Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat View Post
The UK, which went from a closed shop in the 19th to Scandinavian levels of social mobility by the end of the 1970s, is now sadly a near closed shop again. The current government has set about to destroy the 'near' in that phrase.
Let me take your chronology at face value.

Up until the mid-seventies, the 11-plus streaming of children into grammar schools and secondary modern was widespread. University places were restricted to less than 5% of the population and demanded rigorous entrance standards. This is the educational backdrop for your golden years of social mobility.

Since then, comprehensive schools became the norm, the polytechnic colleges all got to call themselves universities and deliver shedloads of bachelor's degrees in David Beckham's Underpants as a Tool of Social Policy, and the stated aim of the last government was to have at least 50% of the population able to go to university and get a degree. Which they did, despite employers telling anyone who would listen that such degrees were worse than useless. This approach, according to you, underpins the contraction of social mobility.

Do I understand your thesis correctly?

As has been noted before, I await the consistent socialist argument that requires the working classes (who have much smaller chances of their offspring going to university) to pay via taxation for the sprogs of the middle class to go for free. I'm all for oppressing the poor, but that seems a bit iniquitous even for my tastes.