Do more to help working-class students enter professions

The solution to working class kids making inroads into professional careers is to improve the quality of state education at the pre-University stage (from early childhood onwards). Only then will students from working class backgrounds be properly prepared for university study. Factoring in social background when deciding whom to offer a university place is not going to solve the problem of such students finding it hard to keep up, or in the alternative, of universities being forced to dumb down their curriculum in order to meet the 'expectations' and 'experiences' of the entry pool. Haven't public officials figured out that by the time they get to university, it is already way to late for all but the very best and brightest? And even they are seriously disadvantaged by their poor early educational experiences. Perhaps the reason that so much attention is paid to university 'widening participation'-related strategies is because that's easier and cheaper than the government admitting years of failure at the elementary and secondary levels, not because of the lack of good teaching, but because of fundamental lack of allocated resources to help disadvantaged children get a good start in life. They simply need smaller class sizes and more individualized attention than they are getting at present. What does this all mean -- Higher taxes for the entire society, especially the well-to-do. But Britain just doesn't seem willing to make this important sacrifice for its children, does it? It's time the government was honest with the public about the need to spend HUGE amounts of money in childhood education in order to improve the current inequities in our society. This being instead of the current philosophy of fraudulent target-setting and tick box evaluation, as well as the 'teaching to the test' approach, which has dominated education for a number of years.

Milburn is an humbug and this is " affirmative action " exercise pure and simple. Having born in a working class family- almost every one is working class these days- I do not believe in this class nonsense which is often used as an excuse. Our parents who could barely afford to buy essential things for us instilled in us a sense of responsibility. This meant that we took responsibility for our learning right from the primary years without blaming others or the society for our problems which were many. Though they were not educated, our parents made sure that we did our homework, attended the schools regularly and took our exams seriously. This steady progress from primary to grammar school meant that we went to good universities and are in good professions. If anything inequalities are addressed well these days compared to even 20 years ago, and there should be no excuse for kids not performing well. Terms like "disadvantaged background" are smoke screen to shift blame on any one else and looking at the large diversity of students attending the pre-92 Russell Group in greater numbers than ever before on their own merit is testament to widening participation. I reject Milburn's cynical exercise unreservedly. He will turn round and say I am a privileged class person. But he will not be convinced if I say that though I am an university professo now close to retirement, my brother and sister are surgeons, our father was a part-time brick layer and the rest of the time he was an hourly -paid sheet metal worker, and that our mother worked as a cleaner whenever she could find time. We had no excuses even then.

I could not agree more with Dr Fredrics' comments. As a fairly new lecturer at a post-92 university that prides itself on widening participation, I was surprised at just how lacking some of the first year undergraduates were in basic skills. Essay writing, simple arithmetic, basic algebra. Without grasping these skills during secondary education, it is difficult for students to excel at university - never mind the top professions. Given the vast number of post-doctoral researchers who leave academia due to the shortage of tenured positions, it would be great if the government would encourage and fund more of them to get involved with targeted skills and curriculum development and delivery in state schools.

How many more kids from lower class backgrounds does this government want to raise the aspirations of only to set them up for failure? Given the number of post-doctoral researchers who leave academia due to the shortage of tenured positions, some of whom are from disadvantaged and working class backgrounds themselves, maybe the government could somehow facilitate their entry into the top professions, which would be a quicker way to address the class imbalance in those professions than going back to square one and starting over with school pupils, rather than have those discarded postdocs get down on all fours for their younger brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews to leapfrog over. All the social engineers keep doing is giving each cohort some scheme to promote social mobility, and when it doesn't work, writing them off and thinking up a new one for the next.

I wonder how much of this is cronyism. Where it's who you know, not what you know.

Fair point, Natasha. If the problem lies in the professions themselves and how they recruit, then no amount of preparation for university, or training once there, is going to make the difference.

