Rishi Sunak, one of the candidates to be the UK’s next prime minister, has vowed to “crack down” on university degrees with poor career outcomes. This is not a new idea. The university regulator in England, the Office for Students, has already proposed setting minimum thresholds for the proportion of graduates from each course that should be in jobs it defines as highly skilled.
A course that does not meet the regulator’s expectations could be prevented from recruiting publicly financed students. The thresholds the Office for Students has proposed are that 60% of people completing their first full-time degree should be in highly or skilled jobs or further study within 18 months of completing the course. For full-time masters students, the proposed proportion is 70%. The final levels will be confirmed in September.
