When I tell anyone I do history, I have to brace myself for the follow-up question that every humanities student dreads: “What are you going to do with that?” Having invested significant time, energy and money in a four-year degree, the question is reasonable enough, but reducing my university experience to a simple input-output equation feels like a disservice to the multitude of experiences of which university is comprised. The debate about the value of degrees has gained national attention in Britain recently, after graduates rightly pointed out that going to university for many means accepting a life of crippling debt. Combined with a dire graduate job market, a degree no longer seems to be the one-way ticket to a stable career that it was long made out to be. With half of Britons claiming that fewer people should go to university (YouGov poll 2025), students now have to argue their case for pursuing a degree, which more often than not means justifying their university experience on a transactional basis.
The background to the recent debate may be found in the British student loan system, which has been labelled by some as a “graduate tax” or “tax on ambition”. Graduates with an income above a certain threshold pay as much as 9 per cent of their income on loans with an interest rate so high that they may end up paying back much more than they borrowed by the time the loan is written off, 30 years later (“Will student loans be the next mis-selling scandal?”, Financial Times). Of course, only graduates who had to rely on loans at university are disadvantaged in their careers, whereas those who relied on their parents’ income can graduate debt-free. At the same time, the so-called “graduate earnings premium” which refers to the difference in income between graduates and non-graduates, has decreased in recent years (“‘Is university still worth it?’ is the wrong question”, Financial Times). The shortage of graduate jobs has forced students to set themselves apart on the job market in other ways, often through extracurricular activities or internships, which are sometimes unpaid. This further disadvantages students from lower-income backgrounds, who, in addition to taking out loans, often have to rely on part-time work to be able to afford to go to university. University degrees only reinvigorate the economic disparity that they were supposed to close in the first place.
The solution has been to blame higher education institutions for “deceiving” students about the return on their investment. The Conservative Party has begun labelling certain degrees “rip-off” degrees and looking into which ones could potentially be scrapped altogether (“Badenoch: Curb students taking ‘rip-off’ degrees such as English”, The iPaper). The metric used to determine which ones should be removed is wrapped in technical jargon and appears to objectively analyse the financial value of university education. With an underfunded higher education sector, it is no wonder that universities will act in their own economic self-interest. Blaming institutions for doing precisely what they are expected to do is ironic and simultaneously offshores responsibility from the state, which has not been able to keep up with the demand for graduate jobs. By claiming that universities are deceiving potential students, they are also individualising a debate that should be collective. Students are not being deceived so much as they are acting idealistically, seeking something other than economic prosperity in return for a university education. They aren’t damsels in distress so much as they are held at gunpoint by the prospect of overwhelming debt.
Expanding the possibilities of pursuing apprenticeships as an alternative to a traditional university degree makes the individual choice for students easier, but it fails to grapple with how education is valued in society. The problem is not that some degrees don’t provide an economic return on investment, but that they are not economically valued in the same way that they are socially. Students have no control over which fields, and consequently which degrees, hold economic value. To make the decision easier for school-leavers, expanding apprenticeships is not enough. Students will still base their decision on the possible return of investment, not on what they actually want to do in life. Those asking others to encourage their children to do apprenticeships are not encouraging their own children to do the same. In contrast, a degree like Classics is something only afforded to the upper classes, to whom it’s branded as sensible. To anyone else, studying Classics is merely seen as a long-term financial mistake.
Students are at the mercy of the whims of the market, making it impossible to make an informed decision. Instead of focusing on their studies, they have to monitor the job market and attempt to update their CV at the same rate that the market changes. Not too long ago, we were told that the future lay in AI and technology, and that coding would be a key skill to have a chance on the job market. Now, AI companies are claiming that humanities students may actually be at an advantage because their degrees teach them skills that AI won’t be able to replicate. Students have no say in what jobs are phased out, so picking a degree based on what may be useful to have on a CV in three or four years’ time is a losing battle. Social value is different from economic value, and universities should not be primarily held accountable for the latter. Most people agree that the creative arts are important and overall beneficial to society, which relies on a robust higher education system with corresponding degrees. The problem is that the economy does not reward creativity because it cannot be automated.
Universities, like students, also have to constantly adapt to a shifting market, which harms their institutional mission. Framing the debate through an individual lens misses the point that universities exist to serve society as a collective, providing a space for people to articulate their opinions and experiences, constructively challenging power structures in the process. Viewing universities as mere economic investments for individuals forgets that universities and students are affected by the same systemic problems. Students should still be able to expect universities to open career pathways, and give them the opportunity at a better quality of life than their parents. They should not, however, be expected to justify their education through a career. Going to university is a way to figure precisely that out along the way. A small portion of students can still go to university without any idea of a career in mind, while the rest have to continually justify their presence on campus. Universities thus cease to be the great equaliser they were once set up to be. When we measure the value of education in economic terms, we are giving up the possibility of shaping universities into what we want them to be.
