I thought the BBC News website was playing up again when ‘Johann Lamont raises questions over free tuition policy’ popped up. Surely she hadn’t decided to go further down the road taken at the infamous ‘something for nothing’ speech?
At the centre of Lamont’s critique of current education policy is something fairly irrefutable. Despite there being no tuition fees for Scots students there is still a frightening disparity in the number of rich and poor children attending university. This is simply not good enough, and with one eye on academia I must say that universities are shooting themselves in the foot by not tapping the underdeveloped potential of some children from poorer backgrounds. I’ve seen it both as a student and latterly as a course tutor.
But Johann’s critique, instead of asking what is desirable in society and asking what the best way to get there would be, simply looks at all the bits of the train set and makes a decision on how best to put the track together. It illustrates well the managerialism which has crept into politics and the lack of real vision which has accompanied it. The ‘long term solutions’ envisaged by Lamont only reinforce the status quo which has caused so many problems. There is an implicit acceptance in the existence of rich and poor, and with it the idea that social inequality is to be tolerated so long as those at the bottom have the means to raise themselves to the sunny plains of the middle class.
This background-based approach to the provision of services also reinforces the very notion of patronage which I thought Johann’s party were supposed to dislike. By linking children to their parents we reduce them to assets. Should a mother receive less maternity pay because she has a rich husband who can keep her whilst she is off work? Removing universalism as a philosophical grounding to how we organise our society can only lead to social friction. It reduces our personal freedoms and traps us in systems of patronage which can only be broken via collective understanding of and consensus on universal rights.
If you charge for university based on the assumption that it will result in higher earnings, you reduce a degree to nothing more than a means of individual self-betterment in the narrowest and most soulless sense. If you charge because you feel that those from wealthier backgrounds should pay, why not just levy a higher rate of income tax as a general principle?
Universalism is vital to a society because it is a concrete sign of the fact that all of us, wherever we may be from, have the same basic rights and opportunities. Furthermore, to try and remove universalism from higher education is an attack on the right of all people to develop what makes us people, our minds. If Johann wants to see an end to the something for nothing culture, why not reduce subsidy for railways used predominantly by middle class commuters, or airports used by people from privileged backgrounds as they jet off on holiday?
There is an argument to be had about the appropriate subjects for a university to be teaching, and whether or not some disciplines would be better taught in a non-university environment, but universities are built on the notion of universalism – of teaching all subjects and all students equally.
A university can take no blame for what happens before students reach its gates. It can try to discern more carefully between students with an expensive education and students with a keen mind, something many are not currently very good at, but the inequalities which are inherent in society from a child’s formative years cannot be laid at the door of the university. It is a responsible government which will work to eradicate poverty which will change the kind of student entering Scotland’s numerous and generally good universities.
The narrative presented by Johann Lamont in her education vision is one of hardworking individuals working their way out of poverty. This is in some sense admirable, but it is also inherently antagonistic toward those who currently enjoy publicly funded education. It is a strange corruption of class politics which assumes both the continued existence of poverty and buys into an old fashioned concept of social climbing, rather than an aspirational vision of what an egalitarian society can look like.
This is not to say that the SNP are any better in their educational/social/economic policy (and these things are inseparable). Neither do I buy into the SNP spiel about having a social democratic vision for Scotland. Social democrats don’t freeze local tax and refuse to use the income-tax powers given to them, nor do they spend increasingly large amounts on private transport and refuse to embrace truly social urban policies. The worrying thing is that, in a country where we have two parties who call themselves social democrats, neither seem to really understand what the term means. We need to have Johann’s honest conversation, but the outcome should be a recognition of the need for greater collective resources, not the abandonment of the principle that all of us are of equal worth.
#1 by BM on December 18, 2012 - 8:03 am
Johann has handed Alex Salmond a mop handle, and invited him to wipe the floor with her on Thursday.
Dom may already know about the BBC Scotland interview with Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, the Icelandic President, but 5m30s into this piece (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-20742997), the reporter talks about his interview with (I’m assuming) Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir, the former Mayor of Reykjavik and member of the right-wing neo-liberal Independence Party, and summarizes her reply when asked about cutting education and health in order to stabilise the economy quicker. I’ll give you a hint, she didn’t agree with Johann.
#2 by Indy on December 18, 2012 - 9:23 am
We have huge collective resources that we could use to our advantage if we controlled them. And we do not need to make average and low income families pay more money. If we had an income tax system which simply collected all the tax that people owed rather than allowing the wealthy to legally avoid paying tax there would be no need to raise council tax or indeed any other tax which the majority of ordinary working people could ill afford to pay.
#3 by Ben Achie on December 18, 2012 - 2:03 pm
A thought provoking piece, Dom. Pity it descends into conceited partisan nonsense in the final paragraph.
