FOLLOW THE MONEY

When they asked the famous and colourful bank robber Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, his answer was: "Because that’s where the money is.” In the movie “Jerry McGuire, with Tom Cruise, one of his clients, a big-time football player played by Cuba Gooding, kept saying: “Show me the money.” That admonition has become part of today’s industrial, commercial and marketplace ethos. Everything is about profit.

One of the greatest tragedies of our dog-eat-dog society is the constant reminder to students that “You have to have an education to get a job” and “ a University deduction will get you a better job.” The philosophy is not new. In my student days if anyone decided to enroll in sociology or philosophy or Fine Arts, the parental question was always” What kind of a job can you get with a degree in….?” The result: we have bred a culture not of scholarship but of money-hunger.

Don’t misunderstand. I am enough of a realist to recognize that have money is a necessity. You can’t feed your family, house them or even educate them on scholarship alone. The irony is of course that you “educate” them toward vocational success. Universities are full of anxious, or better still anxiety-ridden kids, who are far more interested in a piece of paper that says “M.A. or B.A. or PhD” than in real learning. The degree is their key to a share in the good things supplied by the marketplace.

I was dismayed by the awful truth in an article by Gwynn Morgan in the Globe and Mail’s “Report on Business.” He is the founder of the resources giant Encana. He has done well in this resource-rich country, where “Value added” has been replaced by “sell those commodities.” That’s another story.

His plaint is not uncommon. It is heard often from the business community:“you are not graduating people we can use in our industry.” The comment has a kind of slave-market mentality to it because the slaves who sold well were best equipped to pick cotton. Today’s cotton-picking is a world of high tech commerce, competitive marketing, engineering prowess, and other marketable skills. In fact Morgan actually says that there are too many people studying things with low job prospects like visual and performing arts.

He goes on to blame academicians for their closed attitudes. Put in my words: “There are too many of you damned eggheads trying to tell kids what to do. What’s more you have all these indentured professors teaching rubbish like History and Archaeology.” My words – not his.

There was a brief period in our business-oriented culture, when employers were looking for “generalists,” suggesting that people with a broad set of education values were more desireable than specialists who knew nothing outside their chosen field.

He may be right. In a world that puts value on trade we need healthy slaves to pick the cotton of industrial and scientific competition. Who needs more serious musicians, poets, teachers, actors, singers, philosophers, seekers after larger truths? Remember Harry Brock, the illiterate scrap metal tycoon in “Born Yesterday” declaring that he could hire all the brains he needed?

If everything is now decided by the focus on, not just vocational success, but in profitable vocational success, then yes – we do need more engineers and scientists, and doctors. It is interesting to me, and maybe it means nothing, but why are so many doctors also interested in music and can perform capably?

Scholarship has no value. Work skills are everything. Welcome to Philistia.

P.S. Bingo! The Chinese are investing in jatropha. More on that soon.