I think the point of the reform is to ensure that money flows towards more expensive and higher quality courses. Not all university courses are equal, and not all university courses deserve the same level of funding/support. The best way to find out which is to get people to pay for them themselves.

They’ve had it too good for too long. Now comes the pain.

1 Nick

..and presumably in this wondrous free market, we should let the less competitive Uni’s go bankrupt?

“But what they give with one hand in lower taxes, they take back several times over with fees, charges and cuts .”

Yes, because this means that one has a choice. Don’t go to uni and you don’t pay for uni. But if it’s paid for from taxation then you pay whether you go or not.

@3: yes, of course.

Note though that it will be the organisational structure of the uni that goes bust: recall, we don’t blow up the buildings when someone goes bust. We just sell them to someone else who thinks they can make better use of them.

Of the 121 unis (is that the right number?) are we absolutely certain that all of them should be offering 3 year degrees in English Literature (just as an example, I’ve no idea whether they all do) and none of them 6 months in advanced plumbing?

And would our higher education system possibly benefit from a little more variety?

..and presumably in this wondrous free market, we should let the less competitive Uni’s go bankrupt?

Bloody right, we should!!!

So many universities are shit. They aren’t worth students paying for them, let alone the public. Let them close. Let student numbers reduce, whilst also promoting alternatives to uni. Then maybe we can pay for it with taxation again.

Quite.

As I’ve just suggested on another thread, this – like the Child Benefit cut – is a branding exercise; it’s about being able to say ‘we cut spending’ rather than ‘we raised taxes’.

To everyone on the receiving end, these changes feel exactly like tax rises – because the net contribution they make to the public finances goes up just as it does when their taxes are raised.

And these changes do the same job as tax rises – raising revenue for public services; they just do it less fairly and straightforwardly.

And as far as I can see, right-wing ‘Laffer curve’ type arguments about the impact of raising taxes apply equally to the sort of spending cuts we’re talking about here: if the prospect of paying more tax once one earns a certain amount disincentivises hard work, incentivises avoidance, and so suppresses revenues, the same must surely be true of the prospect of making higher student loan repayments or losing Child Benefit.

It’s really not rocket science: you can raise the same money more simply and more fairly, with everyone contributing a small amount each year over a working lifetime, based on ability to pay, just by raising taxes.

“you can raise the same money more simply and more fairly, with everyone contributing a small amount each year over a working lifetime, based on ability to pay, just by raising taxes.”

Why is this fairer? Why is it fairer that I, who do not go to university*, pay more taxes so that you can? Why should I pay higher taxes so that you can have a higher lifetime income?

What’s fair about that? Why shouldn’t you pay the costs of your aquiring that higher lifetime income?

* Just imagine for a moment, alright?

@9 (I’m shocked I’m agreeing with Tim on something!) There is nothing fair about any of that.

Fees were one thing. Raising the target to 50% was another, and made higher fees inevitable.

The best way to find out which is to get people to pay for them themselves.

Hardly. That only works if people are able to reliably tell which are worth the money. There’s neither the opportunity to try out several and then go with the most suitable for requirements and price nor a reliable way to deduce the difference between the qualities of two degrees at different universities and equate it to a price without personally testing them.

It’ll be the universities that are best at marketing themselves and gaming the proxy measures of quality that appear in the league tables that are able to charge the higher fees. (And there’s a feedback mechanism, too – courses charging 9,000 are going to be assumed to be better than courses charging 6,000 even if there’s no actual difference and the other 3,000 goes to gold-plating the Vice-Chancellor’s office or something)

blanco:

So many universities are shit. They aren’t worth students paying for them, let alone the public. Let them close. Let student numbers reduce, whilst also promoting alternatives to uni. Then maybe we can pay for it with taxation again.

So the government goes to all this trouble to go back to the halcyon days when 5% of the population went to university? And that somehow – having banged on about ‘fairness’ and presided over the growth of the ‘why should I pay for the likes of them?’ argument – they’ll go back to using ‘taxpayers’ money’ to pay for such a minority? Somehow I very much doubt it.

