{"text":[[{"start":9.4,"text":"In the final year of studying the UK’s most popular undergraduate course, Marcos Green is wondering what he has got out of it. "}],[{"start":17.4,"text":"“The actual degree itself is much easier than I thought,” he says of the business-related degree he is studying at the fast-growing Canterbury Christ Church University. “The work is pretty simple. I genuinely think anyone could probably get the degree.” "}],[{"start":31.349999999999998,"text":"Green, 22, from outside Margate in Kent, is considering working in recruiting, but has many friends in careers that do not require a degree. “I think a degree apprenticeship would be more practical,” he concludes."}],[{"start":44.3,"text":"Analysis of government data supports this scepticism. Full-time business and management undergraduates are more likely to drop out and less likely to progress to a good job than those on any other category of course, including creative arts and humanities. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":61.199999999999996,"text":"Five years after graduating, business students had an average annual salary of £33,200, less than those with a nursing degree and far behind graduates in medicine and economics, according to official figures for the 2022-23 tax year."}],[{"start":77.5,"text":"Employers increasingly question the value of a business qualification. “If you’re a 21-year-old graduate with a business degree, am I going to give you a job? Not in a million years,” says Steve Tellwright, people and quality director at Capula, a Staffordshire electrical engineering business that employs 450 people. "}],[{"start":97.3,"text":"Long associated with elite graduate MBAs, business schools have embraced the mass market. One in five undergraduates is now studying it and enrolments have risen 57 per cent over the past decade, far outstripping the 16 per cent increase in overall undergraduate numbers."}],[{"start":113.94999999999999,"text":"British universities have been expanding since the 1960s, with the pace accelerating in the 1990s after Tony Blair’s government set a goal of getting half of school leavers into higher education. "}],[{"start":125.99999999999999,"text":"But for business degrees, the big spark for expansion was the coalition government’s lifting of caps on student numbers in England in 2015, designed to create a market in higher education. "}],[{"start":138.1,"text":"Universities have expanded business degrees because “they are popular, students see them as high earning and they are cheap to provide”, says Lorraine Dearden, professor of economics and social statistics at University College London. “Very bad economics drove this switch and the taxpayer and graduates are paying for it now.”"}],[{"start":156.65,"text":"Newer universities, including Canterbury Christ Church, have used business degrees to subsidise other courses and often outsource the teaching to franchisees."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":166.5,"text":"Alan Milburn, a former Labour minister leading a review into why so many young people are not in work or training, says higher education funding is “basically a bums-on-seats model — it’s all about activity, but it’s not about outcomes”. "}],[{"start":179.6,"text":"Iain Mansfield, head of education at the Policy Exchange think-tank and a former civil servant in the Department for Education, says students “are taking out a lifetime of debt at 18 with no checks in an environment [that is] totally unregulated. You know that in a good chunk of these courses, taxpayers will be picking up [a lot of] the tab,” he adds. "}],[{"start":198.4,"text":"Advocates of the expansion counter that business courses are widening access to higher education and spreading opportunity to groups of people who would never have gone to university in the past."}],[{"start":209.75,"text":"Professor Stewart Robinson, chair of the Chartered Association of Business Schools, acknowledges the courses are “significant revenue generators for their parent universities” but says they “equip graduates with a broad range of transferable skills, from leadership and finance to marketing”."}],[{"start":227.6,"text":"He instead attributes relatively low post-graduation earnings to Britain’s weak economic growth, and argues that many graduates go on to lead organisations or start their own businesses. "}],[{"start":238.54999999999998,"text":"The relatively low entry requirements at many institutions are, for Robinson, evidence that “business and management are among the most successful degree courses in promoting social mobility”."}],[{"start":250.04999999999998,"text":"But the vice-chancellor of one long-established university says that some students “are being sold a lie”. "}],[{"start":256.9,"text":"“Some of these people may be the first in their family to go to university and they don’t realise it’s not what a degree would be 30 years ago,” he adds."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":264.5,"text":"Alessia Latorre is doing a foundation year that will allow her to progress to an accounting and finance degree at Canterbury Christ Church. The 28-year-old, who moved from Rome to London without qualifications, describes the course as “lovely” and praises the university for “taking everyone”. