AI is the final blow for Mickey Mouse degrees

Damian Pudner has an interesting CAPX piece on what he sees as the inevitable failure of Tony Blair's ambition for 50% of young adults to enter higher education.


AI is the final blow for Mickey Mouse degrees

• Tony Blair's ambition for 50% of young adults to enter higher education has resulted in a bloated, expensive sector
• AI is threatening to demolish the economics of university education
• Taxpayers should not be expected to bail out failed institutions

Ever since Tony Blair set his ambition for 50% of young adults to enter higher education, successive governments have promoted university as the route to prosperity. The result is a bloated, expensive sector that has spent decades expanding on the assumption that more students, more degrees and more universities must somehow be a good thing.

The whole piece is well worth reading as another reminder of the lasting damage Tony Blair managed to cram into his time as UK Prime Minister. 

Politicians need to accept the Blair-era experiment of mass university education has run its course. AI could administer the final blow to institutions that have spent decades expanding their costs and inflating the price of their qualifications.

Universities have spent decades teaching economics while apparently believing its most basic principles don’t apply to them. They’re about to receive a rather expensive lesson.