Educational inequality, and high pay

[George & Bill]

In my understanding, the former has always been a moral problem - it's not fair that rich kids get a better education than poor kids - and the latter, by which I mean the puzzlingly large rewards that that top executives get even during recessions, an economic mystery - we're told that you have to pay for talent, but it's unclear why the price is quite so high.

But it struck me that the two are closely connected. We know that going to one of the best schools makes you much more likely to go to one of the best unis, and that that in turn makes you much more likely to be in the field of talent from which top earners are chosen. We can gather from comparing the proportion of pupils at, say, Eton, who manage to eventually graduate with good degrees from Oxbridge, with the proportion from a typical school who do so, that the vast majority of people who have the potential to be schooled to the level that is required to eventually enter the top tier of the economy never are.

What would happen to top pay if they were?

If every school sent the same proportion of its pupils on to an elite university education as Eton does*, what would be the effect on top levels of pay?

Sorry if I'm going down a well-trodden train of thought.



*Assuming for a moment that the places existed.

 

[temper_tantrum]

Why is top levels of pay the issue which you wish to address?

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

If every school sent the same proportion of its pupils on to an elite university education as Eton does*, what would be the effect on top levels of pay?

The wealthy would find new ways to ensure their kids got the best careers (and hence get paid a load more than anyone else). You can see it already in the growth of internships.

I suppose if it really, really came down to it, and they couldn't think of anything else, then they'd eventually be forced to just go 'fuck you, we're doing it because we can.'

 

[yield]

This sort of things? Five schools 'send more to Oxbridge than 2,000 others'
BBC. 8 July 2011

 

[George & Bill]

Why is top levels of pay the issue which you wish to address?

This statement assumes I've said it's 'the' issue I wish to address.

The wealthy would find new ways to ensure their kids got the best careers (and hence get paid a load more than anyone else). You can see it already in the growth of internships.

I suppose if it really, really came down to it, and they couldn't think of anything else, then they'd eventually be forced to just go 'fuck you, we're doing it because we can.'

That's looking at it rather literally. Obviously the hypothetical scenario won't happen, for the same reason that it can't happen, which is also the same reason that it hasn't happened, which is that it wouldn't be in the interests of those in a positioto bring it about. But does the mechanism I've described exist?

 

[temper_tantrum]

It's not a statement, it's a question.

 

[George & Bill]

It's not a statement, it's a question.

Well done - it still implies that this is 'the' question I want to address.

 

[temper_tantrum]

Well done - it still implies that this is 'the' question I want to address.

Well clearly you don't want to address my question.

 

[George & Bill]

Well clearly you don't want to address my question.

I'm not trying to be funny - your question is based on a wrong assumption, which it that I think high pay is some sort of pivotal issue. I don't. It's one thing that was in my head, and a connection happened to form to another thing that was in my head, in a way that I thought could potentially be interesting.

 

[temper_tantrum]

So why is high pay AN issue you want to address?

 

[George & Bill]

Questions that this could relate to include:

Do those who administer technologically advanced economies do so because they have been privileged with the skills, or simply with the jobs?

If one wished to radically alter the economic system, what changes, if any, would be needed in the way skills and education are distributed?

 

[George & Bill]

So why is high pay AN issue you want to address?

It's a phenomon whose cause I would like to know, rather than an issue I want to directly address.

 

[George & Bill]

Why is there a growing population who (according to unemployment figures) have no useful skills, but a stable population whose skills are so much in demand that their value can go on growing exponentially? Is this because, does technology magnify the natural differences between the clever and the stupid? Is it to do with disparities in education? If so, is it worth addressing these within the context of our broad economic system, or not? Is it something else entirely?

 

[Greebo]

Why is there a growing population who (according to unemployment figures) have no useful skills, but a stable population whose skills are so much in demand that their value can go on growing exponentially? Is this because, does technology magnify the natural differences between the clever and the stupid? Is it to do with disparities in education? If so, is it worth addressing these within the context of our broad economic system, or not? Is it something else entirely?

Where oh where do I even start with such an IMHO wrongheaded and ignorant question? Probably getting some sleep. After that, and the tediously busy day tomorrow, I might have unpacked your question enough to come up with a sensible answer.

 

[George & Bill]

Where oh where do I even start with such an IMHO wrongheaded and ignorant question? Probably getting some sleep. After that, and the tediously busy day tomorrow, I might have unpacked your question enough to come up with a sensible answer.

