Mortgaged to a degree
Sir, The education of Mike, in Douglas Curtis's article (April 7), has not imparted much logic. If you condemn materialism in society, neither have contributed nor propose to contribute anything material to it, you are not well-placed to complain of the quantity of material goods with which it provides you. He conveniently regards £12,000 cost of his education as " loan " to be repaid from his future tax liability, forgetting that most people required to provide that loan have themselves had to pay for their own university education.
At 21 he considers himself " en titled "to wife (not in outside employment) and child. Those at present providing him with unearned income of £19.25 per week for half the year and £29.50 for the other half had to delay these entitlements, often to an age in the middle-thirties, because of unemployment and associated low earnings; then war-time conscription, which de prived a large number of those born between 1905 and 1915 of their increasing earning power and usually absorbed such small savings as they had been able to make. Now generally retired on whatever they have been able to save since the war, its real value usually diminished by inflation, many obliged to live on considerably less than the £29.50 per week which some sociologist has calculated as necessary for Mike's household find themselves paying taxes for his upkeep.
" Education is essential for effective functioning of society;" but are not students complaining that output of sociologists greatly exceeds demand? Mike conveniently regards society's needs for sociologists as open-ended; student doctors, teachers, architects (Planners), Civil Servants, etc, etc, are equally starry-eyed about their own occupations; somebody has to decide priorities, how many people like Mike are reasonably necessary, how much progress can reasonably be made at the expense of one already over-burdened generation.
The limited self-regarding attitudes of people like Mike, with or without doctorate, make the graduate sociologist almost unemployable outside the bureaucracy and strongly resented by other people who have to deal with him there.
Douglas W. Franklin Dhoon Plat, Maughold, Ramsey, Isle of Man
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