Social Mobility

Just as Young predicted, we have created an academic sorting machine: selecting talent on a narrow set of metrics which have questionable real-world relevance for many students.

In his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy Michael Young predicted that a detached ruling class would be the ultimate consequence of the new grammar school tests developed in the 1950s. Young feared the new tripartite school system (grammars, secondary moderns and technical schools) would give superior status to academic skills over creative or t

‘Is the route for social advancement a degree, student debt, moving to London to spend more than half their take-home pay on a room in a shared flat in Zone 6 and half of what’s left commuting to their stagnant-wage job every day; knowing there is precisely zero chance of saving enough to ever own their own front door? Or is it staying put in a com