My tale of me - Chris Jenkinson

The lack of funding for higher education is not solved simply by raising the cap on tuition fees, as the Economist believes. If the cap were raised to £7,000, an average student may end up owing around £25,000. A key lesson of the current financial crisis must be not to take on unmanageable debt. Putting people off education – the great equaliser – because of this legitimate fear is surely wrong.

Nor will it allow for a fair market as “prestigious” universities, such as the University of Manchester – my own – will be able to charge higher fees than a less prestigious one, such as the University of Loughborough. This is despite students in the National Student Survey rating the quality of courses at Loughborough a whole 10% higher than those at Manchester; and Loughborough students rate their feedback from academics a staggering 20% better than Manchester’s students. Studying at the best research institutions is no good if the best researchers are not actually teaching students.

I’ve just finished reading the book “The Undercover Economist”, by Tim Harford. Definitely an informative book and well worth reading carefully and critically. It rightly makes the point that those of us who are “capitalists” do not defend “big business” (which want limits on competition) but instead defend open and free markets (which ensure competition). It also serves as a reminder that many of the problems countries in sub-Saharan Africa and other lesser economically developed regions face is not “free trade” but instead protectionism inside developed countries (such as the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy) and corruption which stifles entrepreneurial spirit.

The book also contains an interesting section towards the end about how sweat shops (factories run by large multinational corporations in Southeast Asia, with worse working conditions and wages than in Western countries) are actually an improvement in working conditions for people who are employed there, and that Western calls to boycott companies making products in sweat shops are severely misplaced and cause actual harm to workers. I’m not entirely convinced by this argument so some recommended reading on sweat shops would be appreciated!

It’s not a stereotypical “dry” economics textbook, it contains real-world examples of applications of economic theory, and isn’t at all hard to understand for someone without any formal instruction in the field. Harford also has a new book, “The Logic of Life”, which is available now.

Happy Birthday, European Union! Now do the noble thing and scrap the anti-competitive Common Agricultural Policy. It is a giant waste of money (taking up nearly half the EU’s total budget), it means Europeans pay more for their food than they actually need to, it means unsuccessful farm businesses are propped up by the government despite their failings, and it means that farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa find it incredibly difficult to compete with the barriers they face in selling their products over here. The intellectual, moral and economic argument for scrapping the CAP has been won. All that is needed is some courage from the French government to recognise the damage they are doing to not just farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa but to their own economy, despite the loud whining of the French farming lobby. Sadly none of the three presidential candidates have made much noise about CAP reform.