1. The issue

This past week the British government announced a ‘crackdown’ policy aimed at capping the number of students taking what it calls ‘rip-off university degrees’ in England.

In the press release published on GOV.UK, the Department for Education qualified these offending programmes as ‘courses that fail to deliver good outcomes, with high drop-out rates and poor employment prospects’ for students.

While the policy has some merit—in mandating that university courses aim to retain students and result in opportunities for further study or gainful employment for degree holders—the government’s use of harsh rhetoric to communicate it was misguided and played badly in the media.

2. The language

The OED defines the term ‘rip-off’ as ‘a fraud or swindle, especially something that is grossly overpriced’, or as ‘an inferior imitation.’ It’s commonly used in instances of consumer outrage when people feel robbed, giving it immoral, even criminal connotations and an angry tone.

This inflammatory rhetoric makes the policy—and the Government—sound callous and extreme.

Simply put, it’s unnecessary bloviation, and it's unpersuasive.

3. The facts

Starting in 2022, the Office for Students (OfS)—an independent regulatory body—launched a consultation to decide the ‘“minimum acceptable” standards’ for a university degree course, determined to be the following:

80 per cent of students to continue their studies;
75 per cent of students to complete their course;
60 per cent of students to go on to further study, professional work, or other positive outcomes, within 15 months of graduating.

In fact these are not unreasonable benchmarks, yet the Department for Education completely failed to communicate them effectively to the public due to their posturing.

4. The debate

At best, the Government’s harsh rhetoric doesn’t communicate the facts. At worst, it paints the Government like a task force running drug raids on universities.

This miscalculation undermines both the policy and the debate it demands.

Left-leaning outlets including the Guardian stress that critics say the policy ‘penalises courses with a high proportion of working-class or minority ethnic students’. It stands to reason that non-Russell Group universities will be most affected, given the greater accessibility of their courses to disadvantaged students.

The headlines across outlets have also skewed the news by referring to ‘low-value degrees’, which plays emotively on the notion of the Government devaluing the work of those institutions and the dreams and efforts of less-privileged pupils.

The moral argument all around is that students deserve quality courses in which to invest their time, efforts and money. How the quality of courses should be improved is the core issue to be debated.

5. The lesson

Referring to ‘crackdowns’ and ‘rip-offs’ lowers this discourse on the high subject of education to the low level of criminality.

The rhetoric does nothing to elevate or strengthen the profile of the Government in delivering this policy—which is a factor, at this stage, they should probably mind.