John MacFarlane is the chairman of Barclays Bank.  He recently deposed his CEO, a man called Antony Jenkins, and temporarily promoted himself, on the grounds that “a new set of skills were required for the period ahead”.

The weasle phrase “new skillset (“or ‘skill set’ – no one seems able to decide”) first cropped up in psychology journals in the 1970s and was taken up by the business school crowd, ever ready for a new bit of jargon.  It doesn’t mean much but is used throughout industry and especially in jobs where the skills needed are vague.   Engineers and electricians have skills; managers and leaders have skill sets.

Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times, (she is the chief reason for reading the paper; she torments the pompous and laughs at the self-important) commented at the time , “In real life, skills do not come in sets. The ability to run a bank depends on ‘things that are not skills at all, but a mishmash of experience and aspects of personality’.   No, if Barclays is honest, the only skill Jenkins lacked was the skill to win the support of the chairman – who is not called ‘Mac the Knife’ for nothing”.

It got me thinking about jargon and “trade speak” and the dismal idea of taking Business Studies as a first degree.  Unless you are a specialist technical person (an engineer or computer techie) business is just common sense.  You can’t learn it in the classroom, but what you can learn is a load of meaningless jargon. The way of  learning about business is to do it the hard way, that is, do it and get some solid experience behind you.  Were I back running a business I would look first for people who were good with people, whether customers or staff.  Degrees in business are useless unless you have a natural way with your fellow human beings.  The technicalities are easy to learn by comparison. As Lucy Kellaway points out, in big companies a facility with company politics is the thing.  Perfectly Epicurean – the art of getting on well with people and making life as pleasant as possible.

In 1982 an American college student with the maximum Pell Grant could pay for tuition by working 16 hours a week year-round (or a full-time job in the summer). Today, Pell Grant and wage levels lag behind the exorbitant cost of being at college.  The same college student would have to work 35 hours a week year-round or more than 20 hours a day(!) at a low-wage summer job. So much for students paying their way through college without relying on loans, and so much the worse for those many potential students being priced out of a college education.

There is every sign of this being a bubble, and bubbles burst.  Universities and colleges have been competing, not on academic excellence, but on “facilities”, that is, gyms, sports stadiums, theatres, food halls, laboratories etc.  These need money, and a lot of them are unnecessary to an education.  A Bunsen burner is a Bunsen burner, and gold plating it does nothing for science.  Universities are not like offices or factories, which can usually be put to other uses if the firm goes bust.  They are useless, except as places of learning, but they are being run as businesses, with the bosses (administrators) paying themselves handsomely, and skimping on the teaching.  This whole edifice is quite likely to collapse, leaving the kids of rich parents continuing to enjoy the facilities of Harvard and Yale, but excluding those unable to pay.  It is a betrayal of our young people.  As it is many young people come out of universities having learned next to nothing, but unaware of the fact.

Answer: fire half the administrators, declare a moritorium on capital expenditure, and concentrate on academic excellence and good teaching.  (I don’t see it happening until there is a wave of bankruptcies).

Fifty years ago only a small percentage of people were encouraged to go to university.  In Britain the percentage was only about 4%.  This was elitist and closed the door on many able people who would have benefitted themselves and the country from a rigorous university education. On the other hand, the old system did have one advantage that we seem to have lost:  judgement of character.

What I am talking about is the university interview.  In the old days, with fewer people to deal with, applicants were offered places provided they passed a certain number of “A” Level exams.  But just as important was the interview.  Not everyone thrives under exam conditions, as many young people at this point in time are currently finding, to their chagrin.

In the old days, you could make up for exam nerves and misunderstandings at the interview.  I personally failed Geography A Level despite stellar predictions (yes, it was pass or fail – no grades) but in the interview I thrived (made them laugh, actually).  If your school head wrote a good account of you and the committee of old and experienced dons thought you would benefit from the university experience, then their judgement could over-ride the pesky exam results.  These people saw scores of youngsters who were not very academic, and who might do better in a polytechnic (now abolished)  training for a job.  No doubt university dons carried prejudices of many kinds into the interviews,  but at least you had a chance to show that you valued personal growth, independent thinking and lifelong education, and didn’t regard a degree only as a job qualification or a chance of three or more idle years drinking or betting on the horses, so to speak.

Now there are just too many people applying to university for the interview to be practical.  In big State schools with a thousand or more students, personal assessment and recommendations by the head teacher are also impractical.  Thus everything hangs on grades, and messing up on a single exam paper can alter your prospects and your future life, not necessarly very badly (character will out) but, I think, unfortunately.

If you apply for a job in the wide world your experience and credentials can get you an interview, but the crucial thing is the interview itself, where the employer can ask himself, “Can  I work with this person? He is qualified, but would he fit in?”.  Every day and everywhere company recruiters are using their judgement, not just looking at a CV.   In the world of education we have lost the benefit of the judgement of experienced educators.

In South Korea there is  a phenomenon called “mukbang” (a rather appropriate sounding word) in which viewers pay to watch strangers binge eat over a live video stream during dinnertime.  It’s a way of being with people without engaging with them, eating alone without the bother of conversation.

Epicurus once likened eating alone to “leading the life of a lion or wolf.” He was a big fan of companionship. Communal meals are woven into our DNA. In most cultures, eating alone has long been a social taboo. But new research finds 46 percent of adult meals and snacks are undertaken alone. “There’s this true cultural change that we believe is taking place” according to the Hartman Group, a market research company, which prepared the report for the Food Marketing Institute.

One reason for this is the shift towards more single-person households. According to Census Bureau data, the proportion of one-person American households increased from 17 percent in 1970 to 27 percent in 2012. This has encouraged a grab-and-go attitude.

Secondly, the idea of three meals a day is waning.  People eat in cars, walking down the street *, or sitting at a desk, and gradually snacks are replacing the fixed meal times.  53 percent of breakfasts and 45 percent of lunches are now eaten alone.   Dinner statistics look a bit better, with 76 percent of dinners being eaten with other people present. (* formerly regarded as the height of trogginess).

But “present” is the operative word.  The other day, in a London restaurant, I couldn’t help noticing an attractive young couple at the next table, both fixedly gazing at their cellphones during the whole meal. They barely said a word to one another. “Shall we go?” was the first exchange they had.  We are in a state of being alone together.

Since you tend to eat less eating alone (not always good for old people), the Georgia Institute of Technology is investigating whether Skype, table-top video monitors or even robotic systems can be used to bring people together virtually during meals.  Truly!  We are all going to sit in splendid isolation and talk to our friends and family on Skype while we eat?   Wendy Rogers of the Human Factors and Aging Laboratory, thinks that technology can be a means to re-establish a “sense of social connectedness and provide the social cues that feed our joy of eating”.  (original report by NPR, edited by me).