Apologies for the errors in the earlier posting. I do agree that PhDs and post-docs should be given career pathways to continue their work and help the younger generation. There is particularly shortage of career pathways in science graduates and post graduates.

working class people in the professions me old china? who wants that? professions are bent enough as it is without the scum in

I came from a rather working class background, broken family, no money. Best thing that ever happened was a full grant to University to study a 'hard' science subject in the early 1990s. Now I am a senior professor in a UK University. This talk is nonsense, the biggest barriers to the capable working class is (i) the obsession with going from selective to mass education (ii) the loss of full grants and (iii) the loss of interlectual rigour and instead social engineering. Now having finallly made it, I am faced with loss of funding because new labour are incapable of listening to real scientists, and instead trust the civil servants who are too weak to tell it as it is coupled with a science minister who wants to talk about space. I am brain draining as a result .... see ya...

You talk nonsense. Student loans become grants even today if you are poor. As far leaving this country to say US cuts are happening there also fool. No country in the world is increasing the education budget. You will be back crawling. If you are that good in science you would have made it here.

@I am off...: I presume you mean 'intellectual rigour'!

@camerron: get real.

@I am off If you are really as articulate as your posting suggests, it is no surprise that you are so desperate. Before leaving the country, I suggest you to take an intensive course of critical thinking and writing skills. In US, the universities and companies look for these skills. Your brain is obviously drained if you think that there is a wonderful country somewhere in his universe where support for "real scientists" is strong in terms of funding. The tsunami of credit crunch has hit just about everywhere in the globe. New Labour has done much damage to this country, but to be fair, they have put more money in higher education than Tories did in Major and Thatcher years. I am saying this as some one who did not vote Labour during the last 20 years and is not going to vote for them. Milburn talks nonsense and is wrong on social engineering. Lastly, selective education put kids on scrap heap if they are later developers and always favoured the rich. Nothing wrong with the student loans if they are pegged at a certain level as some one has said, as poor students do not have to pay back loans as they become grants when means-tested. Many working class people I know who are suffering should not pay tax to fund full grants to benefit a few like you if you want full grants to be reinstated. The argument that university education will benefit the country as a whole does not wash looking at the greediness of educated these days in finance sectors for example. The working class people as a majority do not send their kids to universities. I have no doubt you will back soon.

@I am not off: I agree with you. The question is will anyone want 'I am off' when he/she finds that the grass is not always greener elsewhere and wants to come back.

"...despite all the recent expansion and feeling of opportunity, the proportion of working-class boys at university is no greater than it was before the 1939-45 war" Jackson and Marsden (1966) on the Robbins report outcome. Howard Fredrics's systemic proposal gets my vote, but equally we can't just abandon the hopes and aspirations of those blighted by continued political failure. And this requires each of us to re-value our motivation to be part of the academy...

Totally agree with Dr Fredrics. I too was from a working class background ( father was a fitter, mother a hairdresser), but it was drummed into me that education was the key to my future.I went to an elite University and am now a member of one of the elite professions. I also worked at an elite university for some time and observed at first hand the widening participation dept struggle to encourage kids from state schools to even apply to the university. The problem is not with universities but largely with primary and secondary education. I say largely because parents play a vital role here also. My parents took a deep interest in my education, and likewise I took a deep interest in my children's education. Both are now at elite universities and it had nothing to do with cronyism. There seems to be this myth perpetrated in the media that only university educated parents can encourage their children to go to university. Not so.

Milburn is a good report, alll 165 pages, for those with the time to read and digest it, not just the sound bites. The key issue is parenting skills, whatever your background or wealth, and that is the hardest hurdle of all.