When Blair apparently described universities as “the coal mines of the 21st century”, he must have meant the coal mines after market forces, the pit closure programme and government policy had all done their demolition job.

there are transaction costs to take into account here – it might be fairer to levy a super-tax on graduates, but it might be easier just to raise taxes on higher earners. That becomes more attractive if you believe non-graduates benefit from the existence of graduates.

If the government did decide to spend more on universities, as an alternative to student fees, by either spending less elsewhere or taxing more somewhere, the incidence of that would depend on the details, but arguendo lets say they choose to raise taxes on high earners. This is like forcing high earners who do not go to university to part pay for the education of those who do. Is that a reasonable deal? Well, how great a benefit to people who do not go to university gain from the existence of other people who do? For the moment, let’s say we’re talking about funding for students, not funding for research. The answer to how much non-graduates benefit from graduates depends on whether you see university as something that transmits real skills that others can benefit from (the existence of graduate may raise the productivity and wages of non-graduates) or as something that merely gives students a stamp signaling ability that helps them compete in the job market against non-graduates.

We need to ensure that the Lib Dems and Conservatives never recover from this.

But Labour needs to learn a lesson too – don’t put discredited former CEOs of climate wrecking oil corporations in charge of wrecking education!

@cim: there are already plenty of ‘Degree Course Guides’ that attempt to offer advice; I suspect they’ll proliferate further once fees go up. You’re correct to identify that universities will both ‘signal’ and compete on price (unless almost all charge the ‘minimum’ to force the Russell Group unis to charge [even] more). Still, it enables Willetts and Osborne to shrug their shoulders and say the outcomes of market forces are nothing to do with them.

@ 4. Tim Worstall

Says it all.

Nahh man the people who are going to be hit hardest because of tuition fees are all the Lib Dem MPs who will lose their seats at the next election. Price of power, eh.

Tim W

“Why is this fairer? Why is it fairer that I, who do not go to university*, pay more taxes so that you can? Why should I pay higher taxes so that you can have a higher lifetime income?”

Actually, I’m not 100% sure it is fairer: maybe the ‘everyone’ in ‘everyone contributing’ should just mean ‘every graduate’ (in the case of covering HE costs) or ‘every higher rate taxpayer’ (in the case of funding the £1 billion of deficit reduction the Child Benefit cut was supposed to achieve.)

But I don’t think it’s just *obviously* unfair for every taxpayer to stump up for Higher Education. We all typically think it’s fair enough to pay through our taxes for all sorts of things that only benefit us in a very general sense – in terms of living in a decent, prosperous society – while benefitting certain people much more directly.

People moving to the UK as adults might resent paying for other people’s education up to the age of 18 – something they perhaps never had the benefit of – but it’d seem a bit rich to let them pay a lower tax rate on those grounds. They ought to contribute because in a very general way, they benefit from living in a country with a well-educated population.

All those people saying taxpayers shouldn’t pay for others to go to university should consider how they benefit form the professions . How would they cope without their doctor for example? Also these are the people who will most likely pay higher taxes as they earn more, putting money back into the coffers of the government to pay for services such as free education to 18, road repairs, council services. Your future pensions depend on the input of taxes from higjher earners many of whom will be graduates so don’t just say you gain nothing by helping educate our young people.

@Kate – yes, doctors, scientists, engineers, and so on. Absolutely. I want more of those, let’s cut the fees for them.

But history of arts graduates? Sorry, no one (not even them) benefits from their degree, especially the poorer workers who have to pay for middle class kids to waste three years getting high, drunk and laid.

I agree Blanco. we need to drop the 50% going to university and concentrate on our high achievers doing useful degrees. However it was pointed out to me by an undergraduate that some degrees actually cost less to run than science, engineering etc and these currently subsidise the more useful course. If we lose the “Micky mouse degrees” the costs for the other degrees go up as they are no longer subsidised.

19 blanco

..what a bleak, narrow joyless view of academia (and probably life) you appear have. Of course, it’s never entered your head that (shock horror) poor people might like to do history of art degrees, classics, archaeology…?

You sound like Goebels reaching for his revolver when anyone mentions the word culture.

