Taxpayers, rather than universities, were the protagonist in this decisive mandate: the room treated poor employment outcomes as a test of whether public money was being put to work. The argument was not simply anti-university; it was a demand to stop making higher education the default and to scrutinise what the state is underwriting.
The floor’s most-respected Yes cases framed the issue as accountability rather than cultural punishment. “Public money is not a hobby fund,” said one, while another called for “a complete audit of all Universities courses”; the sharpest formulation was to “judge the degree by the outcome, not the prospectus.” Apprenticeships, vocational routes, fewer places and the possibility of letting weaker providers fail all appeared in the same case for a harder-edged funding system.
No voters answered that employment is too narrow and too unstable a measure for education. The strongest objection warned that stripping support from arts and humanities would “turn culture into a luxury hobby for posh kids with trust funds”, while another insisted that “Everyone has a right to choose the degree they want”. A further No voice put the distinction plainly: “University is about education, not just qualifications to get employment.”
The two sides often argued past each other. Yes voters focused on debt, taxpayer exposure and courses they regarded as commercially weak; No voters pointed to employer demand, regional wage differences, the lag between new courses and new jobs, and the social or intellectual value that may never appear in an earnings metric. Even some Yes arguments allowed exceptions for “genuine study of value to society”, suggesting the vote was for sharper conditions, not necessarily a single-minded purge of non-vocational subjects.
The room’s message was therefore severe but more qualified than its headline: public funding must now earn its place, without the debate settling what counts as value.
31 Opinions
University education is a perpetual motion money machine for Universities. Many degrees are worthless many lecturers useless but look at their salaries holidays & pension provisions. Another Blair boondoggle. There should be a complete audit of all Universities courses judged against various challenging educational criteria & I am not calling for purely Academic courses to be axed. Those failing should be shut down together with many Universities offering sub standard courses
Like it or no, higher education is a free market now where students are consumers. The sensible approach would be to either study for a professional prerequisite that can recoup the costs, avoid uni altogether and leverage A-Level or vocational training into a business vacancy, or eat the costs of your BA(Hons) in social science and don’t whine. Or if you think society doesn’t reward culture adequately set up a Go Fund Me and see how much value you really add.
After reading the question I though of a couple of subjects that probably wouldn't lead to employment. Yet University is about education, not just qualifications to get employment. What about the elderly, and those who want to learn different subjects, with no employment wanted? Are they going to be deprived of further education that interests them? University is a place of learning, development and discovery, don't make it less so.
Everyone has a right to choose the degree they want, it's called freedom to choose. If people are to be encouraged to pick different degrees then there has to be better incentive, more appeal made for this to happen. Taking funding away from some degrees is like forcing people to go against their own wishes.
If you strip funding from arts and humanities because they don't churn out City traders, you turn culture into a luxury hobby for posh kids with trust funds. A degree in creative arts or youth work adds massive societal value, even if our broken economy pays them peanuts.
Yes they should lose funding for courses that have no use in the work place.
Keep funding degrees where there’s a genuine need, but accept that not every degree is equally valuable. We shouldn’t make university the default when many jobs can be learned through apprenticeships or on thejob training.
They should lost public funding full stop. Then market will decide which will survive and which will disappear. Idea, that 50% of young people should be further brainwashed on pointless uni courses is terrible. In their majority they have no skills nor ambition to become an elite of this country.
University education should be available to all who qualify for it, not restricted by the availability of jobs on obtaining a degree! What obvious job is there for a student on a History & English Lit degree, for instance? But they will often work in a career that is enhanced by the skills they learn whilst on the course
There will always be a lag between education and job markets, especially with new technologies.