Have we cursed a generation? 📉

I don’t want to go full Jordan Peterson on you, but my ears pricked up recently when another speaker on our panel, the head of talent at a huge UK employer, said casually:

"We’ve stopped bothering to hire from Russell Group universities."

He explained that their graduates lack the drive they’re seeing in school leavers and those finishing vocational courses.

When I speak to business leaders about Gen Z’s struggles to access the housing market, I notice some have a curious reaction: relief. Some visibly exhale, apparently mentally counting the Junior ISAs they’ve saved to ensure their kids can one day afford a crash pad in Dalston, dancing past the point that the vast majority of young people will never have that help.

This felt like the perfect moment to chat with Dr Eliza Filby about her new book, Inheritocracy: It’s Time to Talk About the Bank of Mum and Dad. She asks big questions about what happens when opportunities depend more on parental wealth than personal ambition—and what this means for those without the means to compete. And those adult children who support their parents financially.

Our conversation left me wondering: Have we ended up with a cursed generation?

Some groups coasting on privilege and others bursting with drive and responsibility but stymied by the reality that, however hard they work, they‘ll be trapped in overpriced rentals on the edge of town.

What do you think?

Christine

P.S. For anyone with better things to worry about, the Russell Group is a self-selected club of 24 British universities, including Oxbridge, touting themselves as the crème de la crème. The University of York, where I studied, only joined after I graduated. I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest they went up in the world after I left, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get in today…