The point of university education is not actually job training, though. That's a happy side effect, but the point is middle class enculturation.
This is useful to the individual (even if they never get a good job, they now have an easier time navigating institutions, participating in civil society etc) and useful to society (tends to reduce violence, prejudice etc).
Possibly the marginal university no longer does a good job of this - but unfortunately it's harder to measure than employment.
I thought the original point of university was to study a topic very deeply, for its own sake, for the small minority who want to do that. Presumably this would have been neither necessary nor sufficient for class acculturation. Then it expanded to include job training for certain professions like medicine and law, and only later became a gatekeeper for middle-class jobs generally.
I agree that in practice this is why a lot of people go,even though unis and government (including Tony Blair) talk a lot about jobs, social mobility and the economic benefits.
I don't think the marginal experience - living with parents, commuting in, a few hours of contact a week while working 20+ hours in a job - really achieves that. But even if it did, I'd go back to the fact that this really isn't a sensible reason to make young people get into 50 grand of debt.
I thought POSIWID was intended as a clever or snarky soundbite rather than something people earnestly believed. We already have words like "result" and "effect" to mean "what it does". Distinguishing that from the intended purpose is important, like distinguishing "is" from "ought". If you deliberately conflate them, you can't notice and try to fix when they differ.
I think New Labour expanding university enrolment was a huge mistake. It turned something that's very costly in time and money from an optional tradeoff to a requirement, making it necessary (but not sufficient!) for middle-class and some working-class jobs - resulting in a Red Queen's race that delays everyone's ability to become financially independent, have children, etc.
Hmm, so when I use POSIWID what I generally mean is 'for this system, there are some effects that people want to be plausibly deniable about because they sound discriminatory or otherwise bad if you say them out loud, but actually everyone involved tacitly understands this is what is happening and the stated purpose is just a fig leaf'.
Like company values and vision statements - some companies genuinely do act on them, others have them but act purely as profit maximising engines - the actual purpose of the company is not necessarily the stated purpose but is revealed by what it does.
I think POSIWD can be useful for the reasons Michelle says, in providing a potential explanation as to why a system is acting in a certain way which is at opposition to what its controllers say they desire, when they could easily alter it.
This does genuinely sometimes happen and for those plausibly deniable reasons.
However, most systems aren't like this (e.g. the reason why NHS is inefficient isn't because people secretly want it to be but because big complex systems are hard) and it's a mistake to assume that all or most systems are dysfunctional for POSIWD reasons. (Scott argues the last part of this well here, though I think he's wrong in not recognising that situations that Michelle describes do genuinely exist). https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpose-of
That ONS graph is one of the most disingenuous and deceiving graphs that keeps popping up; for an organisation of statisticians it's completely brain dead. It only compares migrants that get a job against all British born natives (including those who may never get a job). When we've seen from the Boriswave a significant number of dependents being brought through on immigration visas this graph is at best not serious and at worst deceptive. What a terrible comparison for the ONS to make.
Agree the ONS graph has many flaws. But I think it's worth saying that even if someone accepts it completely, one can still cut immigration to some extent without economic harm.
I agree with much of this, particularly on HE. The Blairite expansion of HE is one of the great policy mistakes of his era. If education leads to productivity improvements, why has productivity growth been flat in the period since the expansion?
On immigration, too, I think you may be on to something but I think the problem is not *who* immigrates but *how*. We have always been bad at immigration (others have been much worse btw). We had no plan (and the Cabinet was divided) to deal with the Windrush era migrants, which led to those lodging-house signs, CofE vicars turning willing congregants away, and worse. We have opened the doors, but failed to make migrants feel at home and left them to find their own way and establish their own communities. Integration starts with a welcome and it has too often been lacking. But we do need immigrants, for simple demographic reasons. Pro-natalism can't fix the dependency ratio in time to meet the care needs of the boomer generation.
Thank you. A lot of people seem not to understand this. Your post will be a good resource to link to in that situation.
Thank you!
So jealous!
The point of university education is not actually job training, though. That's a happy side effect, but the point is middle class enculturation.