I think we need to mention something about the psychology that is inherent in being brought up on a low income. People with ample and spare resources are able to resolve issues that arise quickly because they can allocate resourse easily and without agonsing over the decision. eg 'I am behind and need help" - Book a tutor, buy a book, buy a computer, buy a programme, go on a summer school, get some experience, or "The garden needs mowing and I have no time - get a gardener in' or 'My shoes are wearing out - buy some new ones. The consequences monitarily are dissolved so the person can focus on the problem. For people from poor backgrounds the options include 'doing it later to save money', 'not doing it at all' and 'trying to find a cheaper way' or 'do the same thing but with less effort' eg I am behind and need help but can't afford the simple and quickest solutions eg ask parents, find a library, , ask teacher for extra help, give up, set sights lower, choose alternative subject, make do with out of date textbooks that sort of do the job. or 'the garden needs mowing and I have no time' - leave it 'till later, don't do it at all, pave the garden (alternative solution that is a make do). This psychology pervades and means that, say, in work a person from a wealthy background will make a case for buying new equipment without a thought, the poorer person will try to 'make do' for longer. People who learn quickly at university are set up to deal quickly with decisions and blocks to study without this agonising - because the consequences of lost resource are fewer - eg a poorer person will travel home for lunch on a bus pass, the wealthier person will grab a sandwich and get back to the library (BTW the economic difference between these options are circa £2K a year - so not irrelevant!). Essentially poorer people are more risk averse as well as having fewer resources and this is magnified by the increased negative options available in any decision regarding personal resources. Wealth (lack of) as a barrier is significant to many many achievements and this should be recognised.

Reading the actual report rather than the THES version reveals that public officials actually have "figured out that by the time they get to university, it is already way to late for all but the very best and brightest" The recommendations report is about raising the aspirations and opportunities from the earliest age, in particular for those who don't have the benefit of the sort of educationally supportive parents which helped Fred and "Someone from aso called working class background". The report also notes that previous non-graduate routes into many of the professions (such as articled clerks for law) are no longer widely available so the professions themselves are being challenged to re-examine whether the graduate route should really have such a stranglehold on entry.

My experience is very similar to that of "I Am Off", except that I never succeeded in making a career on the back of my education. Coming from a working class family, brought up by a single mother on a council estate, and every man I knew working in a trade, in 1990 I went off to university, the beneficiary of a full grant (frozen at 1984 levels by Thatcher). This was before New Labour's mad scheme to send every school-leaver to university, regardless of their aptitude for study or the benefit of the experience to them. Although I never made professor, or even lecturer, I did see my education through to getting a PhD and a research post, and have come right out the other end to find myself earning less than a local government officer with A levels. Class and income were no barriers to anyone from my local comprehensive's sixth form applying to university in the 1980s. Most of us are now working in the lower end of the service sector, where we would be anyway had we not gone to university in the first place. So I have never understood the government's obsession with widening participation. Studies have shown that the proportion of kids going to university who are middle class has stayed the same or increased despite attempts at social engineering. All that's happened is that as middle class opportunities have narrowed due to recession and more university places have been created, so more middle class kids than ever before have chosen to prolong their education where once their poor A level grades with have deterred them.

I am grateful to Hero for spelling the financial dilemmas facing those of us on a low income and how a lifetime on the brink of financial disaster makes us risk averse. I dare say it's the most insightful thing Hero has written on this website, and it speaks of bitter personal experience. My parents and grandparents never encouraged me to go to university. In their experience it wasn't what you did, and they worried about how I would manage financially, and about my not having a trade to fall back on. They were appalled at my decision to go back for postgraduate study after a B.Sc. had apparently done me no good at all, and maybe they were right. When Hero says "people with ample resources are able to resolve issues quickly", and that this creates inequality of opportunity, he isn't wrong. As an undergraduate I couldn't afford to buy books, but there were students on my course who could afford to buy a book for every module, and there were about 20 modules. No one book was useful enough to me to justify buying any at all. A shortage of library books was solved by the better-off students by queueing at the photocopier, but I couldn't afford to photocopy whole books! Every photocopy took me another 3p into overdraft, and my bank wouldn't let me owe more than £450. While doing my Master's degree I rented a damp studio flat because I couldn't afford the extra £15 a week which would have got me and my partner a warm 2-bedroom house closer to campus. Just recently I bought a car for the first time in 10 years. Rather than buy a 3-year old car on finance I bought a 9-year old car for cash. Within 3 months the big end went, possibly as a result of the previous owner having stored it, undriven, for a year. I am now buying a car on finance, but only having wasted considerably more than £1,000 on half measures and making do! And yes, I used to be reluctant to make a case for more resources at work, because I was raised on "I want never gets"; but not these days, working in a low-paid job where my employers need my services very badly, and are thus willing to give me what I need to do the job as some sort of concession, offset by the pittance they pay me. For anyone who doubts that being poor stays with you your whole life despite getting a university education and a 'good' job, I recommend reading "The Hidden Inuries of Class" by Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb.

