In England and Wales it's a bad thing, because it's another example of the "pull the ladder up" generation doing what they do best. The people who, in the 1970

In England and Wales it's a bad thing, because it's another example of the "pull the ladder up" generation doing what they do best. The people who, in the 1970s&80s, benefited from grants, free tuition, and the ability to claim unemployment/low-income benefits in the summer holidays are the same people who are implementing these policies. They are the same people selling the lie of "get a degree, get a good job", then offering unpaid internships to new graduates, or insisting that even the doorman needs a degree. These are people who had "jobs for life" with year-on-year inflation matching/beating pay increments if they stayed still, or decent career progression if they didn't. They are now telling us that we can't expect that sort of treatment from them, and implementing "up or out" pay policies (even if they don't have any "up" positions to offer, because they are "flattening management structures"). These are also the people who will retire in 5-10 years time with Final Salary pensions from the schemes that they, themselves, have closed to the rest of us (because they took "payment holidays" in the good times). They are also the people who bought up all the housing at prices that a normal (at the time) middle-class single income young family could afford, then sold it on at prices that only better-off mid-30s DINKYs could afford. Just because we can't win all of these fights (and have already lost some), and just because some of the individual fights might seem trivial, it doesn't mean we should just roll over and take it without complaint, either for ourselves, or the current generation of schoolchildren and undergraduates.