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":281.95,"text":"Latorre is in many ways a more typical Canterbury Christ Church undergraduate than Green. A majority of its students are admitted without A-levels and are older than British school leavers. Although they enrol as home students, many originally came from overseas."}],[{"start":297.55,"text":"Tapping into this demographic group helped the university to more than triple its full-time undergraduate numbers to 33,515 between 2015 and 2025. By the end of that period, eight in 10 students were taking business-related subjects against 12 per cent at the start of it. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":317.35,"text":"Canterbury is also one of six universities in England where the majority of students are taught by franchisees; in 2023-24, 79 per cent of full-time undergraduates were taught through franchise providers."}],[{"start":330.6,"text":"Latorre’s course is delivered by Global Banking School, a company that evolved from offering financial training into one of the largest providers of vocational and degree courses, working with universities including Suffolk, Bath Spa and Oxford Brookes. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":344.65000000000003,"text":"The shift to franchising has caused concern at the Office for Students, which regulates higher education in England. It has introduced new registration requirements for larger providers. It did not single out Canterbury Christ Church or Global Banking School, but said there were worries about “poor practices” in some franchise arrangements, including a lack of oversight about what is taught. "}],[{"start":366.70000000000005,"text":"In Stratford, an east London suburb 60 miles from Canterbury, a Victorian church, a 1930s town hall and a modern office block are among the buildings used as lecture theatres for Christ Church undergraduates. Some of the university’s other students in Stratford are taught in a college run by a local businessman who also has interests in retail, property and day care. "}],[{"start":389.55000000000007,"text":"Most of the students the FT spoke to in Stratford had first settled in the UK, then enrolled on courses using the UK student loan system to try and improve their prospects."}],[{"start":400.00000000000006,"text":"Professor Sandra McNally, director of the education and skills programme at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, says it often makes sense for them and others to try university. "}],[{"start":411.3500000000001,"text":"“It opens doors for you that just wouldn’t be available otherwise,” she says. “It would be harder to [say that] if there were other things people could be doing. But the reality is there aren’t.” "}],[{"start":421.9000000000001,"text":"Latorre is optimistic that her degree will lead to a job in accountancy, and has taken out a student loan to cover fees and living costs. “I think it’s a good investment,” she says. "}],[{"start":432.3500000000001,"text":"But measuring whether a degree delivers a return is not straightforward. While graduates from some universities may not earn much, they could well have earned even less had they not taken a degree. "}],[{"start":444.05000000000007,"text":"After 13 years working on building sites, Daniel Dimitrov sees the business degree he is pursuing as the path to starting his own company. The Bulgarian chuckles that “the government pays to invest in me” through the student loan system. But he does not plan to be in Britain to worry about paying it off: “My future is in Asia.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":462.6000000000001,"text":"Matt Dickson, professor of economic and social policy at the University of Bath, argues that many newer universities “do really well [at return on investment] once you adjust for the intake”. "}],[{"start":475.1000000000001,"text":"His research on business students who went to university in the late 2000s found that while traditional universities offered the biggest returns, some new institutions such as Leeds Trinity also scored highly. Others, including Canterbury Christ Church, offered male students little prospect of earning more by the age of 29 than they would have done had they not gone to university. "}],[{"start":497.00000000000006,"text":"Others caution that it is hard to draw a complete picture of graduate earnings after five years. Graduates have previously seen wage growth continue during their thirties and forties in a way that isn’t typical of careers such as nursing, though much of this data was collected before the post-2015 expansion of student numbers."}],[{"start":515.7,"text":"In a statement, Canterbury Christ Church said it was consistently ranked highly for number of graduates in employment and that “widening participation and ensuring greater access to higher education” was a priority. "}],[{"start":527.7,"text":"It added that working with franchisees allowed it “to extend this commitment, bringing the benefits of higher education to a broader and more diverse range of students, many of whom may not otherwise have the opportunity to pursue it”. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":541.4000000000001,"text":"Diana Prodan, another Canterbury Christ Church student in the Stratford area, is coming to the end of her business and tourism degree and starting to apply for jobs, so far without success. "}],[{"start":552.2,"text":"She has taken out full loans for fees and maintenance and believes that attending university will give her more opportunity. “But how I pay it back is another challenge,” she adds."