The government is trying to micromanage university degrees by attempting to cut down on the so-called Mickey Mouse degrees which are largely valueless in terms of career potential. Someone suggested that any university course which has the word “studies” at the end of it should be regarded as deeply suspect, with the notable exception of War Studies at Kings College, London, widely regarded as one of the very best university courses in the UK if not the world.

After expanding university admissions during the Blair years, the government now wishes to act against institutions that charge full fees for comparatively worthless qualifications. It now proposes that students who lack English and maths GCSEs, or two A-levels at grade E, should not qualify for a student loan in England. Their point is perhaps that students who graduate in courses such as “inequality studies” will go tens of thousands of pounds into debt for a qualification that will not help them into a job, except perhaps in an NGO promoting class division and conflict.

This is typical of government micromanagement, adding details in order to alleviate a problem that they themselves caused in the first place. The alternative to stepping deeply into more detail might be to step back and go into less detail. The government allows university students to take out loans, thereby giving its approval to university education as opposed to other career pathways that people might otherwise follow. Now it wants to specify which students shall be entitled to those loans.

It might instead seriously consider extending the availability of loans to all those reaching the age of 18 whether or not they choose to use those loans to pay for university education. Some of them might want to use that money to pay for equipment with which to build a career, or to go into business as budding entrepreneurs. Some of them might want to finance training schemes that will give them a qualification other than a university degree that might be more valuable to them in future employment. Instead of specifying the details of what they approve of and are prepared to sanction, the government might leave that to the individuals aged 18 to decide for themselves if they wish to take out a loan and how they might choose to use it.

The Civil Service, nearly all university educated, might recoil from the idea that individuals might want to decide things for themselves instead of being channeled into approved directions, but they might consider the effect such a move might have on social and economic inequality. The claim is often made that concentration on academic success holds back those from disadvantaged backgrounds, whereas such a move might allow them the opportunities to get ahead in fields that do not necessarily require the academic skills

To make loans available to all 18-year-olds would be a startling reform, but sometimes a system that doesn’t work needs to be replaced by one that does, instead of being merely tinkered with at the edges.