My criticism of university sparked a backlash. I stand by it – young people deserve better

Telegraph

a day ago

My article last week arguing that too many youngsters go to university stirred up a hornets' nest. I had a large amount of correspondence, most of which was supportive, although some was critical. This raised many fundamental issues, for which I am grateful.
One line of criticism was that many prospective employers advertise jobs as graduate-only. Accordingly, even if many students would rather not do another three years of full-time study, they may feel that they are compelled to do it.
This point is well taken. What is going on here is a system of mutual re-enforcement. More graduates are produced so employers can supposedly raise the status of their jobs by advertising them as 'graduate only'. This then leads to an increased appetite for degrees. And so on. One of the effects is to propel many students into undertaking post-graduate courses in order to mark them out from the hordes of mere graduates. This is a sort of arms race.
Admittedly, degrees aren't all about money. The attitudes of students and parents are critical. It took decades for an attitude to develop on the part of both teenagers and parents that it was natural for everyone to go to university.
Given this, some of my respondents were sceptical that anything could be done to change the system. The answer, as so often, lies with the funding. At the moment, most government funding for university courses comes in the form of support for the student loan agency, which provides funds to pay for tuition and, in some cases, living expenses. These loans are guaranteed by the state. If and when they are not repaid, the state bears the loss. Accordingly, herein lies a route through which the state can influence matters.
There are three aspects of the over-expansion of higher education: individuals ill-suited to higher education; next-to-useless courses; and poorly performing universities.
A blanket reduction in the amount of loan funding would be a crude and inefficient way of proceeding. It would be better for the Department for Education to vet university courses according to content, excellence of teaching and the subsequent success of students who take them. The majority of university courses would pass this test. But those that failed it would cease to be eligible for student loans. That would surely cause the number of students applying for these courses to plummet. Moreover, some of these courses would cease to be offered and some universities might cease to exist. That would be no bad thing.
Another of the strands of criticism that I encountered was about equity. Isn't it important, some respondents said, that everybody should have access to higher education? I do think it is important that students who are capable of benefiting from a university education should have that opportunity, whatever background they come from.
But being at an institution for which you are not properly suited, wasting three years to acquire a useless qualification and then emerging with a heavy burden of debt (which averages more than £53,000) is not an opportunity. It's a curse. We do young people no favours by encouraging them into such a position.