It is time to crack down on low-value university degrees. Who claimed the need to crack down on low-value degrees, and when? Many prominent people have highlighted the need for high-quality education, including Rishi Sunak, Nadhim Zahawi, Michelle Donelan, Sam Gyinah, Jo Johnson, Gavin Williamson, and others. The quest for quality degrees dates back to the past two decades, and the more prominent people are talking about it.
Sunak, speaking on the election trail, stated that university degrees are letting young people down. According to Sunak, one in five students would have been financially better off not attending college, and one in three graduates are in non-graduate jobs. Sunak promised to replace low-quality degrees with 100,000 apprenticeship programs.
Replacing college degrees with apprenticeship programs is an argument that has been reheated often but always curdled. Politicians keep repeating it because they believe it will draw public attention to the university-educated liberal elite.
What exactly is a “low-value” degree? Most of the time, politicians are really about “rip-off courses” and Mickey Mouse degrees, but they are rarely prepared to name the exact courses they wish to eliminate. It is obvious that some courses are superior to others. However, determining the worth of the courses is not an easy task.
Many policymakers (not only government officials) base their decisions on the value of degree courses on statistics of the percentage of students who dropped out of school and the rate of graduates who land high-paying jobs. In general, humanities or media courses are often considered less valuable than STEM courses because of their economic reward.
Surprisingly, computer science, engineering and technology, and business and administration courses record the highest dropout rates. The lowest dropout rates are in medicine, dentistry, and veterinary, as well as languages and philosophical studies. But in most cases, expectations and reality don’t always align.
Also, when it comes to apprenticeship programs, the data sometimes conflicts with the narrative. The government’s advocacy of apprenticeship programs is notable, as seen by a significant decline in the number of apprentices from 509,400 in the 2015-16 period to 337,100 in 2022/23. The decline is particularly among young people. Most apprentices are above 25 years old, and the percentage has recently increased significantly.
About 54% of apprentices successfully completed their courses in 2022-2023; nearly half the apprentices dropped out because of low-quality training. According to a report from think tank EDSK, if university students or A-level students drop out in such large numbers or report similar complaints, it would be a national scandal.
The report also indicates that one in five apprentices and more than a quarter of the entry-level apprentices receive no on-the-job training from their employers. In most cases, apprentices are treated as workers instead of learners. The report concluded that some employers use fake job titles to access apprenticeship funding, and most current apprenticeships have nothing to do with real jobs. Also, the impact of class on students and their experiences is often ignored.
The respective of turning universities into businesses, students into customers, and knowledge into a commodity. The instrument perspective of education is mainly seen as an opportunity to advance working-class students by training them for the workforce.
According to Martha Gill, many politicians and commentators value university education as a means to elevate human lives and nourish souls regardless of the job market benefits, but it is only limited to a certain class of people. When it comes to higher education, they apply financial calculations rather than spiritual ones to people from poorer backgrounds.
Higher education is all about enriching the souls of the affluent. For the working class, it is seen as entering the job market. They are a group of people who benefit from vocational education. Jim Dickson, an educational analyst, warned of the potential danger of referring to “low-value” courses. We really mean “low-value students.”
