So: we currently charge the same for a humanities degree as a STEM degree and subsidise the latter from the former, because the alternative is that only posh kids can do medicine. But now the idea would be that only posh kids can do humanities (even tho they cost less to teach)? https://twitter.com/thhamilton/status/1284751485927133184

So poor kids get channelled into practical science and rich kids get allowed to muse about the world like Boris Johnson with his Classics or whatever it is degree. Except actually lots of rich kids decide they want the STEM higher salaries anyway, and humanities cease to exist.

University should be free at the point of access, fees simply shouldn’t exist, and part of the reason I believe this so strongly is that allowing education to be treated like a market undos all the work that you might try to do in widening participation or access.

This alternative interpretation shows how financially stupid this model is. If you keep science courses cheap by increasing humanities fees, so all your students decide to do the cheap science courses not the pricey hums ones: how do you pay for them? https://twitter.com/katherineschof8/status/1284763262563815425?s=20

(Lots of people pointing out that STEM salaries aren’t actually higher than humanities salaries — esp. if poor kids are funnelled into, say, nursing rather than pharma research. And that’s true but the government *believes* STEM salaries are higher, & that’s how it’d be marketed)

ALSO given how much we have been told that education should all be about CHOICE, student CHOICE, giving students CHOICE, this mad social engineering doesn’t seem to acknowledge that students mostly choose degrees in subjects that they enjoy and are good at...