Debates about the value of a university degree have again reached the headlines.
The prime minister’s repeated announcements that low value degrees will be subject to caps on student numbers (most recently in the King’s Speech) reflects a preoccupation with economic benefits, “value” here measured via metrics about graduate employment and earnings.
Critics have highlighted the risks of using such a blunt instrument. It could penalise students from minority backgrounds, who are highly represented on some of the courses targeted as ‘low value’, and stigmatise those same degree programmes, leading to a cycle of low recruitment and decline within universities already struggling.
And, as Polly Mackenzie writes, “it defines the value of higher education in purely financial terms”…and “it assumes the value of a degree accrues only to the person receiving it.”
