‘W“We need to crack down on low-value college degrees.” Who said that, and when? Rishi Sunak said in October last year. or Mr Sunak said in July last yearOr Mr Sunak in August of the previous year. Nadhim Zahawi 5 months ago. Or Michelle Donnellan November 2020. or Gavin Williamson May 2020. or Damien Hinds Last year, or Sam Gyima 2018. or Joe Johnson 2017. Or Labour’s Margaret Hodge More than 20 years ago.
This time it was Mr Sunak, campaigning last week: “University degrees are letting young people down.” he told reporters.Around one in five students “would be better off financially” if they hadn’t gone to university, and “one in three graduates are in a job without a university qualification.” Chancellor Sunak has pledged to abolish “rip-off degrees” and replace them with 100,000 apprenticeships.
This is an argument that has been rehashed so many times that it is almost stale, but politicians keep repeating it because they think it exploits public hostility toward the “university-educated liberal elite.”
But what are “less valuable” degrees? Few politicians who rail about “rip-off courses” and “Mickey Mouse degrees” would say specifically which courses they want to cut. Clearly, some courses are better than others. But Define the value of your course Deciding who to tell and for what purpose is not an easy task.
For many policymakers (not just governments), the value of a degree is primarily Students who were unable to complete Humanities courses and media studies are often seen as less valuable than STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) courses because they offer fewer economic rewards, both in terms of economic advancement and personal rewards.
But ironically, Highest dropout rate At university, students can major in computer science, business and management, and engineering and technology. LowestBesides medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine, stereotypes also feature prominently in the fields of linguistics, history and philosophy. Stereotypes and reality do not always match up.
When it comes to apprenticeships, the data also contradicts the narrative. For a government that praises apprenticeships: Number of apprentices This is a decline from 509,400 in 2015/16 to 337,100 in 2022/23, particularly among younger people. Almost half of those starting an apprenticeship are now over 25 years old, and this proportion has been increasing in recent years.
just 54% of apprentices They have successfully completed their training and assessment for 2022/23, but nearly half dropped out due to the poor quality of the training. Report from the think tank EDSK “If A-level and university students were dropping out in such large numbers or reporting similar complaints it would be a national scandal,” he said.
The report also finds that one in five apprentices and more than a quarter of entry-level apprentices “receive no on-the-job training from their employers”. Apprentices are “often treated as ‘workers rather than learners'” and are placed in low-skilled, low-level jobs and paid well below the national minimum wage. “Many current ‘apprenticeships’ have no relation to real jobs”, the report concludes, with “some employers inventing false job titles to access apprenticeship funding”. Some might call these “Mickey Mouse” apprenticeships, but they are not attracting the wrath of ministers or making government headlines. Telegraph or Daily Mail.
Apprenticeships are vital, providing a valuable pathway for millions of people, and should be given proper government attention, but politicians have chosen to stoke moral panic about poor university courses, while largely ignoring the poor quality of many apprenticeships.
Additionally, the impact of teaching on student experiences and outcomes is often ignored. study Research last year by Antony Moss of London South Bank University showed that students who were eligible for free school meals (FSM) – a measure of deprivation – were less likely to complete a degree, get good grades, get a postgraduate job, or continue studying further. Improving the quality of courses has done little to address these inequalities.
In 2017, the government Educational Excellence Frameworkis a rating system that gives universities a gold, silver, or bronze rating based on statistics on “student experience and student outcomes.” Moss found that “gold-rated institutions recruit significantly fewer FSM students.” He also found that whether a course received gold, silver, or bronze accreditation had little effect on inequality in outcomes. Moss concluded that a “cynical interpretation” of this result is that “universities seeking to secure the highest ratings for teaching excellence should focus on recruiting as few disadvantaged students as possible.”
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Behind all this is the colonization of policy-making by a more instrumental view of education as valued primarily for economic gain, whether personal or national. This view has transformed universities into businesses, students into consumers, and knowledge into a commodity. The idea that learning is a good in itself, a means to improving the quality of life, is now derided as hopelessly naive, or at least the preserve of elite students.
The instrumental view of education is often presented as a means to advance working-class students by training them for the job market, when in reality it simply teaches them to study what best suits their station in life. ObserverAs Martha Gill of the University of Pennsylvania pointed out last year, many politicians and commentators value a college education as a way to “improve human lives and nourish the soul, regardless of job-market gain,” but that only applies to certain classes of people: “The types of students who are likely to apply financial, rather than spiritual, calculations to higher education tend to come from poorer backgrounds,” she wrote.
For the wealthy, education is about enriching the soul. For working-class students, education is seen primarily as a path to employment. They are seen as the type of people who would benefit from a more “vocational” learning. Educational analyst Jim DickinsonAs the deputy editor of higher education platform WONKHE points out: “Isn’t there a danger that when we talk about ‘low-value’ courses we actually mean ‘low-value students’?”
