Higher Education and the New Philistines

What kind of democracy is it—no less one that aspires to ‘teach’ other cultures about democracy and freedom—which, rather than widening access to higher education, chooses to turn its young people solely into ‘skilled’ workers to service the needs of the better-off? Skilled people need not be uninformed or badly-read people. The idea that skills and studying are two separate things is absurd and facilitating that separation, as Mandelson and company seek to do, is an insult to the intelligence of the British electorate, implying as it does that reading and thinking ought only to be the preserve of the rich and the privileged (‘highly selective’). It denies the vast majority of young Britons the chance to become fully-fledged, informed, well-read and historically aware citizens.

(via Instapaper)