Almost buried under this week’s avalanche of news reports on war in Iran and who-said-what-to whom in the newly-released Mandelson files, was an announcement from the Treasury Select Committee launching an inquiry into ‘widespread dissatisfaction’ over student loan repayment terms.
They can say that again. It may not be as urgent or compelling as drone attacks in the strait of Hormuz, or whether Peter Mandelson was shown secrets he wasn’t cleared to see. But with almost 3 million graduates owing over £50,000 each in student debts, and many others owing smaller-but-still-chunky amounts, it’s a heavy millstone around an ever-growing number of people’s necks.
If they’ve got any sense, the Treasury Select Committee’s enquiry will take a close look at Kemi Badenoch’s new plans to lift a lot of the load off students’ shoulders by cutting interest payments and offering a £5,000 First Job Bonus, paid for by closing the Mickey Mouse courses that leave students with small jobs and big debts when they graduate.
It’s a sensible, properly-costed, grown-up policy. But the select committee will want to know which courses ought to be closed, and which don’t.
It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer. The danger will be a spasm of intellectual snobbery, where everyone assumes traditional-sounding subjects taught at ancient universities must be better than their newer, modern rivals. But while lots of those long-established courses are world-leading and brilliant, some aren’t. And we’re in the middle of a new industrial revolution where digital services and AI are reshaping, destroying and creating companies and public services everywhere. The only certainty is the skills and knowledge which employers are going to need from graduates tomorrow will be miles different from what they wanted yesterday.
So here’s a revolutionary suggestion. Instead of politicians and journalists parading their prejudices about which courses pass muster or don’t, why not ask the employers themselves instead? After all, they’re the ones who have to navigate the new, fast-changing world by investing real money in hiring and training new staff. If they want to hire graduates from a particular course at a specific University or FE College, but not from a similar-sounding subject taught at a rival institution down the road, that should be the acid test. If the results show some traditional-sounding courses are past their sell-by dates, so be it. They will either have to shape up by modernising so their students are ready for tomorrow’s world, or shrink and close.
Even better is the news that we already know many of the answers to questions about which courses employers find valuable, and which they don’t. The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) survey has been running for years and shows how many students from each higher and further education course find jobs, with figures on salaries and accumulated student debts too.
Weirdly, this treasure-trove of information isn’t widely or publicly available at present. But if it was, it would reveal the further and higher education courses that provide the best and worst value. Students would have the information they needed to make fully-informed decisions about what and where to study. Mickey Mouse courses would shrink and, as money follows students, would either be redesigned or shut down while higher-value ones would prosper.
Releasing the information won’t cost taxpayers or students a bean because it’s already collected and available. Nor will government ministers and officials have to make politically-fraught decisions about which courses to close or shrink, because it will happen organically through bottom-up pupil-power as students make fully-informed decisions about which courses to choose for the first time ever. And those decisions will erode any lingering academic snobbery which historically used to push less academic pupils towards lower-quality but expensive higher education courses, while their more academic working class peers were offered further education courses instead.
The result would be fewer lives and talents wasted by shoehorning people into courses that are not right for them. It would also give Kemi Badenoch’s team a ready-made answer when the Treasury Select Committee asks which courses should close. Student debts won’t fall because politicians, journalists or bureaucrats decide which courses are worthwhile, but because of pupil-power: people avoiding expensive degrees that employers do not value, and choosing further education or apprenticeships when the LEO data show they are cheaper, better options.
If you like this idea, you’ll find more details, soundbites and rebuttals about it under Pupil Power in the Policy Thumbnail section of our website
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals published in CapX from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives.
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