Young versus old - "The real split in Ukraine" [and Northern Ireland]

I've previously wrote a post, 'The young people will bring change to Iran' where I cited Alec Ross, Senior advisor to Hilary Clinton 2009-2013 who said of young people in Iran and China:

"What is ultimately going to change China, what is ultimately going to change Iran are young people in these countries. There are half a billion people in china who us microblogging sites, 400 million of whom are under 25. That's what's going to change China. That's what's going to change Iran."

Christopher Hitchens spoke of "Iran's baby boomerang" whereby:

"Within the carapace of a theocratic state, an almost completely secular society is being created." Muslim mullahs sowed a baby boom whose children will reap their overthrow.

Christina Lamb explained this phenomenon in the Sunday Times also where trendy restaurants "are packed with young people drinking lattes and smoothies, smoking and texting on their iPhones as they plan their night out."

 

In Ukraine the recent clash has been a generational one. Julia Ioffe (juliaioffe) wrote an article in The New Republic, 'Eastern Ukraine Is Still Fighting Its Past - Life under Stalin's long shadow'.

"The younger a citizen of Donetsk, the more likely she is to view herself as Ukrainian. The older she is, the more likely she is to identify as Russian. And this is the crux of it all: What we are seeing today is the reverberation of what happened more than 20 years ago. This is still the long post-Soviet transition. And this is what it’s like to wander in the desert, waiting for the old generation to die off."

Employability versus The Traditional University Degree - An Open Letter to Sir David Bell (part 3)

Sir David Bell, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading.

The Socratic dialogue continues.

Part 1 of this dialectical series was began by me with an open letter published on the Huffington Post and on Ambitious Minds which addressed Sir David Bell who had made suggestions in the Times newspaper that a growing push towards "employability" of university degrees was putting the 'intellectual integrity of degrees at risk.'

In Part 2 Sir David Bell responded to my riposte and gave his own counter-argument. I have since published what he had to say on my blog which you can read it here. Sir David Bell made a number of fair and interesting points.

In Part 3 of the dialectic I would like to give further response by broadening my argument, and by citing more of the commentators and authorities that I've been following and reading assiduously in recent months. To begin with, I would like to present three testimonies that all give a dim account of the "status quo" university education.

Firstly, to start with Dale J Stephens (@DaleJStephens), the founder of the Uncollege movement said of his university experience in the US: