Ah, learning for learning’s sake! The edifying call of studying something based on passion without an eye on investment or remuneration – how noble! Well, not for Rishi Sunak. The ex-Goldman Sachs, math-loving PM wants everything to have a measurable pay-off and has suggested a crackdown on “rip-off degrees”.
In a TV interview after a visit to a London school, Sunak said: “For many people university is the right answer and it does brilliantly, but actually there are a range of people who are being let down by the current system.
“They’re being taken advantage of with low-quality courses that don’t lead to a job that it makes it worth it, leaves them financially worse-off.”
It comes after new government figures showed that “nearly three in ten graduates do not progress into highly skilled jobs or further study 15 months after graduating.” According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), 20 per cent of students would be financially better off had they not gone to university.
These numbers are stark. Sunak also argued that it’s the taxpayer who foots the bill as students who go on to have mediocre careers are unable to make their student loan repayments.
The main part of the plan involves the Office for Students (OfS) being given the power to limit the number of students on courses that fail to deliver good outcomes for students. A course’s performance will be measured by its drop-out rate and the wages graduates go on to earn. Additionally, the government plans to reduce the amount that universities can charge for foundation-level courses from £9,250 to £5,760.
This crackdown was something Sunak promised back in August in his unsuccessful leadership campaign. Our university sector is certainly bloated and there are too many useless courses. Although the Conservatives haven’t confirmed which courses are for the axe, this Hound imagines the lecturers teaching the BA(Hons) in Puppetry Design at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama are worried.
But not everything can be gauged economically. Yes, very few are in a financial position to learn for the sake of it and most students do study something they think will improve their future job prospects, but it probably isn’t the place of the government to say which subjects people can and cannot study.
As the humanities are increasingly politicised and thus mistaught, and as the economy values proficiency in numbers more than proficiency in letters, it wouldn’t be surprising if we see a lot of literature and art history courses limited in their recruitment.
But really, rather than asking which university courses are useless, we should be asking why so many jobs require employees to be educated to degree level.
We should have high expectations for our higher education sector and taxpayers should not be footing the bill for gratuitous and unlimited obscure degrees. But Sunak must be mindful that the value of education is not just measured in financial terms.
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