Elephant trap. Noun. From the practice of herding and catching elephants, largely in India, first coined in the nineteenth century. Has migrated to now figuratively mean a trap that only the unwary or the foolish should now fall in, and the competent should avoid (presumably because it’s so blinking big).
I don’t think the announcements on “low value courses” and “rip off degrees” are an elephant trap. Over inflated rhetoric notwithstanding, I think the government genuinely believes it (and a decent chunk of voters do too).
But the sector is in danger of making it an elephant trap, by falling headlong into a series of responses which are overly defensive. I worry that the responses show a soldier mindset not a scout mindset – determined to pick holes in the argument (or what we’d like the argument to be), rather than engage with it. At its worst, I worry that the reflexive anti-government mindset of too many in the sector has led us to some frankly unbelievable and incredible positioning.
Let’s take some of the most sensible – but also least helpful – objections first. Yes, a simple wage premium model does unfairly disadvantage creative subjects, those who work in the public sector, and those who graduate into labour markets not in London and the South East. Polly Mackenzie gives this general discourse a good shoeing, rightly, here. But this argument against yesterday’s announcement is playing the game on easy mode. The government isn’t suggesting a simple wage premium model.
