"That's too deep": How anti-intellectualism and apathy drown students out the grad market.

In this issue, the CMD team explores student apathy, the phenomenon of loss of consciousness, and how anti-intellectualism hinders students in the current graduate market.

TLDR: 

According to the economist, conscientiousness (the psychological trait that measures how disciplined you are and how much you "stick to your plans" is in free fall. 

Many students come to university already conditioned that being passionate and smart are dangerous social moves. 

In this apathy, university students miss key opportunities to grow their skills and prepare for the future job market. 

1 - University culture and apathy:

I was scrolling through Instagram this weekend, not sure if I was taking a break from work or just mindlessly flicking through content. I came to a reel that resonated deeply with my own experience of the UK culture of "anti-intellectualism". The post discussed the frustration of political, scientific and creative discussions being seen as "too deep" and the alternatives to these conversations. The speaker challenged this notion, claiming, "What else is there to speak about?". 

The discussion reminded me of University. Among my group of friends, we discussed academic subjects, local politics, global affairs and financial literacy. It wasn't the norm. There's this idea deep in the UK that it isn't cool to be passionate about things unless those things are football, celebrity culture or benign enough that they aren't considered "too deep". This is a shame, and it limits our ability to think critically and challenge information around us. It also reflects a wider swing towards apathy, found in the student market.

Where does this lack of engagement come from?

Why are lecture halls empty with students paying 9k a year in tuition and total loans coming up to 50k when you include maintenance, course fees and cost of living?

My argument is that it stems from our school culture; I noticed this a lot in Nottingham. As James Kirby notes in a recent Instagram post, "they laughed at me" What did James do to face this social judgment? He applied to a society and invited his friends to join as well. 

This lack of engagement and apathy isn't new, but it is becoming more pervasive. At CMD, we help students, and we have helped many. However, there's a market of disenfranchised NEETS and prospective university students (who will most likely still attend university) who don't see any hope in their future based on university participation. Their logical argument, based on this value judgment, is not to try at all. This, in turn, leads to further disenfranchisement and a justification of their apathy. 

The biggest factor in student success is how the student conceptualises the personal and community impact of their contribution to the network. Most students will answer that with "what's the point", "is it worth it", or some variation of apathy. 

In my university experience, two types of apathy are at play, which can be divided along the class divide. Generally speaking, students with significant financial and social wealth are apathetic because:

A - They never wanted to go to private school and despise their parents for sending them there.

B - Take university for granted, and it isn't an academic pursuit but rather a stepping stone on a set path of success that the high class have followed for years. 

C - They have no motivation to compete or study due to the financial safety of a trust fund or money from parents, or being able to retake all their exams. 

In this sense, apathy is a reaction to a lack of willingness to risk social failure when raised in a system that guarantees some level of success. While allegorical, we know many university students from top private schools who essentially "prestige" their degrees because, relative to the cost of their secondary education, university costs peanuts. This is a position many of my working-class and lower-middle-class friends can't conceptualise. For everyone else, university is expensive, and redoing university is not a choice made lightly. 

For people without these significant resources, apathy comes from two places. 

A - It is not and never has been cool to be passionate and smart. Depending on where you study, consequences range from social judgment to physical bullying. 

B - Students from lower-resource backgrounds often have to "justify their investment" in university. They need to take the best course, at the best uni and make it "worth it". 

This first factor directly contributes to the broader anti-intellectualism in the UK. My parents' house, where I grew up, is 80% books. My dad worked up from working class Easterhouse (Glasgow) to study at a college in Oxford University and then became a teacher to support the local community.

Education is everything to him, and university changed his life. Yet many of the students he taught would brag about the lack of books in their homes. 

Then the second factor lands like a sucker punch, not only is anti-intellectualism keeping students from exploring their options and practising talking about them. Due to the investment in university, they are then funnelled into a system where, unless it's a top 10 - 20 uni studying 1 of 6 degrees (maths, medicine, physics, comp sci, law, econ), it's not considered "worth it". 

The question of whether X or Y is "worth it" spreads to cynicism about well-accepted career advice. I've had students ask me and respond with apathy to the following topics.

1. The role of LinkedIn as a promotional tool and networking space that challenges previous power structures of the "old boys network" and networking being reserved for well-connected students. 

2. The impact of societies and the role they play in showing a recruiter you are interested in the X sector and have experience leading projects and small teams. 

3. Turning up to lectures (so many students ask about this) as if there's much that can justify not consistently making lectures a priority of your day. 

4. University as a whole (often a conclusion arrived at by devaluing all the aspects of advice and support as lucky exceptions and not practical). This one frequently challenges me. I'm not sure of the answer myself. I landed my graduate scheme before finishing my final year of undergraduate studies. I had a good time at university and earned much money. I do recognise my experience wasn't the norm. 

I don't think apathy should be either. I think where you aim is where you go. I spent most of uni aiming up. 

2 - Is it cool to be smart? 

Apathy is one part of the puzzle, but the bigger question is, do we truly value intelligence and passion? I'm not on about the "Good Will Hunting" super intelligence some people at uni seem to have. In my experience, everyone can acknowledge that even if they don't value it per se.

What about normal students, however?

Do we value the idea of being smart? 

It's a strange question. To me, university is primarily about embracing intelligence, about saying this is a space where learning is the default and people are rewarded for curiosity. Yet, students don't turn up or contribute to group projects, lecture halls are empty, and maybe quiet passion is respected, but don't be too loud about it. 

This was a shock for me; I'd always assumed that, unlike school, university, especially at the top institutions, would be alive with passion. From what I saw, the more elite the university, the more apathy switches from the second type to the first. Wealthy and resource-rich students are just as apathetic, and they don't NEED to be smart either because the future is more guaranteed. 

The elite universities aren't full of more determined and passionate students, and the real divider is wealth. I expected university to be more like my Oxford interview, full of passionate people at the top of their subject, but really, it felt eerily like secondary school. 

3 - Is it worth it? The paradox of efficiency

People like being efficient. Justifying it with phrases like "work smart, not hard". In my experience, this is rubbish. You don't work smart instead of hard; you work hard, and from that, you learn to work smart. The common saying suggests you can find efficiency before trying at all. That's where this apathy of "is it worth it" comes from. Students want to be reassured they are taking the most efficient path before making their first step. 

This manifests in some weird behaviours. I've seen friends watch "ranking" videos of finance firms during mid-application season, students on Reddit asking if they should attend university, and people debating whether to call back job offers. This happens under this guise of "I'm still researching, so I can't act yet". Economists have noted this decline in focus as students seem to have lost direction and are unable to stick to a path. 

The tragedy is that if students just threw themselves at opportunities, they would find out these answers for themselves and learn in the process how to improve for next time. Students often do not do this, and as a result, apathy steals opportunities from them to practice, and they graduate uninformed and undertrained.

Without this preparation, students graduate completely unsure of how even to begin the process of their next steps. This combination of anti-intellectualism (not recognising that university is a space of intelligence) and apathy (worrying constantly about whether anything you can do as a student is "worth it") leaves students in a state of limbo. Many go through this for their entire degree, consciously or unconsciously coasting their opportunity away. 

To wake up in a competitive grad market, they weren't prepared for.