I’m feeling old this morning.   I think it was watching the Chancellor’s budget speech that did it.      Osborne, Clegg, Cameron, Gove, Alexander – they all look so impossibly young.   Not real, grown-up politicians.   More like lost boys from the world of Peter Pan.   (Mind you, all the cheers, jeers and ya-boos didn’t help; not only do they look like errant schoolkids, they act like them as well.    What a way to run the country.)

Anyway, it set me thinking about my own childhood.   Now, that definitely wasn’t a never-never-land.   And I don’t just mean that we were poor.   I mean that, as a matter of principle, my parents, no matter how much they wanted something, absolutely refused to buy it on the never-never, or hire-purchase, as the 50s equivalent of the credit card was called.   It wasn’t just that credit was too risky;  they felt that buying things on credit was immoral.   Like the money lenders Jesus threw out of the temple.

Not any more.   Today’s world is all “live now, pay later”.

Universal Universities?

Take student loans.   I was allowed to go to university because, thanks to a maintenance grant, we could afford it.   If it had been necessary to take out a loan (let alone pay tuition fees), then I wouldn’t have gone.   Simple as that.   Yet if today’s  students took a similar moral stance, our universities would empty overnight.

Loadsa Loans

It’s not just universities.   Lots of adults finance their re-training in IT, interior design, alternative therapies or  plumbing with a career development loan.   It’s a government-sponsored scheme.   And on paper it looks like a good scheme, giving people chances they could not otherwise achieve.

So what’s wrong with them (apart from some outmoded notions of morality that only old fogies like me still cling to)?

Well, being in debt is not a great place to be.   Just ask the Chancellor.   His message, after all, was that we have to go through lots of pain, just to pay off our national debt.   Yummy, yummy.

And what if it doesn’t work?   What if the country goes bust?   What then?

Cough up, or else

Because of the recession, a number of training providers have gone bust.   And those learners who took out a career development loan to finance their studies with them have learnt the hard way what “going bust” means in practice.   They’re left with a loan to pay off, yet nothing to show for it:  no qualification, no course, no opportunity, and no possibility of getting their money back.

So who’s to blame?  The learner, for failing to understand what he was getting into?   The bank for lending him (or her) the money (and demanding it back, even though the provider has disappeared)?   The provider, for going bust?   The government, who set the scheme up in the first place?   Or is it the fault of our modern, seductive, culture of credit?

Paying the Price

Will it get better?   I doubt it.   Take universities again.   25% cuts will mean less places, more universites desperate to raise money however they can and, inevitably, more costs passed on to students.

And were not just talking about the odd extra hundred pounds.   Recent reports tell that at least one university in the States is talking about charging $200,000 for a degree course.   That’s mortgage country.

So, here’s a question, Mr Gove.   How many working class parents are going to take out a second mortgage for £100,000+, in a recession, just to send little Albert (or Albertina) to uni?

But then, the Chancellor’s message is twofold.   One, the State won’t pay.   And, two, too much debt is bad for you.

Where does that leave universities?   Open to competition from the private sector, at least according to another BBC story.   And I’ve no doubt that a few will look to the private sector, especially if the latter can bring down costs, as I’m sure they will.

But the poor will still be stuck.   They’ll either need more state funding, or more loans.   Or they won’t go.

Back with the Lost Boys

Education is our future.   We need to invest in it.   If we are too poor, individually or collectively, to make that investment, we will stay poor.   Indefinitely.   I just hope someone up there realises that, or the future looks bleak.

And Mr Osborne?   Is he being the sensible, realistic chancellor he would have us believe?   Or is he really still stuck in never-never land.

Sources:  US universities; Private universities; 25% cuts to education