As the government launches yet another inquiry into the spiralling costs and questionable value of higher education, a new poll reveals that one in three Britons now admits their degree was not worth the paper it was printed on. The wonder is that the figure is not higher. For decades, we have been sold a fairy tale: that a university education is the golden ticket to prosperity, social mobility, and intellectual enlightenment.
Yet what we have reaped is a generation saddled with grotesque levels of debt, a glut of humanities graduates working in coffee shops, and a system that churns out degrees with all the discernment of a factory farm. The inquiry, a belated and frankly timid act, will no doubt produce recommendations that tinker around the edges while preserving the sacred cow of mass university attendance. What we need is not another committee but a radical rethinking.
Why are we herding teenagers into lecture halls to study media studies or sports science when the economy cries out for plumbers, electricians, and engineers? The answer lies in our snobbish disdain for vocational training, a leftover from the Victorian era that insists a gentleman does not get his hands dirty. Meanwhile, the continental model of apprenticeships and technical schools produces skilled workers who are both respected and well-paid.
Until we shed this pretension, the degree racket will continue, and one in three will become one in two. The Romans did not fall because they had too few philosophers; they fell because they had too few soldiers and too many decadent senators. We are on the same path, armed with useless degrees and empty promises.