This is useful to the individual (even if they never get a good job, they now have an easier time navigating institutions, participating in civil society etc) and useful to society (tends to reduce violence, prejudice etc).
Possibly the marginal university no longer does a good job of this - but unfortunately it's harder to measure than employment.
The point according to who?
I thought the original point of university was to study a topic very deeply, for its own sake, for the small minority who want to do that. Presumably this would have been neither necessary nor sufficient for class acculturation. Then it expanded to include job training for certain professions like medicine and law, and only later became a gatekeeper for middle-class jobs generally.
Both according to 'the purpose of a system is what it does' and why New Labour found expanding it to be important.
I agree that in practice this is why a lot of people go,even though unis and government (including Tony Blair) talk a lot about jobs, social mobility and the economic benefits.
I don't think the marginal experience - living with parents, commuting in, a few hours of contact a week while working 20+ hours in a job - really achieves that. But even if it did, I'd go back to the fact that this really isn't a sensible reason to make young people get into 50 grand of debt.
Both things I disagree with.
I thought POSIWID was intended as a clever or snarky soundbite rather than something people earnestly believed. We already have words like "result" and "effect" to mean "what it does". Distinguishing that from the intended purpose is important, like distinguishing "is" from "ought". If you deliberately conflate them, you can't notice and try to fix when they differ.
I think New Labour expanding university enrolment was a huge mistake. It turned something that's very costly in time and money from an optional tradeoff to a requirement, making it necessary (but not sufficient!) for middle-class and some working-class jobs - resulting in a Red Queen's race that delays everyone's ability to become financially independent, have children, etc.
Hmm, so when I use POSIWID what I generally mean is 'for this system, there are some effects that people want to be plausibly deniable about because they sound discriminatory or otherwise bad if you say them out loud, but actually everyone involved tacitly understands this is what is happening and the stated purpose is just a fig leaf'.
Like company values and vision statements - some companies genuinely do act on them, others have them but act purely as profit maximising engines - the actual purpose of the company is not necessarily the stated purpose but is revealed by what it does.
Can I be annoying and take the middle ground?
I think POSIWD can be useful for the reasons Michelle says, in providing a potential explanation as to why a system is acting in a certain way which is at opposition to what its controllers say they desire, when they could easily alter it.
This does genuinely sometimes happen and for those plausibly deniable reasons.
However, most systems aren't like this (e.g. the reason why NHS is inefficient isn't because people secretly want it to be but because big complex systems are hard) and it's a mistake to assume that all or most systems are dysfunctional for POSIWD reasons. (Scott argues the last part of this well here, though I think he's wrong in not recognising that situations that Michelle describes do genuinely exist). https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpose-of
That ONS graph is one of the most disingenuous and deceiving graphs that keeps popping up; for an organisation of statisticians it's completely brain dead. It only compares migrants that get a job against all British born natives (including those who may never get a job). When we've seen from the Boriswave a significant number of dependents being brought through on immigration visas this graph is at best not serious and at worst deceptive. What a terrible comparison for the ONS to make.
Agree the ONS graph has many flaws. But I think it's worth saying that even if someone accepts it completely, one can still cut immigration to some extent without economic harm.
I agree with much of this, particularly on HE. The Blairite expansion of HE is one of the great policy mistakes of his era. If education leads to productivity improvements, why has productivity growth been flat in the period since the expansion?
On immigration, too, I think you may be on to something but I think the problem is not *who* immigrates but *how*. We have always been bad at immigration (others have been much worse btw). We had no plan (and the Cabinet was divided) to deal with the Windrush era migrants, which led to those lodging-house signs, CofE vicars turning willing congregants away, and worse. We have opened the doors, but failed to make migrants feel at home and left them to find their own way and establish their own communities. Integration starts with a welcome and it has too often been lacking. But we do need immigrants, for simple demographic reasons. Pro-natalism can't fix the dependency ratio in time to meet the care needs of the boomer generation.
Agree integration is important, almost whatever the numbers are.
In "Or do we think we should - if we chose to use it" 'should' should be could
at that point there would be a genuine trade-off between lower immigration [and the economy]
At this stage, are Teslas woke or fascist? Both?