I left my degree in the pub

This is my weekly newsletter for Reaction subscribers, but I’m on summer holiday this week. Unlike last year there’s no Tory leadership contest, so I’m taking a proper break. This involves flying to Naples, jumping in the sea, ordering a Campari spritz, reading and sleeping. Max Mitchell from the team is standing in. At the heart of Reaction is our Young Journalists Programme, providing paid training and mentoring for the next generation. Max has just joined the YJP. I’m sure you’ll enjoy his take. I’ll be back in mid-July. Thank you for being a subscriber.
Iain Martin, Publisher, Reaction.

As you may have read here, I graduated on Tuesday without a degree classification due to the marking boycott by the University and College Union (UCU).  A degree with no grade felt so worthless that I actually forgot to take it with me when I left the pub. When I went back to get it the next day, I didn’t feel like I was salvaging something meaningful, merely ceremonial.  

Until recently I had some sympathy with the strikes which over four years had deprived me of much learning. A tutor of mine, a PhD student, told me about the casualisation of contracts and how he was only paid for two hours work to create and give a lecture – an hour to write it and an hour to deliver it. When, really, it took him about 3-4 hours to write a lecture, especially as he was early in his career. 

This is hardly a fair practice. But in many careers you have to serve your time. I also wonder, can we really be surprised at the casualisation of contracts given the casualisation of university attendance?

The student population has exploded over the past 40 years. In the 70s and 80s, somewhere around 15 per cent of young people attended university, but now almost 50 per cent do as per Tony Blair’s 1999 pledge. For a lot of young people, it’s just taken for granted that they will go to uni whether they are indifferent to it or not – it’s a casual decision. Especially in Scotland where it’s all paid for. 

Add to the boom in the student population the casualisation of academic standards. It’s possible that the former caused the latter but, regardless, it has made university degrees less valuable. Getting a First is more commonplace than it ever has been and high 2:1s are standard practice for anyone half-bright.

But this volume of high grades isn’t translating into wealth and opportunity. As everyone from David Goodhart to Peter Turchin has pointed out, the managerial and professional classes are not expanding to account for all of these new boffins. So, we have unsatisfied graduates with student debt that comes back to the taxpayer as they fail to find well-paid jobs in the years after graduating. The overproduction of elites, as Turchin calls it, is expensive and destabilising. But, it is rooted in irrelevant degrees. And as degrees lose value, so too does the job of helping young people gain those degrees. 

The UCU strikes and marking boycotts are over pay, working conditions and pensions. The union has demanded wage increases two percentage points above the Retail Price Index which was at 13.4 per cent last December but is now at 7.9. To put this into perspective, junior doctors in Scotland were recently offered a 14.5 per cent increase over two years. The Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) has offered the lowest paid staff earning up to £19,333 an 8 per cent increase which fits neatly onto the RPI. It’s not perfect but it’s something. 

On the back of changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pension scheme in 2020, the UCU said that some of their members’ pension benefits had reduced in value by 35 per cent. While understandably aggrieved, those who work in higher education would do well to remember that the 21.6 per cent contributions paid by their employers is a damn sight better than in most other sectors. According to Universities UK, the body which represents employers in higher education pension schemes, the contributions “are among the highest in the country and at the very limit of affordability”.

It could also be argued that the strikes are tone deaf considering that there was no mass lay-off during Covid like in other industries. What’s more, most in higher education were still working remotely and so still earning during the pandemic.

Like all strikers, they need to be careful about losing the goodwill and solidarity of those they are inconveniencing. Even the student Marxist societies will want their grades back at some point. 

The turning tide

In the 24-hour news cycle, it’s hard to keep tabs on everything – even as someone who looks at the news all day. And just as the extreme volume of students at university has trivialised the whole affair, so too with online news. What was impossible to miss this week, however, was the US Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action at Harvard and North Carolina. 

This is the most important ruling since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But unlike that case, it is undoubtedly a great moment for civil society. Positive discrimination has been ruled unconstitutional as it is just that – discrimination. This landmark case sets a legal precedent for the axing of infantilising and racist affirmative action policies across the US. The sooner the axe comes the better. 

The Supreme Court also ruled against Biden’s move to wipe student loan debt in the region of $400 billion. This is a major blow to Sleepy Joe who has overpromised on this one. Earlier in the week, he was also shown up but in a much more bizarre fashion. Robert F Kennedy Jnr posted a video on Twitter doing topless press-ups with the caption: “Getting in shape for my debates with President Biden!” He then used it to segue into his spiel about Making America Healthy Again. To be fair to him, the man is in good shape and there may have been no clearer way to show just how fragile and senile old Joe really is. 

I belong tae Glasgow

This week was my first time being back home since making the move to London. On the drive home from getting my hair cut the other morning, an incredible Jonathan Richman song came on the radio. The nostalgic whimsy of “That Summer Feeling” haunted and taunted me.

Glasgow sits in a valley – or a strath – and the southeastern hills are called the Cathkin Braes. Edwin Morgan named his first book of poems after these lovely hills. I was lucky enough to savour a sunset here this week with one of my oldest friends and a couple of beers. The huge expanse looking over to Ben Lomond and the Campsies felt quite distant to my little Stepney Green bunker. And although it’s been a joy to regroup and check in on home, I can’t wait to get back to the bunker. 

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