1. It is entirely impracticable to raise income tax in Scotland through its parliament’s current tax raising scope: the cost of implementation would consume most of the additional revenue. And a lot of folk cannot afford to have more cash taken out of their pockets. Real private sector incomes have been falling considerably. The Scottish Government can only adjust the standard rate of income tax.
2. In promoting universality in access to university education Alex Salmond has shown that he clearly understands what the term Social Democracy “means”. According to you it is “truly social urban policies”. I don’t know what that means. And what about rural policy? Alex Salmond has consistently referred to the “Social Contract”, and explained its meaning
3. You blithely again ignore the impact of raising taxation, this time Council Tax, on people’s incomes. One of the great successes of the SNP governments has been to generate real efficiencies at both national and local level. This only happened because councils were forced to examine what they were actually doing. Aberdeenshire is underspending its budget by £20m per annum, and the Tory/Lib-Dem administration say this is having no impact on service delivery.
You don’t happen to work in the public sector do you, Dom?
#4 by Dom on December 18, 2012 - 4:11 pm
I work at a university, which is funded by all weird and wonderful means. I also generate income privately via freelance journalism and translation.
Alex Salmond has talked of the social contract, but as a researcher in Scandinavian studies I think that the SNP have fundamentally misunderstood the scandinavian welfare model. The SNP attitude toward land reform is a prime example of this, as is its attitude toward sustainable transport and urban policies.
The government has had ample opportunity to introduce a more progressive form of local taxation and has failed to do so.
My partisanship only extends to my sadness at the two biggest parties in Scottish politics playing a constant game of one-upmanship, which is to nobody’s gain.
#5 by Indy on December 19, 2012 - 10:52 am
The SNP did not have ample opportunity to implement a local income tax, that is simply untrue. Apart from the fact that they were a minority administration at the time it was clear that there would be no cooperation from Westminster on it. Since then they have – correctly in my view – shelved it until we have some clarity on what taxation powers will be available to the Scottish Government in future. There is no great virtue in attempting to come up with a system which can only operate within the quite arbitrary constraints set down in the Scotland Act. If that is the situation we end up in then that is what will have to be done. But it would be preferable if the Scottish Government had available the full range of taxation possibilities as, of course, the Scandinavian Governments can do.
Since this is your area of expertise it might actually be interesting if you looked at how Scandinavian Governments might function if the only financial powers and policy levers available to them were the same as those available to the Scottish Government with the UK Government controlling the rest. That way we might identify things that could be done better within the constraints of devolution but equally I suspect we would find things that they currently do which they could not do if they were in the same position we are in.
#6 by Ben Achie on December 18, 2012 - 10:11 pm
I would probably almost entirely agree with you on land reform, Dom. At least there’s some investigation being carried out on the issue now, and the referendum debate provides a unique opportunity to raise its profile.
The SNP already tried to bring in a more progressive form of local taxation, Local Income Tax in the last parliament, but wasn’t allowed to by the opposition. This time it gave an election winning commitment to freeze the Council Tax in the current parliamentary term. It’s a very popular policy.
Longer term, I would much prefer Scotland to conform more with the Scandanavian model, but there’s a core problem in our lack of economic growth meaning lower average living standards, and producer capture of much of the wealth within the public sector, e.g. over paid medics, teachers and senior management staff.
I can only reiterate, the referendum offers a huge opportunity to articulate alternative visions of Scotland, and to judge what public support there is for these. The SNP is seeking to facilitate this, and the festive break should provide a good opportunity for many of our parliamentarians to spend some time contemplating the bigger picture.
#7 by Thomas William Dunlop on December 19, 2012 - 10:00 am
“disparity in the number of rich and poor children attending university”
This very true. However levying fees is not going to sort that. THis is all to do with the class/caste system in operation in UK and yes Scotland as well (to a lesser extent mind you).
It allows people to discriminate people on their background and the way they talk. For example I have friend who is from a poor area of Glasgow, left school at 16 and worked in a factory before re-entering the education system. From there she first got a degree then a PhD ( in Science). After a while she could not get a job, so she did a masters in IT. She got a job, kept that down until the company when bust. During this time she was confronted by a person who thought it was a disgrace that she got an education over people from her area. Currently she is unemployed.
I have no doubt I would have had a similar experience, if I had not moved abroad. I live in Finland, and I am impressed with the Scandinavian model of organizing society (of course nothing is perfect). I also have noticed as BM has seen, that even the right wing in Scandanavia are much farther to the left of the main stream in the UK. Something that might be replicated if Scotland does become independent
One other challenge is being able to offer satisfying jobs to people you train as well. I see it possible to link PhD training to civil service employment, so that if you cannot or do not like your field of study, society could benefit from having trained, analytical people looking at and trying to solve the hardest challenges of society.
SO at the end , we have break down the barriers between classes in Scotland, if we want to overcome this educational arpartied. This can be done my re-positioning resources rather than charge people through the nose for it