Close the universities - well, most of them at least
As the man got the Nobel - in part - for pointing out prices are information which we ignore at our peril:
Britain’s graduates ‘left on the scrapheap’ as entry-level jobs disappear
Cut-throat competition for fewer roles means even a first-class degree can’t guarantee work
The price of graduates has fallen. To, it appears, less than zero. Or, to be slightly more accurate, to less than the minimum wage that the law, in its majesty, insists any labour must be paid.
Graduate job postings in the 12 months to June are down 33pc compared to a year earlier, according to Indeed.
Not only are there fewer jobs on offer but there are also more university leavers. The numbers have climbed from 828,000 in the 2018/19 academic year to just over 1m in 2023/24 (including both postgraduate and undergraduate students).
Prices are telling us there is gross oversupply here. The answer to such is to reduce supply. Obviously and clearly.
Therefore close most of the universities and shrink those that remain.
Now, yes, we are perhaps amping up the point a little here. Turning it to eleven. But it is still true at heart. If no one wishes to employ graduates then we should stop producing graduates. This is no more a difficult piece of reasoning than closing the Morris Marina production line was. Devoting resources and energy into producing what is not wanted is a waste - a micturation - of the national wealth.
The original claim behind the expansion of the universities was that graduates got paid more than those unsullied by three years of study. As this turns out not to be true therefore the original claim is incorrect - therefore the decision should be reversed.
Sadly, as we’ve been known to point out, getting government or planning to undo an error is one of those near impossible things. It’s markets that crush, close, failures, it’s one of their grand merits. So we can go with more markets in tertiary education and allow those prices to do the job or we can hope that those Rolls Royce minds in Whitehall do. We could even use it as a little test. If those planners don’t then we know we’ve managed to hire the Trabbies for those jobs, don’t we?
Tim Worstall