In my essay yesterday, I netioned that good research training is labourintensive. Today's radio news featured a report that "productivity" in
NHS hospitals has gone down over the past five years. This was, however,
explained by (a) junior doctors having their hours reduced so they stay
awake, (b) more complicated operations now taking longer, and (c) patients
actually getting better quality treatment.
The moral is to make the important measurable. When the "market rules"
philosophy was applied unthinkingly, the whole emphasis was on getting
patients off the premises as quickly as possible. This would maximize the
perceived recorded number of treatments and throughput of patients.
Politicians and managers did not care that the same patient might be
re-admitted within days because of complications - two treatments meant
twice the productivity. I *hope* today's headline will be seen as
misleading, and that "patient improvement" is more important than "units
treated". I hope!
The equivalence with education, the pressure to get "more bums on seats"
at "lower unit of resource" is obvious. Perversely, we are told that
"lifelong learning" is evidenced by continued attendance at training,
rather than by developing an attitude of self-development. Education is
an industry now aiming to create a dependency culture. Margaret Hodge
(UK's Minister for HE) recently told an AUT national meeting that the
policy is explicitly to remove the distinction between FE and HE. I
think that is bad for both. Robin Cook said on the radio yesterday that
voters should note that youth unemployment has been eliminated - of
course, because they are all now called students.
There is an obvious crisis looming. The first students are just
graduating with the full three years' student loan to repay. These are
also the group being told they must save more towards a personal pension,
must be prepared to pay more for health care, must pay more for their own
children's education. Current policies are premised on continuous
economic growth, and I see the student loan "company" being among the
first casualties.
R. Allan Reese Email: [log in to unmask]
|