}],[{"start":563.35,"text":"Patrick Milnes, head of people and work policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, says that degrees on their own “do not always equip graduates with the hands-on capabilities employers need from day one” and that many of the firms it represents “value practical skills and experience more”. "}],[{"start":580.85,"text":"Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, says rapid expansion has left business degrees “really variable” in terms of delivering what companies are looking for. "}],[{"start":592.85,"text":"The same is true of earnings for business graduates. Those with management degrees from Oxford earn an average of £93,800 five years after graduation — the highest return for any undergraduate course. Earnings among business graduates from Russell Group universities are typically over £50,000."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":612.15,"text":"But data from the Office for Students also shows that only 82 per cent of business students continue into a second year of study, and just 63 per cent are in a managerial or professional job or further study 15 months after graduating. In both cases, these outcomes were the worst among 10 subject areas assessed by the regulator."}],[{"start":633.5,"text":"This affects loan repayments. Higher earners tend to repay their loans in full, whereas those on lower salaries are more likely to have a portion of theirs written off, at a cost to taxpayers. The government currently forecasts that it will in effect write off 29 per cent of the money advanced to current students. "}],[{"start":650.8,"text":"“The way we have accidentally set up state subsidies within higher education is bizarre,” says Baroness Alison Wolf, professor of public-sector management in the business school at King’s College London."}],[{"start":662.65,"text":"“We’ve got this crazy system in which the state subsidy is much higher for people taking degrees that mean they won’t earn much — and a lot of the lowest-earning degrees have seen the biggest increases in funding.”"}],[{"start":673.8,"text":"Wolf says far more effort needs to be made to give young people other non-academic options. “It’s really easy to expand university,” she says. “It’s much harder to expand apprenticeships, because the employer has to play ball . . . our number one priority should be improving the apprenticeship alternative.”"}],[{"start":692.3499999999999,"text":"Dickson adds that the lack of alternatives to a degree has been compounded by the student loan system. “If you want to go to university the funding route is very clear. But if you want to do a further education course either there isn’t one, or you’ve got to live at home and there’s no money for maintenance,” he says. “Those incentives funnel people into higher education even if it’s not the right fit for them.”"}],[{"start":715.7499999999999,"text":"Tellwright, at the electrical engineering group, now almost exclusively recruits school leavers to do degree apprenticeships in technical subjects, arguing that management training is best left until later. "}],[{"start":727.9999999999999,"text":"“I’d much rather bring them in, give them 5-10 years, and then do a qualification,” he says. “There are way too many business degrees out there.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":737.6999999999999,"text":"There are growing calls to make information on outcomes far more accessible, so applicants know what they are getting. “Students often get more information when buying a new phone than when signing up for a degree,” says Sir David Behan, who led a government review into higher education regulation in 2024. "}],[{"start":756.3,"text":"Wolf says the huge expansion of higher education has gone unchallenged because “in a democracy it’s very hard to turn around and say to your citizens ‘your kids are not going to be getting a crack at university’.” "}],[{"start":768.55,"text":"But she adds that Britain is “coming close to a cultural tipping point when even middle-class parents start thinking apprenticeships might be better”."}],[{"start":776.6999999999999,"text":"Despite defending the value of degrees for most students, the LSE’s McNally also says that “ideally what you’d want is to have a more developed higher education market with other options as well, including vocational options. That hasn’t happened yet.”"}],[{"start":790.8,"text":"The Department for Education said in a statement that it was “providing more options for young people, including through the introduction of V Levels, to support the prime minister’s target of two-thirds of young people taking a gold-standard apprenticeship, higher training or heading to university by the age of 25”."}],[{"start":808.8,"text":"But critics argue that the proliferation of poor-quality degrees is disenfranchising both students and taxpayers. If figures were available on government subsidy for specific degrees “there would be a lot more noise about closing courses”, argues Dickson, at the University of Bath. "}],[{"start":824.25,"text":"“If individuals aren’t getting a return on a business degree and everyone else is picking up the tab, there are questions about whether that’s a good investment by anybody.”"}],[{"start":840.25,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1777037070_7840.mp3"}