... MOAR FAIL.
"Ok, im going to stoke the fire on this one, in my opinion a degree is a "degree of excellence" ie it should be only for those with exceptional abilities within an academically excepted subject."
No. this is not true and it's "accepted" not excepted. For example the majority of graduates since Universities began during the Norman period we're not populated by such people. Most came from rich backgrounds a few from exceptionally poor. In addition many many geniuses from the time of written history onwards were not University educated. People like Thomas Paine for example, son of a corset maker... became one of the fathers of American Independence, taught himself. No my friend University is not about excellence it's about learning how to think.
"There are three especially pernicious lies:
That university education is for everybody;"
No the issue here is that people believe getting certificates equates with better pay and work, this is not the point of University. The point of University is to make people think, is to show people the world is not black and white, it is to prepare them for the task of having to understand how the world works, a key fundamental for any citizen dealing with conundrum of who should run the country... Though I guess we could go back an era where 70% of the electorate voted based on the Sun and who it sponsors.
The real issue here is that compulsory education up to 16 does not equip young people with the mental faculties to be going citizens, this is why we have a pretend democracies run buy Foreign Investors, The Markets & Big Business.
"Only fund science, maths, medicine and engineering courses/students. If you wanna learn something else you're welcome to it but you're paying full price."
Yes, if you believe that human beings only need to understand the empirical sciences to exist as a civilization then by all means just stick to that. Though as we have noted scientists time and again have no moral compass (A-Bomb, Gas Chambers... etc) and that they are easily led astray by ill meaning politicians. That is why we need to have Philosophy, Political Science, Languages, History etc (I assume Geography, Geology, Psychology and so fourth would come under you banner of empirical studies). Furthermore than that we need Musicians, Artists and the such to make our time on this planet more colourful than that of the machine man in the machine society that you envisage.
In closing the real problem here is two fold, firstly the belief and perhaps truth that Graduates are superior to others, this is not so much the case now but it would be if we restricted entry, this in itself causes problems with regards society. People believe falsely that a Graduate of Mathematics for example would make a better MP than a Master Craftsman and so we return to a society where the Glass Ceiling gets thicker.
Secondly the compulsory education system is the root cause of this, many people would not need to go to university if the education provided by the age of 16 or 18 was to such a standard that the recipients were able to think for themselves. I would suggest to begin with that we scrap RE and replace it with Philosophy, secondly I would argue that Political Science should be a compulsory course as should Economics and Computer Science (Not IT) at KS3, GCSE & A'Level. It is clear that as a Nation we are not teaching children to think freely and critically, we are merely programming them to do jobs and denying them the ability and mental tools to ask Why?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