I think you've got me wrong somewhere, maybe you thought I was supporting the idea that wide disparities in reward are based on wide disparities in innate human usefulness - but if you look at the remark in my OP about the overwhelming effect of different types of education on people's eventual economic position, you'll see that this is not a view I tend towards (that's putting it gently, but I'm trying to phrase this all as openly as possible).

 

[Gmart]

Are we suggesting that the UK should be a meritocracy? I was under the impression that many consider such an ideal as 'arbitrary' and therefore not a principle to agree on.

If you have differences in pay then you will have some who pay for a private tutor for their kids too. Is this 'fair' on those whose families cannot afford to do so? Probably not. Is this going to ever change? Only while people are paid different wages - and even if they are paid the same, some will still allocate their scarce resources to ensuring their kids get the best they can - so we are left again with children who are unlucky enough to have parents who don't wish to allocate their resources in this way losing out.

In other words, working towards equality is a fine principle (IMO) but there is a limit on how much you can force people to be the same.

 

[temper_tantrum]

You're asking the wrong questions.

 

[George & Bill]

You're asking the wrong questions.

Well, lucky you're clever enough to figure that out. Now, the way to fuck off if this doesn't interest you is over yonder >>>

 

[temper_tantrum]

Well, lucky you're clever enough to figure that out. Now, the way to fuck off if this doesn't interest you is over yonder >>>

Not a very nice response.

Seriously, to be a little less gnomic, think about the unstated assumptions behind the questions you're asking. There's a whole set of acceptances there, which maybe if you're interested in issues of equality, egality, fairness, etc, should be challenged ...

 

[jusali]

Surely if more people got the opportunity of an Eton/Oxbridge education the high prices paid to those graduates would be less, as the supply would be greatly increased. A bit like plasterers getting more pay than IT graduates once upon a time.......

 

[stuff_it]

Why is there a growing population who (according to unemployment figures) have no useful skills

Why are you basing a large amount of your rhetoric on government lies?

There really aren't that many people with 'no useful skills' as you put it, except in the way that there are now so few jobs that employers can demand someone who has done that exact precise job in an almost identical company and still have hundreds of applications to sift through. They're actually really nice to you in the Jobcentre these days, well they are up here in Shottingham (one of the highest unemployment rates in the UK) as there really isn't any work. With hundreds of applicants for every job there is no longer such thing as transferable skills, as any job you go for except at the highest level you will be competing against someone who has done that exact job for the last 15 years since they left school.

Is this because, does technology magnify the natural differences between the clever and the stupid?

No, I know many very intelligent people (eg academics, solicitors, docotors etc) who are dreadful with technology, in fact many are so dreadful they need a secretary just to operate a word processor for them.

Is it to do with disparities in education? If so, is it worth addressing these within the context of our broad economic system, or not? Is it something else entirely?

No, it's not down to disparities in education. It may be quite hard for kids from state schools to end up CEO of a big bank but do they really want to? You would probably have to be brought up by a load of toff wankers to even consider that to be an ok career choice. That doesn't mean there's not plenty of opportunity to do well coming from a less privileged background in most kids, in fact sometimes more education (if by that you mean more certificates and so on how things are going these days) is a bad thing, especially if it's used to make youngsters go out and do spurious 'apprenticeships' in stuff like retail and warehousing...all it does is mean that more experienced workers in these sorts of low level jobs have trouble competing against people who have an NVQ in operating a till.

Surely if more people got the opportunity of an Eton/Oxbridge education the high prices paid to those graduates would be less, as the supply would be greatly increased. A bit like plasterers getting more pay than IT graduates once upon a time.......

Plasterers still do get more money than IT graduates round here.

I think you've got me wrong somewhere, maybe you thought I was supporting the idea that wide disparities in reward are based on wide disparities in innate human usefulness - but if you look at the remark in my OP about the overwhelming effect of different types of education on people's eventual economic position, you'll see that this is not a view I tend towards (that's putting it gently, but I'm trying to phrase this all as openly as possible).

I don't think you can put it down to just education. There are a whole range of factors involved in how someone eventually turns out. TBF Mr _it bunked off a lot at school, and left at 16 to do an apprenticeship. He's now earning the same as my mum was in her early 40 running a music department of a secondary school. A lot of it really is down to attitude. I never got a chance to do A Levels as my mum kicked me out and wrote a letter to the dole saying I was welcome back any time, which meant I didn't have time to busk enough to live on and do my 4 A Levels as well. I'm going to university later this year to study Mechanical Engineering now I'm in my 30s.