Maybe its time that companies that gain from having workers with degrees helped to fund those degrees like they do in USA. More sponsorships and funding as we do with apprenticeships.

Godwin’s law strikes again! Why not go straight for the jugular and say my ideas are tantamount to the Final Solution, this time with students? We’re making poor little middle class parents invest in their kid’s education in a fair way without putting the burden on less well off taxpayers, we may as well shove them into the furnaces and invade Europe.

If anyone who wants to do those useless degrees (and mine was useless), then by all means, they should do so – but they shouldn’t complain they can’t find a job at the end of it (and someone who can’t contribute to the upkeep of society despite having subsidised higher education is the very definition of useless) and they shouldn’t expect other poor people to foot the bill when that money is better spent on early education that is proven to improve the life chances of those at the bottom end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

Kate @20 fair point, I also agree with scrapping the target. But if we’re being fair, if those degrees cost less than the more useful ones, why should their fee be as high? One of the fallacies of those opposing variable fees is that they introduce fee cost differentials. Rubbish: all universities (with one or two exceptions) charged the full £3000 from 2006 onwards. It is nonsense to be able to pay the same amount for an education at Cambridge as an education at London Met.

@blanco – so those arts graduates that go on to work in arts industries or education aren’t useful or just too busy shagging each other at work? ‘Do it to Julia! (She’s an arts graduate)’ isn’t much of a policy when it comes to cutting HE funding.

@Galen

How many poor people compared to middle class people go to uni as a percentage of overall students, and how many of them study classics, history of art, latin, and ancient greek?

“They ought to contribute because in a very general way, they benefit from living in a country with a well-educated population.”

This is the public good argument. And certainly, there’s a great deal of power to it. When there are public goods they should at least be subsidised from, if not paid for entirely, general taxation.

Living in a society where almost all are literate and numerate is almost certainly such a public good, as even Adam Smith pointed out. Thus tax funding/subsidy is entirely justified (and we might actually get a school system that manages this feat if we didn’t confuse such subsidy with direct government provision of the education).

Pure research is, similarly, a standard example of a public good. So the ivory towers and peeps thinking in them should get subsidised.

But a society which is 50% graduates? Naah, not really possible to see how that is a public good which deserves subsidy.

“You sound like Goebels reaching for his revolver”

It was Goering and he reached for his Browning.

The joke being that he wore a Browning revolver rather than a Luger (and for those sadly educated in the modern degree mills, Browning was a Victorian poet) and, just to finish this off, the joke is from a play, not something Goering ever actually said or did…..and it’s not Goering who says it in the play anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Johst

i suppose its back to how we fund the useful degrees whilst still allowing others to do the more arty,high brow degrees.
dont get me wrong, i have a daughter wishing to study english and i support her in her choice. I will of course use my middle income as i am already supporting my son doing physics.
I would just like those who say tax payers shouldnt pay to think about how our economy would work without these graduates

blanco:

It is nonsense to be able to pay the same amount for an education at Cambridge as an education at London Met.

This is why free tuition kept things simple: you went where you wanted to go,(subject to interview). Now, instead, London Met cannot raise the cash to raise its game, and Oxford can sail serenely on knowing that its reputation means it can price out the competition because it’s worth it. Unis should ‘know their place’ in a pecking order, stick to it and charge accordingly. And this enables universities to produce a better-educated workforce how, exactly? It sounds more like an educational version of the worst practices of the English Premier League.

“Now, instead, London Met cannot raise the cash to raise its game, and Oxford can sail serenely on knowing that its reputation means it can price out the competition because it’s worth it.”

I know, I know, such bastards these markets and capitalists. McDonalds has absolutely no chance of raising more money to beat The Ivy at its game of providing expensive lunches, does it?

Relative positions are just fixed forever, no change ever happens….

I’m not sure if it’s right or wrong but it’s a damned shame whichever way. I loved my degree, I loved the fact that it was cheap (student loans to me to court and I was a bum at the time so they take £10 off me every month regardless of my wage) and I do feel sorry that kids who are nerds, love reading, love esoteric crap that I would consider pointless (and, maybe it is) can’t go and study it to their hearts content.

