 50% went south.
Peter said,
December 1, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Tom N,
I wasn’t aware that the Coalition was in favour of restricting access to university? So Paul could oppose both Labour’s past policy and the Coalition’s policy.
Me? I think it’s great that lots of people can go to uni if they want to. My university years were the best years of my life, and I think as many people as possible should have access to a university education.
Tom N said,
December 2, 2010 at 8:09 am
Peter,
I don’t mean a strict logical contradiction, more like an implied inconsistency.
I think you cannot really be in favour of a reduction in the number of universities and university students yet against cuts to the education budget tout court, particularly when the former would spark much greater protests than the latter and when the lack of the former is greatly responsible for the need for the latter.
‘Me? I think it’s great that lots of people can go to uni if they want to.’
Yes but it’s got to be paid for. Universities are losing money on every UK undergraduate they teach. This is a massive problem. In these straightened times it’s unrealistic to expect the higher education budget to remain unsqueezed
Anyway, how many want to go to university for no other reason than the supposed graduate pay premium? Attacking Browne for a philistinism about higher education is all well and good but fails to recognise that among many prospective students it’s already here. A lot of the anger concerns the belief about future job prospects rather than missing out on cultural enrichment.
NemesisThe Warlock said,
December 2, 2010 at 4:50 pm
There’s a simple solution: restrict university attendance to the top 15-20% of the population (instead of Labour’s ludicrous target of 50%) and fund their places in full. Think of it – undergraduates whose free education is both merited and affordable.
Peter said,
December 2, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Tom N,
I don’t have a problem with the proposals to increase fees, provided that there’s the Student Loans Company and loans aren’t repayable until you’re earning a half decent wage. I massively prefer the current proposals to some (hypothetical) proposals where only the academic elite can go, but they go for free.
Mark said,
December 3, 2010 at 3:20 am
”My university years were the best years of my life, and I think as many people as possible should have access to a university education.”
Peter, what was it that you enjoyed about university?
For me, university was so-so, the year after university the pits and the period since then, where I have been working, the best.
My experience of university was that it was rather pointless and boring because I didn’t have any reason for being there. I was there simply because it was expected of me and because it was cheap. For people like me, having to pay a large amount of money and actually being forced to think about what you are doing, might lead to less wasted time and a better experience.
Basically, I think there might be a lot of people who are unsuited to university education who are trapped by the expectation that university should be the best time of your life.
Duncan said,
December 3, 2010 at 9:05 pm
These are men who, as Max Weber put it so well, lack the true calling for politics; a calling which depends upon taking self-reflective responsibility for one’s actions.
I think John le Carré describes politicians like Nick Clegg equally well: they are human dust, people without principles who blow with the prevailing wind.
David said,
December 3, 2010 at 10:47 pm
“But he can’t change the names (though he’s giving it a go, if you read the BIS statement they’re called “graduate contributions” rather than “tuition fees”), firstly because it’s too late for that now and secondly because the Tories wouldn’t vote for it if he did.”
Graduate contributions was the name given to the system when Labour brought in top-up fees at least, and it may have been earlier. The spin isn’t new, it’s just unsuccessful (which is a pity, as the system works fairly well). I doubt the Tories care what name it’s given.