I know so many people who have worked or are working 'low level jobs', that's not really the issue. The problem is there are no jobs, none. When the recession is over and everyone can walk straight into a crappy industrial or warehouse job in a week or two again it's going to be like shangri-la compared to how it is now. I have been through the mill looking for work to suit my skill levels or even any work at all, and I've had about four weeks temp employment since starting looking hard last February, all of it very very low level - i.e. treated as though too stupid and untrained to even do picking. I was lucky though, at least I had some work. I was unsticking labels.

It doesn't matter one fucking jot what you do towards education if the economy is fucked, look at all the recent graduates being exploited into unpaid work, for example.

 

[George & Bill]

Surely if more people got the opportunity of an Eton/Oxbridge education the high prices paid to those graduates would be less, as the supply would be greatly increased. A bit like plasterers getting more pay than IT graduates once upon a time.......

Yes, that is what I was suggesting.

 

[George & Bill]

Not a very nice response.

Seriously, to be a little less gnomic, think about the unstated assumptions behind the questions you're asking. There's a whole set of acceptances there, which maybe if you're interested in issues of equality, egality, fairness, etc, should be challenged ...

I think in this case most of what you're seeing as unspoken assumptions are just hypothetical postulations for the sake of debate...

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Surely if more people got the opportunity of an Eton/Oxbridge education the high prices paid to those graduates would be less, as the supply would be greatly increased. A bit like plasterers getting more pay than IT graduates once upon a time.......

Not really IMO.

Firstly, even if you assume the simple supply/demand model works you seem to be assuming that there's a simple oxbridge -> massively paid job progression, because high paying employers only demand that education. Obviously there's a big correlation but plenty of Oxbridge graduates don't go into very highly paid jobs, and some people who didn't go to Oxbridge do. In fact it's one of a number of criteria (including work experience - people don't get graduate jobs as CEO of a major bank) they claim to use. Increase the supply of Oxbridge graduates then other things become the differentiating factor. Internships being a current example as I said earlier but there could be others.

The other argument against that I can see is that at really high pay levels the supply and demand model doesn't hold anyway. They like to claim they need to pay those amounts of money to retain 'top staff' but the pay awards are made entirely by people with a high pay agenda so it's not surprising they keep going up. The assumption that businesses even attempt to minimise their costs doesn't hold any more.

 

[George & Bill]

Why are you basing a large amount of your rhetoric on government lies?

There really aren't that many people with 'no useful skills' as you put it, except in the way that there are now so few jobs that employers can demand someone who has done that exact precise job in an almost identical company and still have hundreds of applications to sift through. They're actually really nice to you in the Jobcentre these days, well they are up here in Shottingham (one of the highest unemployment rates in the UK) as there really isn't any work. With hundreds of applicants for every job there is no longer such thing as transferable skills, as any job you go for except at the highest level you will be competing against someone who has done that exact job for the last 15 years since they left school.


No, I know many very intelligent people (eg academics, solicitors, docotors etc) who are dreadful with technology, in fact many are so dreadful they need a secretary just to operate a word processor for them.


No, it's not down to disparities in education. It may be quite hard for kids from state schools to end up CEO of a big bank but do they really want to? You would probably have to be brought up by a load of toff wankers to even consider that to be an ok career choice. That doesn't mean there's not plenty of opportunity to do well coming from a less privileged background in most kids, in fact sometimes more education (if by that you mean more certificates and so on how things are going these days) is a bad thing, especially if it's used to make youngsters go out and do spurious 'apprenticeships' in stuff like retail and warehousing...all it does is mean that more experienced workers in these sorts of low level jobs have trouble competing against people who have an NVQ in operating a till.


Plasterers still do get more money than IT graduates round here.


I don't think you can put it down to just education. There are a whole range of factors involved in how someone eventually turns out. TBF Mr _it bunked off a lot at school, and left at 16 to do an apprenticeship. He's now earning the same as my mum was in her early 40 running a music department of a secondary school. A lot of it really is down to attitude. I never got a chance to do A Levels as my mum kicked me out and wrote a letter to the dole saying I was welcome back any time, which meant I didn't have time to busk enough to live on and do my 4 A Levels as well. I'm going to university later this year to study Mechanical Engineering now I'm in my 30s.