Hero: or 'the garden needs mowing and I have no time' - leave it 'till later, don't do it at all, pave the garden (alternative solution that is a make do). This psychology pervades and means that, say, in work a person from a wealthy background will make a case for buying new equipment without a thought, the poorer person will try to 'make do' for longer. People who learn quickly at university are set up to deal quickly with decisions and blocks to study without this agonising - because the consequences of lost resource are fewer - eg a poorer person will travel home for lunch on a bus pass, the wealthier person will grab a sandwich and get back to the library (BTW the economic difference between these options are circa £2K a year - so not irrelevant!). Which planet are you in Hero? Poor people often do not own homes that have gardens to mow at. Also, poor students do not travel home to eat by bus. Have you heard something called "packed lunch"? I do no think you understand the issues here and it is better to shut up than to show weird ignorance. Tobermory: I would have told you for free that acquiring a PhD will in no way enhance your career prospects unless you were prepared to climb the greasy pole in academia. Britain is not US or Germany ( Herr Doktor) and PhD is not respected at all. We call the bloke who visits to repair our washing machines as "service engineer" instead of calling him " service technician". If you are in service sector, all that counts is education upto GCSE and certain ability to read, talk and write. This Labour govt floated the notion of widening participation after they saw the outsourcing of services to India where they noticed the call centres manned by graduates and psotgraduates. Little that Blair and Brown (and Lord Sleaze now ) realised that in India university degrees are devalued as hundreds of millions hold university degrees. These idiots argued that we also need a significant proportion of our population as degree holders like India has and forgot that that country has a very large number of illiterates below the poverty line. The post-92 universities took the hint from Blair and Brown and started recruiting just about any human being home and abroad under the "widening participation" scheme". Often these hapless beings have no A levels. But we as a country gave Labour party 3 landslide victories and ostracised any one who dared to suggest minimum university entry qualification of at least 300 UCAS points. Well the country as a whole suffers. Will we ever learn? I say this reading what the admirers of this hypocrite Milburn says, beause they are Labour tribal to the core.

@Tobermory: Get a grip and get a life! If you are unhappy with your lot then make some changes! But you won't will you, it is easier to continue as before and blame all but yourself.

Listen to Mr Life Coach.. oh dear

@hero: Maybe being a life coach could be a new and rewarding career for our friend Tobermory?

@Hero Could you enlighten us where a poor person travels home by bus with a bus pass for lunch? I read your posting which sounds bizarre. For example "in work a person from a wealthy background will make a case for buying new equipment without a thought, the poorer person will try to 'make do' for longer". What a ridiculous ramble this is!

Hero declaims that 'Essentially poorer people are more risk averse' ... Nonsense. We have less to lose. We just think more. Why, I have even worked out that if I take my filling jam sandwiches to work in a little plastic bag, I can save on shoe leather by not walking to the stop to get the bus home at lunch times. Saves wear on the bus pass, too.

