English post-18 review faces increasingly uncertain passage

It's vital that the 'value' of a degree be dissociated from the potential earning power of those graduating with that degree. Enhancing your salary is only a small part of the point of taking a degree. It's about learning to learn and to think, replacing an empty mind with an open and enquiring one, and delving deeply into a subject that has caught the student's interest. Many people's eventual career is not in the area that they studied anyway, so how much 'worth' can you put on their degree. My first degree is botany, I'm now a computer scientist who, after a commercial and teaching career, have now slithered into academia.