Does any of this matter?

Politics isn't really my thing. I like science and reason and proper unbiased evidence over politics. I wanted however to share my experience as a Phd Student, Charity Director, Health Psychologist and most recently: Tutor to gifted students at under-performing schools in North and East London. This isn't really any kind of statement, more just how I see the world. 
I have been really lucky in my academic career. As a mature student who desperately wanted to study psychology but couldn't afford to, I was granted an opportunity bursary covering over 90% of fees for my BSc. I was then offered a fully funded Phd at Birkbeck half way through my masters which is crazily fortunate, something I still pinch myself over.  It's not something that I take for granted now that undergrad degrees alone are £27,000, totally different from my dad who studied law on a government grant with a teacher mother and a lorry driving father. 
Technically: education level and parental occupation, I am middle class........I guess?.
You wouldn't know that if you saw me sitting in my one bed flat in Tottenham, the mould that aggravates my asthma creeping up the walls again with the contents of my roof currently all over the carpet thanks to the recent weather and a crack the size of the San Andreas fault in my ceiling (but it is quite cheap.....for london.... I know .....I'm 33..... I know that we have a double income..... but we can't afford the 50k deposit).  I am not middle class, not any more, nobody is. You are rich or you are poor. No where is this more obvious than the school system.
One of the charities I work for places Phd students from top unis in under-performing schools to talk about their research and teach a course around it. This starts by delivering a tutorial at a top UK university and culminates in a graded assignment and a graduation service at another , ideally acclimatising the pupils to the idea of academia and uni life. I remember the first time I did this at Oxford and sat with my new wards in the dinner halls, making a joke about ... ha ha we're at hogwarts, asking them if they might apply here:
'no miss I think I'd prefer to stay in London'.
That's a shame I thought until it suddenly hit me that I was in a hall full of non white students who were being subjected to the critical eye of nearly 1000 years worth of fat old white men staring down at them in portrait form from every wall, corridor and structural orifice possible. It was a startling realisation - I wouldn't want to go here either. I didn't voice that though, I'm there to widen participation, to W I D E N participation, but to be fair they'd have to widen the walls first.
because I didn't see any women either
Actually that's a lie. On the way back when they had the a - z of oxford covering one of the the long roads back to the station they had some black tribal queen - didn't say anything else about her though, no inventions, or laws, like the other (ALL MALE)  appearances , just that in the past they had seen a black female. Well done Oxford! A PR bogof if you like!
But never mind I soldiered on, thinking this generation will be different..... has to be different. One of the things we try to do in this job is to get the kids ready for their UCAS application by saying how they can use the course. I asked them all what they wanted to do at uni - there were 12 students:
'Law, law, law, economics, law, economics, economics, law, law, law, economics and law, economics'
What a coincidence I thought, while simultaneously wondering why these students were in my class (apparently I was part of the STEM initiative)! I asked one student what he was going to do as a career after a degree in Economics
'run a hedge fund miss, then retire at around 30 and get into hip hop production'
Oh you like music I said, I was a musician before I went back to academia, it was great I loved it, why wouldn't you do that now?
'did you make any money miss'
I divert and ask my other student who has been stressing over how much information there is to remember in my course
'you know that the law is really dependent on how good you can recall information right'
'Yes I know miss, but when I'm a big lawyer I can buy a big house and have an amazing car then quit and have a lush retirement at 40. Then maybe I'll write a novel'
I want to scream at them, tell them to do what they love and are passionate about, that they are the ones who have the best songs, the best ideas, you have to struggle to truly create, that the world is their oyster, that rod stewart started as a busker, to look at the life of David lamie (who I later find out was basically plucked from tottenham as a child on a scholarship to a very exclusive private school) and they can be who they want to be and stuff (you should have seen their faces so young and bursting with potential). I brave myself, I can say this shit, I'm not the system, I'm not the school or the authority, I can get to them....
But I didn't say any of it... ...because right now that sentiment, in this political climate..... for these kids anyway..... is a lie.
They can't follow their dreams, not for the cost of a deposit of a house. No, they don't get to be creative, or passionate or god forbid talented. They have one goal - to make that £27000 that they have to pay for their education count......in purely monetary terms. There is no doing something because you love it, no possibility of waiting for success, only attaining the heady dream of living in your own home rather than paying someone else mortgage (and then some) as soon as possible. Opting out ...... as soon as possible. Trust me at the moment with the drips being caught by a salad bowl - I get it.
We are not inspiring greatness in our working and middle class children, we are  promoting greed as the only viable career choice. We are telling them that their talents and passions are nothing in the face of a capitalist system that rewards litigation and moving money around confusingly more than understanding the cultural nuances of Iranian creative writing or studying why people behave the way they do or being able to train yourself to the dexterity of a Beethoven piano sonata. As a result we will only receive a cultural stagnation, a whole culture of private school nativity plays. But hey we'll be too busy in hedge funds to give a shit.

After the sessions had ended my star pupil, who genuinely is capable of doing anything, at any uni, at any time said to me:
'I really enjoyed your course, I didn't think I would but I really did, and thank you for the mark, I didn't think I would do so well but I'm really happy, I would even change my mind about my uni degree, but I've already picked my stream so I can't do anything about it now.  Thanks though, It was great.
But hey, at least he won't have a leaking roof right?