Media Studies is vital; PPE is a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree.

The hedge-fund hearted, soulless Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, used the Telegraph to attack universities again.

Previously: The Assassination of Objective Reality by the Coward Fraser Nelson
The Spectator editor's response to the Huw Edwards story and The Sun's grim ethical vacuum is another column in praise of the 'free' press

---

Only three post-war Prime Ministers have had no university education — Winston Churchill, who went to the military academy Sandhurst instead; James Callaghan, who passed the exam to attend Oxford but could not afford to go and joined the Civil Service as a tax inspector instead; and John Major, who left school with three O-levels and became a clerk aged 16.

Five post-war Prime Ministers — so far — have studied the Politics, Philosophy and Economics course at Oxford: Harold Wilson (Labour), Edward Heath (Tory), David Cameron (Tory), Liz Truss (Tory), and Rishi Sunak (Tory). In 2017, The Guardian published a long read headlined PPE: the Oxford degree that runs Britain in which Andy Beckett observed:

Monday, 13 April 2015 was a typical day in modern British politics. An Oxford University graduate in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE), Ed Miliband, launched the Labour party’s general election manifesto. It was examined by the BBC’s political editor, Oxford PPE graduate Nick Robinson, by the BBC’s economics editor, Oxford PPE graduate Robert Peston, and by the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Oxford PPE graduate Paul Johnson. It was criticised by the prime minister, Oxford PPE graduate David Cameron. It was defended by the Labour shadow chancellor, Oxford PPE graduate Ed Balls.

Elsewhere in the country, with the election three weeks away, the Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury, Oxford PPE graduate Danny Alexander, was preparing to visit Kingston and Surbiton, a vulnerable London seat held by a fellow Lib Dem minister, Oxford PPE graduate Ed Davey. In Kent, one of Ukip’s two MPs, Oxford PPE graduate Mark Reckless, was campaigning in his constituency, Rochester and Strood. Comments on the day’s developments were being posted online by Michael Crick, Oxford PPE graduate and political correspondent of Channel 4 News.

On the BBC Radio 4 website, the Financial Times statistics expert and Oxford PPE graduate Tim Harford presented his first election podcast. On BBC1, Oxford PPE graduate and Newsnight presenter Evan Davies conducted the first of a series of interviews with party leaders. In the print media, there was an election special in the Economist magazine, edited by Oxford PPE graduate Zanny Minton-Beddoes; a clutch of election articles in the political magazine Prospect, edited by Oxford PPE graduate Bronwen Maddox; an election column in the Guardian by Oxford PPE graduate Simon Jenkins; and more election coverage in the Times and the Sun, whose proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, studied PPE at Oxford.

More than any other course at any other university, more than any revered or resented private school, and in a manner probably unmatched in any other democracy, Oxford PPE pervades British political life.

Just as Etonians have dominated the office of Prime Minister since it was established under Robert Walpole (an Etonian), since it was established 102 years ago, PPE has had a stranglehold on British politics and journalism. It is the degree that broke Britain; a Mickey Mouse course that produces class after class of chancers, people who can pretend they understand anything while being good at nothing but bullshitting. Surprisingly, however, the world king of bullshitting, the Old Etonian Boris Johnson studied Classics (and never shuts up about it). However, his cabinet and gang of advisors were lousy with PPE grads.

If more people in journalism took Media Studies instead of PPE, today’s policy story from the government that Rishi Sunak wants to free students from “low-quality degrees” would have gotten more scrutiny. It isn’t about ‘value for money’ or caring about students but rather an attack on anyone other than the rich having aspirations to study subjects that aren’t vocational courses or degrees specifically designed to provide easily malleable economic units for businesses.

In The Daily Telegraph today, Rishi Sunak offered an op-ed so boring that the paper stuck it at the bottom of page 4. He writes:

Put simply: our young people are being ripped off. They’re being saddled with tens of thousands of pounds of debt from bad degrees that just leave them poorer, and dissuaded from pursuing more vocational options because they are led to believe that university is the only route to success. It’s not fair on them – and it’s not fair on you as taxpayers, forced to pick up a big chunk of the bill despite getting nothing back for our economy.

One of the government’s measurements of “value for money” is that a course delivers a ‘good job’ — it’s not so good at defining that, unsurprisingly — within 15 months. That knocks out many careers, including in the NHS and social care as well as almost every job in the arts or journalism unless you’re already a rich kid. Curiously enough, Classics — a degree that often sends its graduates to jobs in investment banking, not because of their Latin declension but their family connections - is not included on the ‘low-value’ list.

The Tories wave their hands over what constitutes a ‘good job’ because if they discussed the NHS and social care, the debate would inevitably focus on the way the government has not paid medical and care staff properly nor respected how difficult their jobs actually are on a daily basis.

Pretending that degrees that don’t immediately lead to ‘well-paid’ roles are a rip-off is red meat for the Sun, Mail, and Telegraph readers to whom Sunak is trying so hard to appeal and ignores that the UK’s creative industry contributed £109 billion to the economy in 2021 (5% of the total). But the economic argument is a bloodless one and it accepts the framing from Sunak and his hedge-funded hearted, top-down class war perpetrators.

The plan to attack this so-called scourge of ‘low-value’ degrees is that the ones deemed crap by the government and its quangos will have their places reduced. Effectively, it will simply become harder for working class people to make those choices in the higher education market that Tories and Labour alike foisted upon us; you’re forced to pay huge amount of money to study and the government can ensure that you’re not allowed to pick the subject you want. The Tories ‘love’ ‘free’ markets until they don’t.

Also in the Telegraph, the paper’s pet former Labour MP, Tom Harris, writes:

New Labour used its time in power to establish itself as the party of mass university education. It heralded the advent of too many courses of study that, in hindsight, were perhaps not value for money for the graduates who ended up paying for them for decades afterwards, or the taxpayer who had to foot the bill for those students whose loans have been partially or fully written off. 

Education is a social good in and off itself; a better educated population will be happier and more able to choose a life that works for them. But that’s not what the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, and their donors (frequently the same people) want; they want their children and their friends’ children to have choices and for the rest of us to learn only things that make us more useful employees.

The newspapers who back this narrowing of choice and opportunity are full of PPE graduates and the children of the rich whose own children will never be told they cannot afford to aspire to bigger things. Posh kids can study History of Art or Drama because they have a safety net; their degrees will never be called ‘Mickey Mouse’ because they themselves are considered better than the plebs.

Many people go into jobs that have nothing to do with the headline subject of their degree. The point for many employers is that you can learn skills and you have talents that can be applied to what their organisation does. The idea that any degree is ‘low value’ is in the eye of the beholder. If you can prove you can think creatively or learn new skills quickly, smart employers will value that, but ‘Business’, that angry grumbling blob, should not decide what we value about education or whether young people should be students.

I’m writing this in late afternoon on Monday, 17 July 2023, before Tuesday’s columns and leaders go online. I predict that many more will howl about ‘rip off’ degrees, with their writers conspicuously avoiding any mention of their own academic careers or what their little darlings did at university. One lesson that every British columnist and editor learns is how to smirk through hypocrisy.

---

Thanks for reading. Please share this edition…

… and consider upgrading to a paid subscription (you’ll get a bonus and I’ll be able to keep writing these stories):