T this time of the year, arts and science graduates are being steered into big business, without realising the implications of the work they are undertaking. They are pushed by the careers boards at the universities and by pressures brought to bear on them by industry. This is a subtle policy; the industrialist wants a certain type of managerial staff, and the best market these days is the graduate. Arts men and women trained in sociology or social administration find it difficult to do the kind of work they would like in the social services, because of the vast run-down in the last decade of Tory rule means they are overloaded with -work, inadequately paid and generally used as comforters of the workers—deprived of any real power to effect reform. Put against this the soft seat promised by large companies in return for management in personnel, production or sales, and it is little wonder that they are increasingly opting for such posts. To industry, social services offer no turnover, no percentage; at best they keep the workers happy, at worst they get in the way. | And outside this field, the graduate has only the large corporations, I.C.I., Courtaulds, the City, and so on as a potential labour market. The implications of this are enormous. It means that the graduate must surrender the humanist teaching he has been given and identify his values with those of company; the deal is not so much in terms of cash, though that is there, as in a moral revolution he is expected to undergo. Figures show that two out of three applied science graduates go straight into that part of industry they were trained for, They are assimilated into the technical and managerial elite which is rapidly becoming the real ruling class, the ‘captains’ of industry. One graduate in three in the pure science faculties follows suit; (a high percentage go on to do a further degree), but of arts graduates only one in seven actually uses the material he is taught. It might seem he has the best choice; superficially he has, but the openings for work where there is some degree of intellectual and social independence are very few indeed. The alternatives
by Paul Routledge are clear—teaching or industrial management, sales and advertising. Not many are suited for teaching, but take it as the only option offering freedom of choice. The others are swallowed into the ancillary industries of big business, such as advertising. | Again, on the surface, this does not represent a sacrifice; but the advertising man is as much bound up in the success, in terms of selling, of capitalism. His interest is possibly most marked of all. He is the first to go when things get tight, so he has to try and make sure things never do get tight. This kind of economic short sightedness is typical in the advertising industry.
Comprehensive schools are gaining ground at last, and so one teacher’s dilemma, that of propagating a class society is on the way out. The hierarchy of public, grammar and secondary schoolboys is aimed at separating the affiliations of the huge variety of children and re-grading them into potential key members of the society we have today. The teacher is supposed to elevate the working class boy to the stage when he can take his place in the industrial establishment. This process is continued at the university. The new universities, thiat new venture into education, are already cap in hand to industrialists. | (Nottingham’s new V.C. has said he sees his job as “bricks, mortar and money” — this exactly coincides with the American ideal of the President as _basically a fund-raiser, and his worth is estimated by the amount of money he can wring out of industry. This is a vicious circle. The more education gets from industry, the more returns will be demanded in the shape of tailored graduates, and the less the U.G.C. is given to play with.) Only an informed and active Left wing in the universities can bring general awareness of the subtle way they are being turned into graduate factories, turning out the future managerial class of Britain. | The problem accentuates yearly, as British industrialists copy the ways of- the U.S.A., and the policy of graduate “brainwashing” will become general practice. Obviously the Left has to work against this.
Happy