This is only another example of governmental lip service without doing anything real to solve the problem. The real problem is British 'if your face doesn't fit' mentality towards people in the professions. When I taught in secondary school in the UK, my two degrees in English and History meant less than skin colour and nationality because white British teachers held management positions without first degrees whereas I was not considered for similiar positions. I am a non-UK national and not white and that mattered more to those decision makers. There are all too many examples akin to what I experienced. Unless Britain honestly deals with how people actually get hired and promoted in the professions irregardless of their actual skills, qualifications and experience, this problem will still exist in the foreseeable future. There are all too many examples of nepotism controlling hiring processes, as well as some employers having formal interviews whilst the prime candidate has already been decided. (I have experienced this as well.) Currently, I am a PhD student, and partly feel as if I am accepted because I am studying (and teaching) Black History. As such, I fit within the stereotype of what others expect of me. However, as a Teacher of English, which I was, challenged what the dominant population expect of me because of ethnicity and gender, mainly the former. Entry into the 'higher' professions requires a particular image, including the 'right' accent and dialect, in order for the decision makers to accept someone for entry and promotion into these professions. It is easy to say this is wrong, but as long as the decision makers (i.e. employers) control future entrants into such professions, we will have more of the same in the future. Let's face it, Britain is generally conservative, particularly England, and as such will not change significantly. In short, at best a few working class people will be helped in the foreseeable future, but not enough to change anything significantly.

Sally M, I can't agree. "We have less to lose" is utter crap. Precisely because we have nothing, we can't afford to lose anything we do get. The well-off can afford to lose more, to sacrifice more, because there is plenty more where that came from, and plenty of opportunities to generate more capital in the future. If we risk what we have, it's a once-only proposition. Jyoji Oh, I hear what your saying and it sounds about right to me - in the professions your face fitting counts for everything. I have acquired the right accent and the right dialect, but employers can tell I'm not 'one of them' because I don't take the same things for granted. To Whippet, I say who exactly am I blaming beyond myself? Hardly my family, for not encouraging me in my education, because I went to university regardless. Not my fellow students who could afford photocopying, because their being able to afford it made no difference to my not being able to. Not my current employers, because it's not their fault there's insufficient demand for my skills in the supposed 'knowledge economy' (a sociological fiction) for me to be earning more elsewhere. Perhaps I am blaming Thatcher for freezing student grants in 1984 and my bank for limiting my overdraft to £450 when they were willing to lend my friend at the posh university whose dad was a professor £1,200, but that was a long time ago. Maybe you're right and there's no-one but me to blame for the freezing of grants and the bank manager's discriminatory lending practices in the days when student debt was a new idea, but I don't think so. I am, slowly but surely, trying to put together the life I want for myself, but you must concede this takes longer when you don't have a middle class head start with period cash boosts from the bank of mum and dad when things aren't going your way. Your dismissal of my whingeing seems like a denial that structural factors are involved above and beyond the failings of the individual. I was merely offering my own experience as an illustration of what Hero was talking about. Starting out poor in a sphere dominated by the middle class and the well-to-do knocks your confidence for life. Have you never heard of labelling theory and the self-fulfilling prophecy? Even when you understand how these processes work it is hard to shrug off their influence when you aren't bolstered by a level of material comfort and economic safety nets. I did have a good laugh at the suggestion I become a life coach. I could do that, and I did toy with the idea for a while before the credit crunch, but I rejected it because my conscience got the better of me, otherwise I'd happily have joined the scrum of charlatans and snake-oil merchants eager to take people's money off them for telling them what to eat, how to dress, how to talk properly, make speeches, date, clinch deals and present an air of confidence. It's money for old rope. As soon as I've consolidated my current work situation I will be branching out into new and more lucrative areas, but nothing as parasitic as life coaching. I did enjoy the joke, though!

Jyoji Oh Just don't moan . It was your choice to come to this country and take up a job. No one forced you. I am non-wjite and it is easy for me to throw the mud at the powers be without looking at myself and my contribution. We in this country act much fairer than in any other country. If you do not like this conservative country as you put it, you have the choice to go back to where you came from. Most third world countries that I know are corrupt and we do not have slums and slumdogs while the rich in mercedes by pass these slums like Mumbai.

