University courses should be about acquiring skills, not just a job

Pete Dorey and Pat Stevenson respond to a letter that made the argument for employers funding universities. What a depressingly narrow, economistic view of university education your correspondent .He complains that “the courses that universities offer … aren’t what the economy needs and so aren’t maximising returns”, but instead, are “the courses students want to study, not what society and employers value most”. Why does he assume that, instead of being institutions of advanced education and academic study, universities should only supply degrees in subjects that employers or big business want? If fee-paying students want to study geography, English literature or history, why shouldn’t they? Would a Soviet-style education system be preferable, in which the state dictates what can and cannot be studied, based solely on what the economy is deemed to need at any given moment? To me, education is inherently worthwhile – but I am probably a deluded old dinosaur.

Besides, the assumption that degrees are only worthwhile if they are in subjects that clearly lead directly to a particular career (astrophysics, medicine, etc), or attract a large salary, ignores the fact that many employers are mostly interested in the skills acquired in studying for a degree: analysis, evaluation, communication, interpretation, time-management, clarity of arguments, and so on.

Those skills are intrinsic to the much-maligned arts and humanities degrees, which it has become fashionable to sneer at due to our boorish anti-intellectualism and a dumbed-down, celebrity-obsessed culture that knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.