Interesting story in the Guardian reporting on a presentation at BERA conference
I’ve not seen the research so there isn’t a huge amount to go on here:
The government’s policy of expanding university education has reduced the value of arts and humanities degrees and lower tuition fees should be charged in these subjects…while degrees still have high value in the UK labour market, the study found evidence that recent graduates in some humanities and arts subjects are already being paid similar amounts to non-graduates.
However, all this would seem to suggest is that recent graduates in some subjects have yet to get ahead of their non-graduate peers in terms of earnings. What is not clear is whether that pattern is sustained over the next 40 years of work.
Moreover, a degree in any subject is not a guarantee of future high-salary success, just a very valuable investment for those who have such ambitions. Is it not therefore up to the prospective student to decide what they want to study and to judge the value of her/his potential investment? Will this lead to a major decline in applicants for English and History and mean that universities will start discounting on a £3,000 fee? I doubt it.
