Okay, you asked for it.
Fallacy a) 'university numbers has devalued degrees'
Firstly, university degrees do not go out of fashion, and labour markets do not act in the simple supply/demand diagram bullshit that the modern economists threw out last century.
What do I mean go out of fashion? Firstly a lot of degrees, especially mathematical and scientific, simply can't be 'devalued'; under literally any employability circumstance, these degrees are going to separate the wheat from the chaff. Secondly, the global market for skilled operators is increasing drastically with the BRIC economies rise to power, and has been since the second world war. Britain is one of the biggest exporters of education and professionals in the whole world, and education is literally free money for universities/Britain. Under no economic circumstances can anyone say that Britain should stop accepting overseas students (who make up roughly half of all immigrants, as well. Yes, they do have to pass an English test). Even for niche degrees, there are still expanding markets looking for people with 2:1's or firsts in certain, sometimes highly niche industries. Thirdly, if someone does choose a niche degree or a degree that doesn't have an expanding local market, they can re-train, and in my opinion, retraining is better than having no training at all.
Secondly, degrees are not devalued from university numbers; much more importantly they are 'devalued' because of the market forces that shape the industry that they are in. It's not a surprise that a lot of physicists and potential physicists will end up unemployed for at least some time if NASA and US defense dept. suddenly shut down. As you can see this isn't an education problem, this is a problem with society, that it has an opportunity cost. I understand that if you take a degree in fixing franking machines you might have trouble finding a job, but see paragraph one.
Then, there's the personal economic benefits. People with a degree are half as likely to be unemployed than people without, and in the same light, the vast majority of people in the west rise out of poverty through some education system. People with degrees on average earn about half a million pounds more over their lifetime than their non-degree counterparts, and it's all taxable, firstly from the 10% of gross income that they have to pay for their uni debt and then the higher tax brackets that they will pay through because of their higher earnings.
Fallacy b) 'Universities impose financial burdens upon the nation at large'.
There's multiple layers to this one, but I'll start with taking the fallacy at face value.
Firstly, the 'financial burden upon the nation at large' is not 'at large', it's on the state. As anyone that's studied the modern financial system, they should understand that states, out of everything, are able to carry the largest financial burden possible. Interestingly, by being in debt, states are able to grow their respective economies quicker by borrowing off their own banks (which gives the banks interest, keeping them happy and more stable) and investing the money into economic infrastructure, things like education, UNIVERSITIES, public infrastructure, UNIVERSITIES, things that lead to a long-term strong economic infrastructure, stuff like UNIVERSITIES, which promotes and multiplies long-term growth. Of course, if industries are growing the government has more to tax without having to raise taxes (although it should in some respects), and thus the government is able to 'balance it's books'. This is why almost every government runs a deficit, because it's more 'efficient'.
Secondly, it's barely a 'financial burden'; student debt in 2040 is going to be a loss 0.6% of GDP: This is literally fuck-all, especially in comparison to, I don't know, global warming, the elderly crisis, bankers etc.. Even when we're in a recession such as now, 1% increase in GDP is pretty fucking easy and we've been awkwardly waltzing between a percent up and a percent down for over six years. Either way, this loss of 0.6% is child's play in comparison to the benefits we shall reap, collectively, by being educated to a higher standard than most other countries. Even in a recent article that was linked to me, an independent economist said 'what was lost through non-repayment was "small" when compared with the extra tax revenue from graduate earnings'. Winning.
Lastly, the Student Loan Company/Government reserves the right to not fund universities and students. Thing is, there's so many academics and students that are literally vital to our economic situation. So many UK cities, especially the northern, rely on the business that universities supply. So many businesses approach universities asking to use their academics, and when the academics aren't working with companies or teaching they're advancing their fields with their small armies of Ph.D students. I mean, where would biology be if Watson or Crick were never able to get a spot in Cavendish? Or Feynman wasn't able to get his scholarship? Truth is, intelligence is proportioned normally, in comparison to economic class; sadly, privatised education isn't.
Fallacy c) 'There's an irrational culture of overqualification'
Why is being well qualified a bad thing? 'overqualification', or as everyone else calls it, underemployment, occurs when either industries are shrinking, in which case it isn't just the postgrads that are out of work, or when the labour markets are too rigid, in which case governments need to provide retraining or provide help people to move into other markets, such as the international markets. This 'irrational culture of overqualification' is effectively the same as saying 'god-damnit Mitch, you're just too smart for your own good'. Although I disagree with the former, it seems like after writing this I can't deny the latter. The only time I've ever heard of overqualification being an actual problem uninfluenced by the labour market was of a friends mother who had 3 respected degrees who had become a stay-at-home-mum because no-one could pay her high enough. I'm assuming that people in that situation are well off enough that there's worse situations.
Fallacy d) 'dumbed down education standards of this country'
I'm sorry, but we've been a massive exporter of both professionals and education in the global markets for decades now, unlike the Americans (which have to import theirs, because of their poor education system). If we have 'dumbed down education standards' we should be educating people at a higher level for longer. If we're having teachers that can't teach, we should increase their wages so it becomes a competitive market and thus get some more raw talent in. Either way, this argument doesn't have any weighting.
Fallacy e) 'The education industry has become too large and too expensive to maintain'
The education industry is both efficient and pays dividends in multiple ways, much moreso than quite a few Western countries. Through economies of scale we pay less for our education infrastructure per capita than most other places in the world and we have some of the most prestigious students, academics and universities around. If we are finding that there's leakages in our education system, we shouldn't be changing schools to academies, which become legal companies, of which we need to be reclaiming profits which are being siphoned away from the education system and into the hands of governors through nationalisation or nationalising profits from universities.
Anyone got anything else?