I know so many people who have worked or are working 'low level jobs', that's not really the issue. The problem is there are no jobs, none. When the recession is over and everyone can walk straight into a crappy industrial or warehouse job in a week or two again it's going to be like shangri-la compared to how it is now. I have been through the mill looking for work to suit my skill levels or even any work at all, and I've had about four weeks temp employment since starting looking hard last February, all of it very very low level - i.e. treated as though too stupid and untrained to even do picking. I was lucky though, at least I had some work. I was unsticking labels.

It doesn't matter one fucking jot what you do towards education if the economy is fucked, look at all the recent graduates being exploited into unpaid work, for example.

It's not my personal view that the unemployed have no useful skills, any more than it's my view that it's logical for a CEO to earn 100 times the median wage in their company. Just to spell that out. I was just interested in whether very high pay is directly caused by limitation of the supply of certain types of education.

 

[jusali]

I agree personally I think it's a back scratching exercise at CEO level,
"Do you know Tarquin from harrow?"
"Ya"
"Ok he'll do! We'll start him on 10mill."

 

[George & Bill]

Not really IMO.

Firstly, even if you assume the simple supply/demand model works you seem to be assuming that there's a simple oxbridge -> massively paid job progression, because high paying employers only demand that education. Obviously there's a big correlation but plenty of Oxbridge graduates don't go into very highly paid jobs, and some people who didn't go to Oxbridge do. In fact it's one of a number of criteria (including work experience - people don't get graduate jobs as CEO of a major bank) they claim to use. Increase the supply of Oxbridge graduates then other things become the differentiating factor. Internships being a current example as I said earlier but there could be others.

The other argument against that I can see is that at really high pay levels the supply and demand model doesn't hold anyway. They like to claim they need to pay those amounts of money to retain 'top staff' but the pay awards are made entirely by people with a high pay agenda so it's not surprising they keep going up. The assumption that businesses even attempt to minimise their costs doesn't hold any more.

Thanks for this reply! I definitely accept the argument about new differentiating factors being found. I also accept the point about people who award pay having an interest in keeping it high. But if we broaden it out, it's fair to say that deliberate limitation of access to education, including at a very basic level, has been used to shore up elites' justification for their privilidges, no?

 

[temper_tantrum]

I think in this case most of what you're seeing as unspoken assumptions are just hypothetical postulations for the sake of debate...

Your initial post rested on the assumption that high pay is primarily caused by educational inequality, and thus could be tackled by reducing educational inequality. It's not possible for me to engage with your hypothetical construct because I disagree with its postulated foundations.

Edit: And Monkeygrinder has done a good job of highlighting in more detail some of the assumptions which I am questioning.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Thanks for this reply! I definitely accept the argument about new differentiating factors being found. I also accept the point about people who award pay having an interest in keeping it high. But if we broaden it out, it's fair to say that deliberate limitation of access to education, including at a very basic level, has been used to shore up elites' justification for their privilidges, no?

Yes it absolutely has, I don't think anyone could argue with that. Removing that would probably help in getting rid of that as well. It's not the whole story though and I think the people with wealth and power are more than capable of finding other ways to shore it up.

 

[romeo2001]

Why are you basing a large amount of your rhetoric on government lies?






I know so many people who have worked or are working 'low level jobs', that's not really the issue. The problem is there are no jobs, none. When the recession is over and everyone can walk straight into a crappy industrial or warehouse job in a week or two again it's going to be like shangri-la compared to how it is now. I have been through the mill looking for work to suit my skill levels or even any work at all, and I've had about four weeks temp employment since starting looking hard last February, all of it very very low level - i.e. treated as though too stupid and untrained to even do picking. I was lucky though, at least I had some work. I was unsticking labels.

It doesn't matter one fucking jot what you do towards education if the economy is fucked, look at all the recent graduates being exploited into unpaid work, for example.

echo that - and have done the label thing as well! ive just done a masters but was bizarrely treated as if i couldnt handle scanning a label on a bar code (was given the less taxing role of sticking labels!). now xmas is over and there is fuck all work about - there were loads that i worked with who only ever work at xmas and just resign themselves to jsa for the rest of the year.....
and indeed it will be like shangri la when there is work about - in some job agencies you have to go on a waiting list to even join round here - and when you get on theres still no work - utter madness