Jerusalem

Politicians and promises are in the air this week, with the election finally upon us. Come Friday morning we’ll know if it’s Got To Be Gordon’s, as the gin advert used to say or if Clegg-mania prevailed or if a Blue Note has been struck. At church this morning we were enjoined to vote and even, in a not-so-subliminal message, sang Jerusalem as the final hymn.

Well, I never mind singing Jerusalem. The words, by William Blake, are definitely odd but fuzzily inspiring and the tune’s great.  Not so long ago, in this corner of England’s Mountains Green, we were surrounded with dark, satanic mills and there’s still plenty of factory chimneys left to remind us all of the thick smogs and the gritty taste in the air caused by lots of soot in the atmosphere.  (I grew up thinking that all public buildings were made of black stone; it was a real shock when, after the Clean Air Acts, they were sandblasted and turned into honey-coloured sandstone and white Portland Stone.)

But promises… One innovation of recent years is the huge increase of students studying at university and they’re promised an awful lot.

Well, I’m delighted to say that daughter Helen, who graduated last year from Royal Holloway, University of London, finally managed to find a “proper” job.  We got the news at the beginning of the week that she’s been successful in getting on a graduate trainee scheme, one of the fortunate final 30 out of 1,500 applicants.

Hallelujah! That meant an outbreak of cards, cake and a bottle or so of champagne, it was such brilliant news.

I can’t think of any recent graduate who hasn’t found it a real slog.  It used to be much easier to get a graduate-type job.  Naturally, with far fewer graduates chasing them!

At one time, of course, being a graduate was a fairly big deal.  So few people went to university, that they really were a privileged group and creamed off the really desirable and sometimes well-paid jobs.  Well, the courses haven’t, despite what some grumblers say, got easier, but there are far more students than there used to be. Helen’s been working, of course, but only as an office temp.  The government (here come the promises) are very keen to tell us all how much extra graduates earn than non-graduates.  Well, I suppose they might, but getting a degree, as so many have found out, is very far from being the fairy dust or magic wand politicians depict it as.

For a start, University is expensive.  There are student loans at a good rate of interest, but they do have to be paid back.  Then, to make an obvious but sometimes overlooked point, while a student is at university, they’re not earning anything.  That’s three or four years with no income while contemporaries are bringing in a salary.  These aren’t grumbles, just statements, and it’s a rare student who can complete the course without a big slug of help from home.

It helps, as a student’s parent, to know how a university works.  Just because you’ve done a course in – say – Graphic Design or Creative Writing, doesn’t mean you’re going to be a Graphic Designer or any sort of Writer.  Or a Forensic Scientist or lawyer or archaeologist.  Sometimes politicians talk as if it does, but it’s simply not true.  A degree, by itself, is good but most training schemes insist on a 2:1 (which represents a huge amount of work and considerable talent on the student’s part) – and some sort of post-graduate training is almost always necessary.

So where does that leave the politicians’ promises?  True? Yes – but, as with most things, you have to read the small print.  The devil, as William Blake might very well have thought, is in the detail.