@Tobermory Despite the long paragraph of a mix of moan and ramble you posted you did not say what was the topic of your PhD. Your ramble mirrors that of Jyoti Oh, which is in a nutshell- none of your fault, we are a nasty country, illitearates are promoted upstairs, you look ( colour in the case of Jyoti Oh) is the problem etc.. etc.. Have you watched Sonia Sotomoyor's confirmation hearing for supreme court judgeship in the American Senate? This is the land of opportunity, the brave new world, not the "Old Europe" as Donald Rumsfeld put it, but as Sotomoyor, a Latino Amercan born looked different , sounded different, she was given very hard time and questions to her from white senators were downright racist. I also suggest you to travel to India and see how that country is mired in corruption and how caste-even people of a different subcaste withi a caste are discriminated against and how bureacrats and politicians push their own candidates be it a school teacher's position or university professor's position. These days, I see ethnic Chinese, Indian, East European professors in universities like UCL, Imperial and Edinburgh. Oxbridge have opened their doors to many ethnic students and professors. Indeed the Master of Trinity College Cambridge was Amritiya Sen an Indian economics professor, won the Nobel Prize in economics while at Cambridge. We see more and more medical speciliasts of ethnic origin. My own GP is black from East Africa. IG Patel of India was the Director of LSE. Even in my own case, a non-white, despite niggly racist attitude here and there I pretty much achieved what I wanted to achieve. Ugandan Asians came to this country penniless and look what they have contributed and done! No use in blaming the entire society for our own shortcomings. Moving up the career ladder is tough whether it is UK or US as Sonia Sotomoyor's case clearly demonstrates inspite of the support to her from a black president.

@ 'To': that wasn't a ramble; that was a systematic, point-by-point self-justification. Your own riposte was itself quite rambling, if you'd care to read back over it. You seem to be saying it doesn't matter that I feel social class puts me at a disadvantage vs people of equal ability, because my disadvantage is as nothing compared to the caste system in India and racism toward ethnic minorities in Britain and America. Then you trot out a long list of exceptions, as if to say 'these hurdles are not insurmountable, so we can go on as if they don't exist at all'.

What I see here is the on-going debate about who should be responsible for encouraging children to make the most of the opportunities available to them: their parents or the state. Several contributors to this discussion (Someone from a so-called working class background, Fred the Shred and I am off) come from working class backgrounds and appear content. The first two had parents who motivated them. Tobermory also comes from a working class background, and is clearly not content.Apparently was not given much moral support by his parents. So clearly, to re-iterate points made by Fred the Shred and Stephen Mortimer, it is crucial to get working class parents more engaged with their children's education and career development. I'm not sure the fining them is the way ahead though.

To clarify, I also come from a working class background but had a single-mother who was painfully desperate for her children to do well academically. And I went to secondary school in the African bush, cooking on firewood, eating stir-fried termites, drinking muddy water that I filtered through my shirt...... So when I see white working class people - with so many opportunities compared to their Victorian counterparts or to the average working class person in Africa - spending £30-£50 a week in the pub/club, subscribing to Sky, and having their annual trip to Spain, it is had to sympathise. I generalise of course, but we do have so many opportunities today and this idea that we are being held back by the nepotism of the middle classes is not entirely true.

"Hard to sympathise". Apologies - it is 2.21am and I am going to bed.

Young and from a "working class" actually more like none working class backgroun and trying to enter a profession (as archietct.) below is an insight to my situation barriers. passion...no...ability .....no....being a "ethnic minority"....would even think about it....being dislexic (i always spell it like that "as proof")..... having a rich mommy and daddy to pay my cousre fees ....yes. Mr Milburn said: “It’s not that Britain doesn’t have talent; to coin a phrase, Britain has lots of talent. What we have got to do is open up these opportunities so they are available for everybody.” ..."who can afford it".

Hi all, there are so many points I'd like to address in the above, but one thing sticks vividly in my mind - I came from a lower middle class background and had a very tight budget for university. I wrote out my budget and worked out that at the end of the year I would be about £2K inn debt - not much but this was the early 90s. I applied for hardship funds and was denied. A very middle class (some public school, some state school) friend spent all her student loan on coke and clubbing in the first term. She applied for a hardship loan and got a £1.5K payout.