Sure there are shit universities, shit courses but there is also a joy of learning. It’s just a shame is all.

There appears to me to be a huge flaw with the Browne plan. Student debt is written off after 30 years, and paid back at a rate proportional to earnings rather than to the size of the debt or the interest rate. Therefore, once the debt reaches the size that you’ll never pay it off entirely, there’s no further penalty to taking on even an infinite amount of additional student debt.

Assuming a 2% real interest rate, and a £20,000 starting graduate salary that increases by an average £1,000 in real terms each year (which is more than the majority of graduates will get), the maximum debt that can be paid off in 30 years is just under £25,000. Assuming a 3-year degree, and taking out the full £3,750 cost of living loan each year, that maximum gets hit at fees of around £4,500/year. For a 4-year degree, the maximum fee is only £2,500/year.

So, given that from the student’s perspective, £4,500/year fees are equivalent to £12,000/year fees, and that the Browne review estimates that universities will need to charge around £6,500/year fees just to break even with now, what’s the incentive for any university not to charge £12,000/year fees? (The clawback levy is supposed to prevent this, but I can’t see how it does: there’s always a financial advantage to charging more, right up to the point where the levy hits 100% – which Browne implies never happens, but there clearly must be one)

Excellent cim.

You’ve just shown that the cost of producing all these graduates is higher than the returns from producing all these graduates.

So therefore we should be producing fewer graduates, yes?

26 Tim

Hmmnn.. apparently you are correct that the attribution to either Goebbles or Goering is apocryphal (tho hardly out of character for either I would venture), altho according to this source;

http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/german_joys/2008/08/when-i-hear-the-word-revolver.html

the Nazi Baldur von Schirach used the original quotation from the 1933 play “Schlageter” by Hans Johst in a speech.

25 blanco

“How many poor people compared to middle class people go to uni as a percentage of overall students, and how many of them study classics, history of art, latin, and ancient greek?”

Not enough in answer to both.

Article: “Politicians who promise to keep taxes down pretend that they are doing so to support middle class people. … But what they give with one hand in lower taxes, they take back several times over with fees, charges and cuts.”

Yes, two different definitions of ‘middle class’ going on here… it’s moving from people contributing to the cost of higher education roughly proportional to their income (i.e. income tax) to contributing more-or-less flat rate per head, something which obviously benefits the most wealthy in society.

But looking at it through the class / income distribution lens misses something – it’s also shoving the responsibility for paying for the higher education system down to the next generation, giving a convenient break in payments for the generations making up most of the current electorate. With the banks ultimately providing the loans taking their cut, that “buy now pay later” deal won’t come cheap, even if the debts are in the name of millions of individuals rather than the state.

Class, fairness, public good and a useful degree, can anyone using those terms like to expand upon them, because for me, they all appear subjective.
I’m pretty sure it was Thatcher who started the ball rolling about there being some kind of hierarchy of degrees.
And as far as arts degrees are concerned, I believe that after finance, the arts generate the second largest income in the UK.

It seems to me there are 2 different narratives going on here; one involves whether there is a “better way” of reforming the present tertiary education system than that proposed by Browne or inherent in the whole fee paying system initiated by New Labour, the other involves the “art for arts sake” argument.

In the case of the former, I would venture that most people (and more particularly those on the centre left) would agree that there has to be a better way or organising things than the current system, or than Browne’s proposals.

This might involve reducing the number of universities, increasing vocational training, a thorough examination of how we fund a revised system amongst other things. It shouldn’t be done as a knee jerk response to a fiscal panic when we already under invest in such educational provision, as well as R&D, when compared to our main economic “competitors” or other similar societies.

As for the latter, there IS and always has been, and always will be a case for people to study areas of knowledge which are not vocational. We’re not drones, and we don’t all have to be lovers of fine art to see that such things have their place.

God, this whole thread is permeated by the concept that education benefits the state. Regardless of whether it does or not, who are you or I to stop someone with the ability pursuing whatever degree they wish? Because any system of government funding does this, so currently the number of history degrees is capped, meaning that students with lower grades are less likely to be able to study history and have to take an alternative programme such as heritage management – which should be a vocational course not a resort for less-able A-Level historians (there is no reason to assume from this they will not be good at degree level).

