Thinking about this section of the Conservative manifesto:
"We will fund this by changing the law to close
university courses in England with the worst
outcomes for their students. Courses that
have excessive drop-out rates or leave students
worse off than had they not gone to university
will be prevented from recruiting students
by the universities regulator."

You know, that's going to be tricky to define because what happens to an individual is not what happens to the average. Very few people who study nuclear physics will end up as nuclear physicists: there just aren't that many jobs. Maybe they get a job in something else, but should they have been on a different physics course and we should shut the nuclear physics course?

Or take my daughter, who studied Philosophy. For the best part of a decade she was stuck on zero hour and short term contracts for very low wages, but is now Head of HR and Recruitment for her international firm on a pretty good salary. She credits the skills she learned on her course for a good part of that. Worthwhile course or not?

Humanities are all about evaluating arguments and multiple viewpoints, thinking about what things really mean and what lies behind what was said, seeing alternatives. Sciences and Maths less so. "Compare and contrast these two experiments"? I don't think so.


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