There's no business like the Law School business

Sian Griffiths (@SianGriffiths6) recently did wonderful some work in The Sunday Times (@thesundaytimes) here, reporting on the "1000s of law students who will never practice law." The Sunday Times (@thesundaytimes) is now complicit in this economic madness, offering to add yet more aspiring, but credulous, law students to the "glut" of jobless or desk-monkey law students - see advertisement above! Above that advertisement The Sunday Times included a lengthy encomium, via Sian Griffiths, on a racing driver turned law student. 

Nigel Savage, chief executive of the University of Law was featured on that encomium. He passed wise words on employer-led practice learning, as opposed to the "traditional liberal education" (euphemism for "bums on seats, don't teach education" (as per the Jenni Russell article here)). Apart from that it was cheap salesmanship, PR passed as journalism. Journalism's ignoble and shameful capitulation.

Yet here's what people don't know. The University of Law was sold to a private equity fund for £200 million. With that, you have to ask: If someone was prepared to pay £200 million for the University of Law, there must be big money to be made from teaching law students?

Yes, there's no business like the Law School business. So here's my question for the Sunday Times: Why not offer scholarships for a degree in languages? In technology and engineering? For this is where the growth and economic opportunity lies. 

As a post-script. Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) has written feverishly on his ad-free blog The Dish about "the surrender of journalism to PR and advertising." It seems that it's infected even The Sunday Times. 

When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd

Sian Griffiths quotes Alison Wolf, professor of public sector management at King's College London in The Sunday Times of December 1 2013 here: 

"If you are growing up in Seoul or Shanghai, you go home from school to a family that cares desperately about education, no matter what its social standing is. British parents are simply not as aware of how important education is."

My previous posts in the "Cool to be dumb" series here, here, here, here,here, here and here. On the Huffington Post UK here.

When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd

Sian Griffiths wrote in the Sunday Times, 'The Lessons our Schools must Learn':

"Some of the worst miscreants come from white working-class families who failed at their own schools are passing on a contempt for education to their children."

Richard Cairns, head of the independent Brighton College said:

"The problem is not immigrants but white working-class kids in areas where there are relatively few jobs and their parents have not worked."