So until someone explains to me how the middle class benefits from being told what to do, or proposes that we tax to pay for degrees but let people spend their taxation supplied money as they wish (which kind of undermines the arguments for taxation) I cannot see how to come to a better solution than the Browne review.

This might not be original but here goes anyway:

I hate how all this “realism” cant about the deficit is being used as a smoke screen for dismantling those institutions that bind society together (family allowance, funded higher education, god knows what next).

I’ll pay higher taxes to know my kids (and anybody elses) can go to university if they’re bright enough. What the Tories want to do is reduce us all to squabbling “what’s in it for me” consumers. I think we’re better than that. What the left needs to do is communicate that message of hope.

Tim/32: Well, I’ve shown that there’s no chance of the government getting all the money back via the student loans system, but that argument applies even if there’s only one graduate. (It might get it back via increased GDP and income tax, though, and I’ve no idea what the optimum number of graduates is for that)

Since this now applies to part-time courses, which it didn’t before, there’s a nicer opportunity for mature students to take the courses knowing that they’ve got even less to pay back before they retire and drop back below the repayment threshold, too. In terms of increasing HE participation it could be very good there.

38

We all realise resources are finite, but why should we sleep walk into the same kind of system they have in the USA (which many people there think just doesn’t work)? The Browne proposals simply build on the system introduced by New Labour that very many people think is flawed.

It cannot be outwith the ken of man to come up with a system which provides decently funded institutions, doesn’t saddle graduates with huge debt, and promotes more access for poorer students. I for one think we have surrendered far too easily to the concept that adopting the current system is the only way.

We can come up with billions to bale out banks whilst STILL failing to regulate their excesses, to spend on so many other useless areas… but we can’t see the sense in investing in education?

39

Ah, but remember Chris, for a Tory there is no such thing as society… er, except the Big Society of course.

They are quite happy to see a tertiary education system where the rich can afford to pay for the best (because of course they won’t be paying a fair whack in taxes), the middle class get squeezed and used as a milch cow as per usual, and the working class know their place and put up with a few scraps thrown from the table in the form of bursaries, because of course… if they deserve it and are bright enough..then they’ll bally well succeed any won’t they?

If it weren’t so transparently Dickensian it would almost be funny.

“I’ll pay higher taxes to know my kids (and anybody elses) can go to university if they’re bright enough.”

And there’s the rub.

How bright is bright enough?

50%???

39
Well said

Galen 10,

I’m not concerned with resources being finite or not – I’m concerned with the fact that the government controls them, and therefore those of us seeking higher education.

Basically, I am OK with government funding education so long as it is universal, as it is up to 18 – there can be no government control there (so long as it is done properly, which has not been the case since approximately 10 seconds after the 1944 Education Act…).

I am not OK with a rationed system of education being controlled by government, because this gives them power of patronage and means that institutions have to pander to government whim not student requirements. It effectively means that the philistines who want to stop art degrees can get into government, or that anti-sciencists (Green or right-wing) can start funding pseudo-sciences to justify their beliefs. It means above all else that you and me, or our children, would not be able to go and do the degree we want if it did not suit government.

If you believe universities and by extension ourselves (as potential outputs) are arms of the state, and that the state is the best judge of what is necessary, then this sort of thing is fine. Me, I prefer my academics to be responding to their own thoughts and to the needs of students (and yes, if someone if paying, their research sponsors), not to government. I know this is undemocratic, but universities are by definition elite (even the worst universities reject applicants as not good enough) so to fulfil their mission they should not be constrained by government whims. After all, if a university starts to fail its students and stakeholders, it should fail because it performs no useful function (note that any closure of a university is gradual to allow for students to complete programmes) – it should not be preserved by governments that seem afraid of change.

cjcjc,

And there’s the rub.

50%???

Is that not a question for admissions tutors at universities to answer?

Tim Worstall @39:

I know, I know, such bastards these markets and capitalists. McDonalds has absolutely no chance of raising more money to beat The Ivy at its game of providing expensive lunches, does it?

