Lazy, ignorant, shallow and irresponsible, more interested in taking drugs than in proper study, too apathetic to make it to the polling station but not to an ecstasy-fuelled rave: those are the images often associated with young people in modern Britain. Survey after survey shows widespread illiteracy and innumeracy among teenagers. At the ever-expanding universities, it is said that terror of placing too heavy an intellectual burden on students has resulted in remorseless grade inflation and undemanding degree courses like media studies and golf-course management.
The anxiety about youth is graphically reflected in the current hysteria about binge drinking. A generation of young semi-alcoholics, whose entire lives are geared towards explosive, sodden hedonism, is supposedly threatening the fabric of our society. Yet amid this increasing moral panic one awkward fact stands out: alcoholic consumption among students — who now make up a far larger proportion of young people than 20 years ago — is actually on the decline. Those temples of subsidised self-indulgence, the student union bars, have seen substantial falls in their takings of late.
The reason for this is simple. Contrary to the perception given by moral campaigners, today’s students are a much more sober, serious lot than their predecessors. Most of them have neither the time nor the money for the kind of endless, idle pleasure-seeking that characterised my generation of students in the early Eighties, when our puerile lifestyles were propped up by full grants from the taxpayer. And, apart from falling alcohol sales, there is another powerful indicator of the seriousness of the current university intake. By far the most popular degree course is business studies. One in eight undergraduates is now in a business-related course, a proportion that far outstrips all other subjects. Here is a generation that is more interested in profit than in protest, that does not want to change the capitalist world but be a successful part of it.
The rise in business studies is not confined to universities. In the last decade it has also become an increasingly popular subject in GCSEs and A-levels. In 1992, 19,000 pupils took a business studies A-level; today the figure is 31,000, while another 94,000 undertake the subject for their GCSEs this year. According to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, business studies is the most sought-after course in post-16-year-old education. Russell Wareing, who is head of business studies at the prestigious Perse School in Cambridge, told me that his pupils like the subject because it is relevant to their own lives. ‘The students are attracted to it because they gain an understanding of the real world immediately around them. They can quickly see, for instance, how interest rates affect mortgages or how exchange rates influence prices. As part of a Young Enterprise scheme, they set up a real mini-company which imported 500 pashminas from Nepal. I was amused recently when one boy came to me and said that he was “over the moon” because his shares in the telecom company O2 had shot up in value. You would not have heard that sort of talk from a school pupil a few years ago.’
The question of relevance to the real world has become particularly important for university undergraduates since the introduction of tuition fees. Forking out £3,000 a year in fees, students want to be assured that their degree will improve their job prospects. There is no guarantee of that with many of the humanities, languages and social sciences. Indeed, a study published last week by the Department for Education showed that graduates in these subjects were 65 per cent more likely to be in non-graduate jobs — such as shop assistants, bar managers and clerical work — than those with more vocational degrees. In an economy still dominated by the private sector — despite the best efforts of Gordon Brown — there is no subject better at enhancing a student’s employability than business studies. As Professor John Saunders of the Aston Business School in Birmingham puts it, ‘Because of tuition fees, students want skills that they know will help them in their careers. They don’t want to leave with a debt in five figures and then struggle to find a decent job. And because they will have learnt about presentation, teamwork, investment and marketing, they can relate more easily to employers. A bloke with a degree in Latin might be very bright, but in a job interview with a blue-chip company he won’t be able to talk about brand management.’
The introduction of tuition fees has created a virtuous circle in relation to business studies. Not only have debts encouraged students to seek out the most relevant courses, but they have also led students to go out to earn a living while at university. In turn, this has encouraged a more hard-headed approach. It was therefore idiotic of the Tories to promise to abolish tuition fees at the last election — in fact, David Davis is still trumpeting his opposition to them, another sign of the intellectual woefulness of his campaign. Student fees are a sound, Tory, market-led measure which have brought a refreshing dose of realism to tertiary education. Thanks to Labour’s wisdom on this issue, we may now be heading the way of the USA, where 20 per cent of undergraduates study business in a flourishing, privately funded university system. Professor Phil Dover, dean of the Business School at the University of Buckingham, who spent 20 years in entrepreneurship education in the US, says, ‘I’m very upbeat. I do believe that the environment in Britain is changing, with more and more kids wanting to run their own businesses. People here used to be risk-averse, but that is changing. I have just been talking to two venture capitalists from Legal & General and they both commented on the growing interest in entrepreneurship among young people.’
For all the Tories’ folly on tuition fees, it is one of their former leaders, Margaret Thatcher, who is largely responsible for this change in climate. When she came to power in 1979 entrepreneurship was dying, while the traditional universities looked down with condescension on business. Bright graduates from Oxbridge and the red-brick universities generally went into the Civil Service or academia. But she presided over a revolution in attitudes. By the end of the Eighties, business had become glamorous, enriching, liberating. In contrast, the public sector, with its caution and can’t-do mentality, seemed dreary by comparison.
Fifteen years later, we are living with the legacy of her achievement, and the boom in business studies is a central part of that. For the post-Thatcher generation, the goal of business success is an inspiring one. The greatest youth heroes of our time are not bearded guerrillas, but entrepreneurs like Richard Branson, Alan Sugar and Jamie Oliver. Alan Sugar’s show The Apprentice, in which 12 youthful would-be tycoons competed for a £100,000 job in his organisation, was a huge ratings hit on BBC2, something that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. And one survey last year found that half of teenagers aged between 14 and 19 wanted to be their own boss. The appeal of capitalism has been further enhanced by the far-reaching developments in information technology, especially in the expansion of the internet as a tool for marketing. Young people have seen that even the simplest ideas — like the school reunion website Friends Reunited or the online auction house eBay — can quickly lead to multi-millionaire status.
This should all be good long-term news for the Tories, once they have ditched their absurd opposition to tuition fees. For a generation of enthusiastic capitalists is likely to be a generation of Conservative voters.