Is LEO ‘Orwellian'? Earnings, Willetts, OfS, Creative Arts, and the Cost of Higher Education

The cost of higher education to the taxpayer is determined in part by the choice of subject and institution made by students. The Augar report on higher education noted that there was an oversupply of ‘low value' courses and called on the government to ‘bear down on low value courses' and ‘target courses better aligned with the economy's needs'.1 Until recently there was no reliable data to identify such courses or the institutions supplying them. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has utilised recently available longitudinal education data on earnings, courses and institutions to rectify this deficiency. Many of the lowest earning courses are in the creative arts. Not everyone is happy with using earnings to measure the value of courses. This paper discusses the IFS estimates of graduate earnings and the public cost of higher education, as well as the criticisms of using earnings data to measure the value of courses and institutions.