A problematic analogy, since universities aren’t retail food outlets (mind you, maybe my analogy is equally flawed?). If I take your analogy, it still implies the difficulty of developing a world class uni/Michelin starred restaurant in a market where ‘everyone’ assumes The Ivy is always going to be the place to eat (or to use my EPL analogy, no-one is expected to do a Wimbledon, let alone an AFC Wimbledon). Alternatively, no-one is making the case for, say, London Met beyond hoping it will go bust and go away: the sense of a strategic overview of universities outside of the Russell Group ends up being ‘find yourself a niche in the market, if you’re lucky’. It’s like those people who argue for grammar schools; they never make the case for secondary moderns where everyone else will end up.

“Alternatively, no-one is making the case for, say, London Met beyond hoping it will go bust and go away: the sense of a strategic overview of universities outside of the Russell Group ends up being ‘find yourself a niche in the market, if you’re lucky’. ”

Absolutely delighted to make a case for London Met (or anywhere else for that matter). I’m just not entirely convinced that it’s in the provision of three year degrees in academic subjects.

My brother benefitted hugely from day release schemes to do City and Guilds stuff for example, he eanrs a very nice £50k a year in the catering biz as a result.

I think we need a great deal more vocational training in the UK: I’m just entirely unconvinced that we need the amount of “university” training that we’ve got already.

Worstall:

Absolutely delighted to make a case for London Met (or anywhere else for that matter). I’m just not entirely convinced that it’s in the provision of three year degrees in academic subjects.

I think we need a great deal more vocational training in the UK: I’m just entirely unconvinced that we need the amount of “university” training that we’ve got already.

Perhaps that leaves three options:

1 – More money for FE. Probably not going to happen.

2 – A return to the polytechnic/university divide. It’ll satisfy those who like a hierarchy, but won’t follow that vocational training will be well funded. Besides, the polys used to do degrees – e.g. Philosophy at Middlesex – anyway. (And we’d also have to work out what to do with all the University Colleges that are now the new ‘new universities’ while we’re at it)

3 – A return to ‘Liberal Studies’ type arts/humanities courses outside pre-92 universities, since academic subjects are ‘their’ domain (which might be news to Bristol University’s Drama department)

Unfortunately, all we’ve got instead is: ‘grab what you can…charge what you like…and the devil take the hindmost’.

You’ve forgotten option 4.

A market in further education. We’ve, currently, 122 institutions (is that right?). All of them can attract students (or not attract them, as the case may be) by varying what they actually offer.

The financing for those students is guaranteed by the government, the students themselves repaying that financing over their working lives.

Looks like we’ve got the basics of a pretty decent market there. We’ve got finance, we’ve got competing suppliers, we’ve a potential customer base. As long as we add entry and exit for suppliers (which Browne does indeed do) then the interaction of consumers and suppliers looks highly likely to produce the optimal allocation.

This is, after all, what markets are actually good at: sorting through what people want to supply and what people demand that they are to be supplied with.

Tim – we had that market before fees: now ‘how much?’ is a greater signal than ‘how good?’

“now ‘how much?’ is a greater signal than ‘how good?’”

It is? Jeez, I missed how everyone eats nothing but lobster and caviar these days.

@Galen

“This might involve reducing the number of universities, increasing vocational training, a thorough examination of how we fund a revised system amongst other things. It shouldn’t be done as a knee jerk response to a fiscal panic when we already under invest in such educational provision, as well as R&D, when compared to our main economic “competitors” or other similar societies.”

Yes. Absolutely. This is not the debate any of the parties want to have, because it will involve telling people that university isn’t for everyone, which some people will interpret as “university isn’t for people like us.” They’re damn right it’s not.

“As for the latter, there IS and always has been, and always will be a case for people to study areas of knowledge which are not vocational. We’re not drones, and we don’t all have to be lovers of fine art to see that such things have their place.”

Yeah, that’s fine, study what you want. Don’t make me pay for it if its value to society is unquantifiable and negligible.