I agree with the difference in problem solving opportunities: A friend of mine didn't get the degree she wanted. She moved to London, got some work experience and realised that she needed to prove herself at a higher level. She took a career break and finished an MBA an London Business School where she was able to conduct a project for Google UK and was employed as a project manager at £40K rising to £60K in three years. I didn't get the degree I wanted. I needed some work experience and further training so I applied for graduate training programmes and took on a temporary job in the meantime. I was unsuccessful in getting a graduate training position or a graduate level job. I stayed in the temp job for a while gaining experience and trying to save money. I got made permanent and took on some extra projects adding value to the business. I sought graduate level positions but was unsuccessful. I tried to save money to pay for further training or an MBA but consistently found that my salary lost pace against the rising costs of living. My employer will give me MBA style projects, but won't pay me to do them. I am still slowly moving up the ladder and after 10 years am earning around £20K. Costed: A friend of mine didn't get the degree she wanted. She moved to London (£150 a week rent) got some work experience (worked for nothing for six months - equivalent (to my subsistence salary) £6,600) and realised that she needed to prove herself at a higher level. She took a career break and finished an MBA an London Business School (£40K + £14K lost earnings) where she was able to conduct a project for Google UK and was employed as a project manager at £40K a year later rising to £60K in three years. Cost £60K to achive a £60K salary in 5 years, but earning £40K after 2. Happy days. 2. I didn't get the degree I wanted. I needed some work experience and further training so I applied for graduate training programmes and took on a temporary job in the meantime. (Earning £160 a week for one year - about £7K a year (no holiday pay) I was unsuccessful in getting a graduate training position or a graduate level job. I stayed in the temp job for a while gaining experience and trying to save money. I got made permanent (£16K per annum) and took on some extra projects adding value to the business. I sought graduate level positions but was unsuccessful. I tried to save money to pay for further training or an MBA but consistently found that my salary lost pace against the rising costs of living. My employer will give me MBA style projects, but won't pay me to do them. I am still slowly moving up the ladder and after 10 years am earning around £20K. - After five years had earnt £70K overall, but had been spending on living expenses. - effectively EARNT £150K over 10 years to now earn £20K. Guess which one is public school middle class and which is working/arguably lower middle?. OK - the argument is perhaps - well if £60K will gain you a £60 salary, and in two years you'll be earning £40K why not borrow £60K.. all well and good but again who is most likely to be lent £60K? I have only been lent £60K in the last 6 years, but that was to buy a house, not to have as cash. There is no getting away from the fact that the opportunity of wealth helps the psychology of wealth be able to succeed. - i.e if I thought like the investment route, which I do - i.e take the investment/risk now for benefits later I still can't take that route because my lack of wealth means that the opportunity to take forward that strategy is also limited. If I don't have that psychology because I have learnt that that kind of strategy is always denied I am double-blocked, so the situation repeats. I don't know if I am, but what if both of us were put through the MBA, and I were more capable and would have generated more money and success for google? The truth is, we don't know if we are employing the best people in the best positions because we are not looking for that.

Godfrey, I know what you mean. The problem with the early '90s hardship fund was it was expensive to administer fairly. At the university I went to, it was administered by the single member of staff who dealt with student loan applications. The university's simple formula was to disregard the source of maintenance support and consider instead the student's weekly outgoings in rent and bills. So richer students automatically qualified because they could afford more expensive accommodation! Those who lived in the town because they wanted a communal lounge received a subsidy, and those who economized by living in university-owned self-catering accommodation did not. Each successful applicant's payout was decided by dividing the total amount equally by the number of applicants, regardless of individual circumstances. One would've been stupid not to apply; the higher your living expenses the more chance you stood of getting some extra beer money (because that was all it was when divided by 5,000).

Re: Fergus - see article by Amy Binns ('Wanted: free dogsbodies') in this week's Times Higher (and online), 30th July 2009.

