You know that hefty student debt you’re going to be spending most of your working lifepaying off?. Well according to the chairman of the Commons Education Committee, your degree might not have been worth it after all.
In a speech at the Centre for Social Justice think tank this morning, Tory MP Rob Halfon claimed the nation has become 'obsessed with full academic degrees,' when in reality the returns gained from them are 'paltry.' According to Halfon, between a fifth and a third of graduates don’t actually end up getting graduate jobs. Definitely not encouraging news for those of us already panicking about our employment prospects.
'We place far too much emphasis on research excellence, and not enough on teaching quality and employability,' Halfon argued, pointing out that the elite Russell Group universities tend to perform poorly when it comes to the Government’s teaching excellence framework. Instead, Halfon thinks that if Universities continue to be 'lavishly' furnished with 'taxpayers’ money,' they need to start shifting their focus towards apprenticeships, providing graduates with real-world skills. As anyone who has discovered upon entering the real world that that dissertation on 13th century love poetry is not actually that useful when it comes to corporate meetings and excel spreadsheets will probably agree, Halfon might be onto something here. Holding Universities accountable for the value of what they offer students is also definitely a good thing. Especially when the price is a debt of £50,000.
For those of us already knee deep in that debt, however, it might not be the best news to wake up to on a cold Monday morning.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.