‘The Educated Underclass: Students and the promise of social mobility’ by Gary Roth

Noël Staples reviews 'The Educated Underclass: Students and the promise of social mobility' by Gary Roth

Having returned to bus driving in 1998, I became a member of ‘the educated underclass’. Simply put, I was educated above my job’s needs, yet economically unable to mix easily with equivalently educated – wealthier – people. There are growing numbers like me in Britain since the backdoor privatisation of UK higher education (HE). Friends’ testimony to equality is now challenged by a kind of inequality relatively new to the UK. You might nowadays be less surprised to encounter a well-spoken graduate postman, coffee shop barista, or lorry driver. Had it not been for my acceptance by Quakers in 1990 I would have been considerably more discontented.

Rutgers professor Gary Roth’s sociological study of the relationship between US HE, largely privatised, and graduate-level jobs, is relevant here, now that our HE has been partly privatised. (Universities cater for ever-increasing numbers of students but, as The Times pointed out last month, taxpayers will ‘meet forty-seven per cent of student debt’ this year because many graduates earn below the income threshold.) Roth deals with his subject under the following chapter headings: ‘Higher education and class’; ‘The overproduction of intelligence’ (particularly interesting); ‘Class in transition: historical background’; ‘Underemployment through the decades;’ ‘Class status and economic instability’; and ‘Into the future’.

Much of this book fits the UK situation, though our educated underclass arrived later. Here is an example from ‘Into the future’: ‘Beginning in the 1970s government pivoted away from supporting itself… [it] didn’t necessarily expand its own bureaucracy by directly hiring employees. Instead massive numbers of contracts were issued to the private sector… this further clarifies why government support for education has been whittled away, with tuition-hikes and student loans used to cover what the private sector no longer can. Higher education is not quite “public” in the traditional sense of the word, but it hasn’t been “privatised” either. Like the economy itself, which is part government funded and part privately owned, higher education has become its own unique mishmash of these two realms.’

The neo-liberal policy of privatisation of state services blurs lines of authority and renders service provision secondary to provision of a return on private investors’ capital. Using market forces to determine need has a knock-on effect of increasing inequality in society. It prioritises rewarding investors. There is also a tendency for market competition to drive down wages.

Though written for the general reader, there is also a good index and end notes linking to source materials for those wishing to follow up ideas. I thoroughly recommend this thought-provoking book, certainly to us Friends with our testimony to equality, but also to anyone with an interest in promoting greater equality in society.

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