Interesting point about the internships - media is a classic example of a sought-after profession being dominated by the welathy middle class because of an internship tradition of low/no pay entry- television especially - the old 'well you must be really committed if you are prepared to work for free and that is what we want - committed people' is trotted out, but what media and television needs is talent, practical skills and especially stroing research skills. - what it gets instead is people who can afford to work for free irrelevant of talent and then FROM THAT POOL seek the best. This is simolar to my argument that banksdon't choose from Britain's best graduates - they choose the best from those who apply to work in banks - and those who want to work in banks are those most motivated by personal reward, not those who are best at banking. The internship model of entry pretty much guarantees the stupid wealthy kid will be promoted and paid more than the intelligent and talented poor kid. Unless the current proposals include some offset funding for lost salary and increased living costs |I can't see how this isn't just more boosts for the rich kids. What we need in all indusrtries is those who have the potential to do the best and this isn't equal to those with degrees from russell groups - because these universities are skewed in favour of stupid rich kid, nor does it mean 'those who can afford an internship' because these are skewed in favour of stupid rich kids, nor does it mean 'those who can afford to move to London' because this skews in favour of stupid rich kids, nor does it mean 'employ those who come with good recommendations from someone in the profession' because this is biased in favour of stupid rich kids. If we are going to be competitive in a way that beats other countries we have to promote employment and opportunity by merit, by innate ability and by clever selection. Russell Group, Internships, networks etc are predictibly going to result in stupid people in positions of authority and power, and recent events have shown how risky that is as a strategy.

You use the word " stupid" so many times which really indicates you are one. Your rant reveals a classical symptom known since the time of the caveman-ENVY.

Constructing a sentence misusing words throughout isn't helping your case! You evidently misunderstand the point. Promoting the best is sensible, but currently we promote from public, fee-paying schools first, then the richest from state schools, then the brightest poor from state schools then the middle poor from state schools then the low ability poor. This is the filter that results in the gap between rich and poor and that does NOT match the rank of abilities or intelligence. Ability and intelligence is spread similarly throughout the wealthy to the way it is spread through the rest of the population, so a fair society (and I would argue the perfectly competitive society) would have a mix of backgrounds throughout the hierarchy, but this is patently not the case. I would rather work with the best people period, than average and poor ability people from 'good' backgrounds and/or public school not because of prejudice, but because working amongst stupid people is tiring and a waste of resource and effort - funny I suppose that I am working in HE becuase the 'nice (accent) but dim' promotion is fascinatingly common - luckily this is offset by the fact that actually academics are quite often a better example of fair distribution that many organisations because IQ and talent really are necessessary for the academicparts of the job. But the point I make is not one that is about my needs or envy, though I am frustrated that some of my decisions are blocked by people with poor understanding but 'the right' background, and also that with more money I could train to rise above the 'good background, not that bright' layer that collects just above my level in the public sector/civil service/local government. That is not why I argue this point though - it because on too many occasions I have had to correct and redo the work of someone who is 'the right sort of chap' and have also had objective tested recruitment overturned in favour of someone that collagues 'have just liked' (i.e. talked like them walked like them had a degree from one of their 'known' institutions who then failed to do the job correctly. I know recruitment is never perfect but trying to make it as close as possible and as objective as possible is essential in my view. Not in the view of people content to promote like for like over people with real and demontrable ability

And my apologies to Fergus - just read your full post and it is a good illustration of why the UK is missing out on talent in its rush to promote people who can afford to buy courses and opportunities. Its particularly interesting because the first career path looks neat and the second chaotic and weak yet the same potential could be hiding behind each picture with the second more hungry for the chance - something I will definitely consider in the future when I look at a CV with ostensibly slow or disjointed progression. - I hadn't realised how stark that was.

Try writing fewer sentences, much fewer sentences. It is clear you have problems in grasping issues as they really are, not as you think they are. Hence your muddled thinking. Envy gets no where.

Aw poor 'to Hero' big words confusing you? Long sentences make head hurt?

Its 'many fewer' sentences not 'much fewer' nice try but you look a bit foolish criticising writing when you can't speak english. Perhaps this is your problem when reading a lot.

"Many fewer"? OK, Hero, have your day. By the way any chance you work or study in a new university? Envy and abuse are clear signs of something deep and malign.