Left-wing academics have long warned against the perils of “marketisation” of universities. Regardless of where one sits on the political spectrum, it is becoming harder to dispute at least some parts of this diagnosis. There is an irreconcilable mismatch between the expectations of students and the very purpose of higher education.
Universities were created to cultivate and shape clerics, philosophers, and statesmen. They were meant to allow the pursuit of truth and beauty and to advance knowledge through rigorous scholarship — a social role far broader than a narrow focus on employment.
Over the last three decades, both Labour and Conservative governments have dragged universities into the marketplace, reducing public funding and forcing them to survive on tuition fees. Beyond the effect on graduates’ finances, these reforms transformed the relationship between students and professors. Education is in danger of becoming little more than a service provided to customers and degrees began to be valued primarily for their capacity to secure good employment.
However, marketisation has not just impacted students and their relationship with staff — it also changed the way universities operate and present themselves. On the one hand, hundreds of less-fortunate and less reputable institutions scrambled to survive by admitting increasing numbers of international students, cutting courses, closing departments, and reducing investment.
On the other end, some of the most prestigious universities developed bloated marketing budgets in pursuit of “brand identities’. Take, for instance, Imperial College London. In 2024, its leadership decided to spend just under half a million pounds on a rebranding campaign, hiring an “inclusive research agency”. The outcome of this exercise saw them shorten their name to simply “Imperial” and produce a new logo consisting of just the letter I.
One does not have to be a leftist to see that something is wrong with the incentive structure of modern universities. A few years ago, then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, sounded the alarm about so-called “Mickey Mouse’ degrees and, more recently, the current Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch has criticised the “unfair” student loan system. However, much, if not all of this discourse fails to acknowledge the fact that universities were not created with the sole purpose of facilitating social mobility.
None of this is to say that the discussion around student debt is unimportant — on the contrary, the worsening financial prospects of millions of young people deserve national attention. However, frustration with the current higher education model is not driven by student loan repayments alone. A sizeable minority of graduates now leave university believing their degree was either not useful to their field and the majority feels that higher education failed to prepare them for working life. Doubtless, social mobility and wealth can be a by product of education for many. The problem arises when it is treated not as a possibility, but as a guarantee for every graduate.
We must stop pretending that all — or even most — white-collar jobs require a degree
Worsening financial prospects of graduates reveal the fundamental contradictions between the views of education that see “knowledge as a means to money” and “knowledge as virtuous in and of itself”, and indeed, the contradiction between our expectations from higher education and its foundational purpose.
A more comprehensive solution would require two things. First, we must stop pretending that all — or even most — white-collar jobs require a degree, especially when many employers routinely hire graduates with unrelated degrees and provide on-the-job training. Indeed, some firms now run apprenticeship programmes in white-collar fields that would previously have always required a degree.
Secondly and most importantly, we must stop treating education as a commodity. Young people who wish to pursue a degree should, of course, be free to do so; however, we must also be honest about the career prospects — or lack thereof — associated with certain academic fields. At the same time, universities and academics should not be made responsible for ensuring that students develop the exact skills that the invisible hand desires.
