Education and Social Mobility

A couple of posts on my trip to the US will have to wait for another posting -first this. A very interesting Thinking Allowed today with Richard Reeves from Demos, talking about the restricted of mobility despite the expansion of higher education. Reeves points out that education is a positional good - people use it to gain relative advantage in the labour market, but when the total number of graduates increases that means that the value of a degree declines. Some very interesting statistics quoted at the top of the item (sorry, can’t remember them) are a sobering reminder that those who have the advantage of private education dominate the top professions.

One aspect I felt Reeves (and Laurie Taylor) omitted was to mention that while in general the value of a degree may decline, it is worth noting that arguably the result is the further stratification of higher education. It’s largely impressionistic and a claim on my part, but I would argue that this is what we’re currently witnessing in higher education. Despite Reeves pessimism, it is important and worth having a degree in today’s job market, but what was left unsaid was that it is probably becoming even more important which institution a person has attended and which subject they studied - and which profession they aim for. The old hierarchies - Oxbridge and the Russell group, are re-trenching. And whatever some of the press say about public sector salaries (they refer only to public sector fat cats and maybe MPs) I’d suggest that on average most individuals would do better if they opted for the private sector.

Discuss.