It comes down to this: Do we want 1) to set prices centrally and have government cover the difference by paying money directly to universities and having foreigners subsidise nationals indirectly or do we want market rates for everyone and government to cover the difference by paying (less) money to universities directly and (more) subsidies directly to poor students?

Market fees could, could!, work and be more egalitarian than what we currently do. Frankly, I don’t trust the Tories to adequately provide for poorer students, so no way am I supporting this proposal, but in principal this set up could 1) eliminate the gross fees we charge non-Europeans (cosmopolitanism, check),2) remove a subsidy from the median taxpayer to the already rich (egalitarianism, check) and 3) improve access for poor pupils (if adequately funded).

“Yeah, that’s fine, study what you want. Don’t make me pay for it if its value to society is unquantifiable and negligible.”

That doesn’t make sense. Firstly, it can’t really be both. Secondly, the value of, say, human life is unquantifiable, but I bet you think it’s worth paying for.

In this particular case: I agree that the arts are less productive than the sciences and more vocational studies in terms of teaching someone a useful trade. That’s why it seems fair that the former tend to subsidise the latter. But what about the value to society of making sure that a bright kid from a poor background can make something of himself? Degrees allow you to differentiate yourself in the market: at present, you’d disallow that advantage for anyone except the progeny of middle-to-high earners and the scientifically-minded poor.

“Degrees allow you to differentiate yourself”

Not when 50% of the population (which, by definition, is going to include a lot of those not too bright) have them it ain’t.

“But what about the value to society of making sure that a bright kid from a poor background can make something of himself”

What about not-so-bright kids from poor backgrounds? What will they do to make something of themselves?

@Tim Worstall

You do realise that degrees are graded, its not just a degree but a 1st, 2.1, 2.2 or 3rd from such and such a university.

53 blanco

“Yeah, that’s fine, study what you want. Don’t make me pay for it if its value to society is unquantifiable and negligible.”

I’ve rarely read such ignorant, philistine nonsense (which given the quality of discourse in cyberia is saying something). In what fevered imaginings of your dour, lumpen consciousness is it possible to “quantify” the value of a course of study, or decide on it’s value to society?

The public and private sector is stuffed full of people doing jobs which are nothing to do with their chosen degree, whether by accident or design.

The ignorant philstinism evident in your previous posts seems to be something of a chip on your other shoulder; it might just save time now if you tell us what the balancing chip on the other shoulder is, so we can be prepared to laugh at that one.

@56

“Not when 50% of the population (which, by definition, is going to include a lot of those not too bright) have them it ain’t.”

Yes, because a 3rd in catering from Guildford is equal to a 1st in physics from Canbridge in the eyes of all. Do keep up.

57 “What about not-so-bright kids from poor backgrounds? What will they do to make something of themselves?”

Um, what do you care? You’re happy to throw the bright ones on the scrapheap, why not the less bright ones as well? You’re the one arguing the case of abandoning poor children due to perceived lack of funds, so don’t try to turn it round on me.

Yes, because a 3rd in catering from Guildford is equal to a 1st in physics from Canbridge in the eyes of all. Do keep up.

Not so much apples and oranges as apples and particle accelerators – presumably the physicist can run a top-class restaurant, and the catering student will be expected to know about quarks as long as they come in a bernaise source. Or maybe a Cambridge degree means you can do anything. Perhaps a third in physics from Cambridge equals a PhD from anywhere else, in any subject.

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“Or maybe a Cambridge degree means you can do anything.”

There’s some truth there, actually. An Oxbridge degree in physics doesn’t make you a good caterer, of course, but it stands you in good stead for a job that doesn’t demand much prior knowledge. Basically, it’s taken to indicate that you are intelligent and capable of applying yourself. Liberal arts degrees do the same, albeit to a considerably lesser extend.

Obviously a caterer and physicist have training and expertise in different fields, but a 3rd in catering from Guildford is a lot less impressive to a potential business employer than a 1st in physics from Canbridge. Hence differentiation. I only bring this up because Worstall seems to think that all degrees are identical.

“Not when 50% of the population (which, by definition, is going to include a lot of those not too bright) have them it ain’t.”

But 50% of the population are not going to be studying the same subject at the same university.