Going to university is the most powerful single tool we have to boost the living standards and life chances of many young people.” These words were recently uttered, without irony, by the very man who helped to make getting a degree a much more unappealing proposition for Britain’s young people over a decade ago: the former Tory universities minister, David Willetts.
Hitting back at “edu-sceptics” this week in a report for King’s College London’s policy institute, he declared that higher education was still very much not a waste of money. “If you were a doctor, you would prescribe more education,” Willetts said, citing studies suggesting that higher education is a driver of better physical and mental health.
