Is school out forever? For some undergraduates, it might be.

Reports that a number of Britain’s universities are facing a ‘financial crisis’ will have professors shaking in their tweed blazers. It is being said some universities will have to cut courses and shut departments, which will put thousands of jobs at peril. 

Among other measures, the Government is supposedly thinking about merging large universities with smaller ones, while Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is looking around for a new interim head of the Office for Students. 

The University and College Union (UCU) is, predictably, in a state of meltdown. The group is calling on the Government to go further and deploy a ‘rescue package’ to save jobs. According to its General Secretary Jo Brady, anything less will be ‘insufficient to stave off catastrophe’.

The details of how much this package would cost are unclear, and the public finances are in no fit state to write any sector a blank cheque. Before stumping up, the Government ought to ask itself if some universities being forced to scrap certain courses is necessarily such a bad thing.

For far too long, taxpayers have been shelling out to fund a litany of degrees of dubious intellectual and vocational value. Political commentator Charlotte Gill has been particularly vigilant in identifying examples of such courses, including a taxpayer-backed graduate researcher role exploring the history of gay porn.  

While this might seem laughable, there is a genuine issue here. Taxpayers should not have to fork out for absurdly niche areas of research, or foot the bill when universities fail to keep themselves or their low-value courses afloat.

This is a problem the Conservatives seemed to actually have a solution for. In the build up to the last general election, the Tories announced a policy aimed at cracking down on so-called ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees. They argued that as many as one in eight undergraduate degrees could be shut down. The £900 million this would have raised would have been used to fund apprenticeship schemes – a move which would actually get young people into well-paid, productive jobs.

That we are in this position at all is the predictable result of too many people going to university in the first place. In 1999, Tony Blair announced his intention to get over 50% of young people into higher education. We have now surpassed this. But as ever, the former Prime Minister’s insatiable appetite for political interventions didn’t stop there, and he has recently called for this to increase to 70% by 2040.

According to Blair, this would boost the UK’s productivity and growth, allowing us to compete with the likes of Japan and Canada. But something’s off here. We have more young people going to university than ever, yet our productivity remains stagnant. According to recent ONS stats, productivity rose by a pathetic 0.1% in Q1 2024 compared to the same period last year. And since Blair’s time in office, productivity in the public sector has stayed flat.

The value that an increased uptake in apprenticeships could add to the economy is clear. According to government research, 74% of employers claim that apprentices improved the quality of services on offer while 78% say they improved productivity overall. 

But despite these obvious gains, little progress has been made in encouraging more young people to take this route. 

Research from the Centre for Policy Studies has shown that the focus on getting people into higher education has completely ignored the benefits of further education. This is in spite of estimates that the Government receives between £26 and £28 for every £1 invested in level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships.

Now, none of this is to say that a liberal arts education cannot be extremely valuable. As a History graduate, I can vouch for the critical thinking skills it helps equip you with. But the fact of the matter is that my university could afford to sustain the course. And if it couldn’t, I would expect it to go bust. 

This is the nature of the labour market. When times are tight, businesses make cuts. Sometimes they have to wind up completely. Poor universities which for years have duped students into saddling themselves with debt by studying for degrees with substandard outcomes should not be treated any differently.

In our age of low productivity and growth, it’s galling for taxpayers to be expected to pay yet more of our money to prop up what are essentially failing businesses. Particularly when there are better vocational options available for young people who want them. Options that have the potential to improve the economy. So, shed a tear for Mickey Mouse. But if bad degrees being forced to shut down is what it takes for the state to start taking young people’s futures seriously, then so be it.