It’s hard to believe it in this day and age, but a new survey has shown that the current generation of teenagers in Britain will find it harder than their parents did to get careers in professions like law, finance and medicine if they come from a poorer background. With around 90% of future professional jobs in the country requiring a degree and only 29% of students from poorer backgrounds making it to college, Marx’s specter of class oppression is still haunting the country.
There are plenty of people coming forward with ideas on how to fix the situation. One is a former government cabinet minister, Alan Milburn, who is behind the survey released earlier this week. Milburn is pushing for better careers advice for those as young as 10, a focus on “soft skills” like teamwork and taking initiative and a “free-free” university education for mature students, who currently make up half of the 2.5 million U.K student population.
Milburn believes programs like this will make sure young people from poorer families get the same chances as their middle-class counterparts. His report found that 70% of traditionally professional roles like doctors, solicitors and barristers, lecturers and scientists, now require an undergraduate degree or more, while the number of “modern professions” such as management, human resources, I.T., teachers and journalists requiring further study has jumped to 60%.
The problem is that going to university is becoming increasingly expensive in Britain. The introduction of variable tuition fees at U.K universities, also known as “top up fees,” means that universities in the U.K. can set whatever price they see fit, charging up to $5,200 per year at some of the country’s best universities. Meanwhile, many professional qualifications require additional postgraduate study, which can often be more expensive than undergraduate degrees, costing as much as $19,000 a year.
There has even been a jump in the number of vocational jobs that require a degree, with around 40% of sales, marketing, nurses, midwives and physiotherapists careers now depending on higher education.
“There is a decline in social mobility in education, but it’s wrong to tinker with higher education funding and admissions; that’s meddling far too late in the process,” said Tom Clougherty, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, a British think tank.
Whatever the change, something needs to be done soon to stop British society sliding back into class conflict. “Such elitism is unjust socially. And it can no longer work economically,” said Milburn.