Whether you are for or against our actions on tuition fees, we can’t pretend it’s not still an open wound for us. It’s an elephant in the room when talking to non-Lib Dems and when discussed between Lib Dems it leads to a row. The irony is that this all happened whilst higher and further education are in their death throes.
The current model of a child attending school, then choosing whether to enter the workforce until retirement at that point or to take a few years of higher education first, then never attending education for the rest of his/her life, will be archaic.
This week The Daily Mail took a break from bashing immigrants, judges or spinning the “What Can Give You Cancer” wheel and turned its attention on the threat posed by robots “ROBOTS TO STEAL 15M OF YOUR JOBS” their headline roared. Their headline isn’t wrong – whether it’s 15 million, 5 million or one in 11 jobs –many of the jobs humans do today will soon be automated by, for want of a less sci-fi description, “robots”. And, as the limitations of and the cost to produce these robots lowers, the more common they will become. We need to adapt to this.
Over the past 30-40 years the amount of careers available to people who enter the workforce without a higher education has reduced dramatically, with more people being accepted into universities and the ICT revolution of the 1990s seeing many low-skilled jobs move overseas – this, I would argue, has led to the rise of the anger against globalisation amongst the white working class. A generation ago you could leave school, find a decent career – working your way up the ladder until retirement. This career narrative is now on the endangered list and robots will knock it into extinction.
The rage against globalisation is perfectly valid, however the reaction – Trump, Brexit, Corbyn – isn’t. Putting up trade barriers and enforcing state interference in our markets is prescribing a 20th century medicine for a 21st century illness. Trump might bring back jobs to the USA, but those won’t be performed by humans.
Having a few A Levels or a degree won’t protect you from the rise of the machines. Most (58.8%) graduates are in non-graduate roles, many at risk of automation.
Technology is reshaping our lives. Game-changing innovations are released daily. At university I learnt about TV production. We used state-of-the-art cameras, new editing software and specialist hardware such as vision mixers. Within five years of graduating, those vision mixers were antiques, the editing software had been updated beyond recognition and the cameras were collector’s items.
The skills we learn and the jobs we do could become obsolete within years. We have two options; become Luddites, rally against innovation and vow to “Make Britain Great Again” or we can embrace the change.
The Liberal Democrats need to stop rowing about how we fund Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) and start rowing about how we fund LE (Lifetime Education). Whether this is a state-funded project or something we incentivise employers to fund or something that the individual has to pay for or a mixture of all three – this is a conversation we need to have. We need a population that is not just resilient to a robot-dominated economy, but a population that thrives in it.
Today, retraining or gaining qualifications off of your own back costs time and money, which we don’t have. Some employers pay for training but there needs to be more regular topping up of people’s knowledge. A doctor doesn’t complete five years of medical training and then believe that the way they will perform their job will ever change from the point they graduate.
Established workers need to have the means available to them to completely retrain, as very few of us can expect an industry, let alone a job, for life. We’re on the cusp of the dawn of driverless vehicles. Taxi drivers, HGV drivers, bus drivers – all of these jobs are on the verge of being consigned to the history books, there needs to be provisions in place to soak up these millions who will be out of work.
There will always be a place for the Oxfords and Cambridges but we cannot kid ourselves that the current model, where the population stops learning in the first quarter of their lives prepares us for the final three quarters.
Only by owning the issue of Lifetime Education can we become the party that fights Trump and Corbyn’s hatred of human progress. The robots won’t take our jobs, but they will change what our jobs are. Let’s reform our tertiary education system to prepare us for the future and then we can all fall out about who pays for its fees.
* Charles Lawley is the Liberal Democrat candidate for Chapel & Hope Valley in the Derbyshire County Council Elections in 2017. He works for a humanitarian aid NGO.