The degree arms race is bad for everyone

When every job becomes professional, you devalue education and shut out less bookish applicants

Exam season is upon us again. I feel sorry for the conscientious, motivated students who are on course to do well, because it’s predicted that there will be a bumper number of first-class degrees awarded, prompting renewed calls for a ludicrous “starred first” classification for “exceptional” candidates.

Grade inflation? That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that it’s all part of the general, wholesale lowering of standards in education. It’s not just the first-class degrees that don’t automatically earn respect, it’s university degrees full stop.

The university degree is no longer about academic excellence or intellectual adventure. It has become a sort of cure-all magic wand, a panacea that can right wrongs or improve anything, a weapon to combat social injustice, a passport to prosperity. And so everyone should have one – nurses are now required to be educated to degree level, and soon police officers will be, too.

The degree arms race is a result of the prizes-for-all attitude that has permeated the school system, the bums-on-seats competition between universities, middleclass embarrassment about being middle class, and the Left’s obsession with social engineering.

Is it a good thing for a policeman to be savvy in computer science or to be able to banter in Mandarin? Of course. Is it a good idea for nurses to have an understanding of chemistry? No one would argue with that. But there’s a difference between rigorous training, which in the case of police officers is probably best administered by experienced police officers, and a degree, which should have a serious academic threshold. So either you have a debased degree, or you run the risk of turning away less educated applicants who might make excellent police officers, if not outstanding chief constables.

There’s no question that the best police officers are the ones who are good with people; that’s something that’s hard, if not impossible, to teach, and certainly nothing to do with a degree. And surely one of the most important qualifications for nursing is compassion, concern for others – again, something that tends to be innate.

The premise that getting a degree will automatically make you irresistible to employers is questionable, too. If everyone has a degree, how does that make you stand out? And if employers notice that graduates are incapable of writing a coherent report, why should they rate a university degree?

Some of the students doing undemanding arts degrees today would probably be financially better off learning how to be a carpenter or an electrician, and would enjoy greater future independence. Yet even with the numbers applying for apprenticeships in decline, the obsession with getting more young people to university grows more and more absurd.

Cambridge University is now considering a foundation year for students “who have experienced educational disadvantage”, to encourage more applicants from state schools, ethnic minorities and low-income families. I don’t know why there aren’t more successful applicants from those “educationally disadvantaged” groups, but the idea that they are somehow shut out because they’re not as polished or erudite as the kid from Eton doesn’t stand up to examination. The Left-wing dons are desperate to give a place to students from the bottom of the pile. And the handful of Right-wing dons? It’s their dream to find a maths genius from a council estate in Tower Hamlets.

Handing everyone a piece of paper called a degree isn’t going to solve society’s problems or usher in Nirvana. The big problem is not inequality but poverty: if I’m earning £1 million a year, it’s not a scandal if others are earning £20 million.

As a teacher of creative writing, let me point out some of the writers who didn’t bother with university at all: Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, William Blake, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot. University isn’t (and shouldn’t be) for everyone – not if it’s to mean something.