Universities should set student tuition fees according to how much a degree subject is valued by employers, a leading education economist has argued.
There will soon be too many arts and humanities graduates, and the value of their degrees is likely to fall below the cost of the tuition fees paid to obtain them, Anna Vignoles of the Institute of Education said.
Already recent graduates in some of these subjects earn no more than school leavers with A levels, and for young graduates the rate of return on a degree has fallen dramatically in the past eight years, she pointed out.
Article here.
3 comments:
This is an initiative that could recuce the extent of mismatch in teh labour market.
But there is a debate to be had over whether financial barriers to consumption preferences are desirable, as human capital investment isn't necessarily the motivation of every student.
Even if human capital investment is not the motivation of every student there is still an argument for pricing because these courses require partial (or total in the case of Ireland) public funds. In practice very few people at third level are studying flower arranging or accountancy-for-fun.
Given the level of public funding in the third-level sector, we may want to reflect on how our taxes are used to train the workforce.
But if a fresher wants to study journalism (reputedly extremely difficult to get into at the moment) at Griffith College, they may do this because they think it is fun.
This is where things get interesting as we observe prefernce formation that is either uninformed, unrealistic, based ona desire for consumption or perhaps just plain old ambitious (or hopeful).
It would be nice to unlock this, as while very few people at third level are studying flower accountancy for fun, a lot of people are studing arts without the faintest notion of what they will do afterwards.
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