An author and new Chancellor at the University of Essex has slammed the government’s criticism of some degrees.
The government wants to limit the number of courses that don’t get ‘good results’, such as those where a smaller proportion of students are pursuing a career.
dr Sarah Perry said the “value of the outcome of a university education cannot be reduced to a salary”.
The government said limiting such degrees could lead to an improvement.
dr Perry, who wrote The Essex Serpent, Melmoth, After Me Comes the Flood and non-fiction book Essex Girls, was announced as the new Chancellor this week.
In an interview with the BBC, she was told the government had said it wanted to put a cap on certain degrees that didn’t bring “good results” during the period.
She replied: “Our students are not cogs in a capitalist machine, they are not units of income.”
“[University education] It’s also about learning about the world that is big, wonderful, and insightful, learning ways of speaking, patterns of empathy, history, and language to put the world in context.
“It is perfectly reasonable that a student would want their degree to have such financial value, but we must also encourage them to see the benefit of this comprehensive learning in all possible subjects, not only for their job but for their whole life may have.” .”
The author added that “some would say it was an assault on the arts at the university level.”
“I think it’s really significant that I’m the first Chancellor of the University of Essex with an artistic background, which I’m very, very excited about,” she said.
dr Perry added that her main role at the university will be “to encourage and inspire students”.
“I think part of the reason I was invited to this role is because I’m an Essex girl and that’s an identity that wasn’t celebrated,” she said.
“It was ridiculed… and yet I’ve been fortunate enough to achieve more than I ever imagined.
“I also hope to show them that working in art is not a barrier to inhabiting the world in a very vibrant, vibrant and enriching way.”
Earlier this week, Education Secretary Robert Halfon told the BBC that capping underperforming qualifications will mean that those courses “then improve”.
“Students will be able to make informed decisions,” he said.
He said any course restrictions are a matter for the regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), not the government.
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