Fifth of 8 weekly articles documenting bias in “The Cambridge Student”: Lent 2009 Issue 5.
This week it’s jobs, and economic bias (or perhaps economic ignorance). The Cambridge University Press are to cut 133 jobs. (Confusingly, the article prefers to use the numbers 160 and 170 more often, even though these appear to be overstatements.) The article does not quote anyone in favour of the cuts, and does not even quote the Press itself to justify them. It apparently hasn’t occurred to TCS that any job cuts anywhere could ever be justified.
Without job losses, economic growth would be impossible. Not just hindered, but impossible. Without job losses, living standards would never improve and we’d be stuck in the middle ages, with everyone much poorer. The reason is that the very definition of economic growth — each person becoming more productive — means that firms can do the same work with fewer people, and fewer firms are needed. These people are then available to go into new or expanding sectors. Job losses are scary for those who lose their jobs, while they look for other jobs. But they are essential to allow some sectors to shrink and others to grow as the market adapts itself to the changing desires of consumers. In a recession, this is restructuring is essential.
Cambridge University Press appears to want to leave the printing business altogether, and just be a publishing business. Presumably they believe that printing is not a sector they will be able to remain competitive in. Indeed, printing is one of the most competitive sectors in the world. A CUP employee says “the decision on the printing side is perverse; the Press as a whole is currently operating at a profit.” This is disingenuous: even if the University Press is making a profit overall, its printing section may be making a loss. There is no point throwing away profit to subsidise wasteful jobs, when the profit should be used to support the University of Cambridge.
Why do people feel the need to claim offence on others’ behalf? (It’s rather like claiming to represent people who haven’t asked for it.) There was a rather over-the-top comment by a student in a story about Emmanuel College’s “Empire” May Ball: “Throwing the party in the name of ‘Empire’ will damage the Emmanuel College’s reputation indefinitely and stop people, who have the potential to be here, from applying to Cambridge”! So good on TCS for including the following charming story in an article about “Golliwogs on sale at souvenir shop”: “An African gentleman had come in to collect a Stieff Bear he had ordered, and while he was in the shop a white girl came in and said we should be ashamed for selling the dolls. The man turned round to her and said, ‘it doesn’t offend me; so why should it offend you?’”.
More on the occupation of the law faculty. 56 academics have signed a letter to the Vice Chancellor condemning the University’s response to the protesters. The pull-quote is “The letter describes the occupation as ‘peaceful and dignified’”. Non-violent protest is laudable, but it’s not enough. If some people entered my house to demonstrate against something that had nothing (or very little) to do with me, pointing out that they were non-violent would hardly make it okay. Trespass is trespass. The university did not “deprive” the protesters of food — it merely stopped them taking food into a building that the university owned. The protesters were free to leave and eat elsewhere.
The article mentions “the occupation’s most popular aim, with 74% of students in a poll stating support for disinvesting in the arms trade”. It doesn’t mention their other, unpopular demands (and they were demands, not just aims), and their general unpopularity. Minor criticism of the demonstrators is admitted at the end.
Finally, a hilarious quote from a comment article: “you cannot sell education in a market system. Education is too complex to be priced. Not only does it involve too many different elements and qualities, but it consists of things like truth, falsehood, science, culture, and art. These things cannot be bought and sold in a standard market system, because they cannot be identified as ‘goods’.” Ahahahahaha. What non…sequiturs. Education already is bought and sold. Of course it is not to complex to be priced. Teachers have to earn a living, and charge for their services, as do the writers of books, etc. At the moment most are paid by the state, but there is no reason why they can’t be paid for privately. Indeed, many are. In America, for example, one can get a loan to pay for university education, where the payment is a percentage of all future lifetime earnings. Such schemes are crowded out in the UK by the state.
It is not quite true that “if you try and turn the education system into a market, these things will take on a totally one-dimensional character.” It is true that if university was privately funded, fewer people would study things like philosophy, laudable though they are. For most people, degrees like Management are means to an end, whereas degrees like Philosophy are ends in themselves. If students had to pay for it themselves, most would only choose to do a degree if they thought it would pay for itself through increased earnings. Some would still choose to do more “soft” or “abstract” degrees, for “leisure” purposes. (We pay for leisure.) Probably, fewer people would do degrees overall, and then fewer employers would expect them. And wouldn’t that be more rational?
Finally: Is “journalism by facebook group” the new “journalism by press release”?