Braverman urges GCSE students getting results not to study ‘pointless degrees’
Harry Taylor, David Lynch and Nina Lloyd, Press Association Political Staff
Young people getting their GCSE results should not “waste your time studying for a pointless degree at a mediocre university”, Suella Braverman has said.
The Reform UK education spokesperson made the comment as she set out the party’s plans to create 600,000 more apprenticeship starts a year by the end of the first term of a Reform government.
Ms Braverman announced Reform would offer small and medium-sized businesses a 30% rebate on apprentices’ wages between 16 and 18, in a bid to get more young people into work by removing some of the costs businesses face in employing them.
The party would also offer the same businesses a £2,000 apprentice retention bonus if they keep workers on for two years.
Reform estimates its plans would cost between £1.5 billion and £2 billion over the course of a five-year parliament.
The party would pay for this by banning all foreign students from claiming taxpayer-funded student loans, and by scrapping “Mickey Mouse” degrees.
As she set out the policy, Ms Braverman addressed students receiving their exam results, telling them: “My advice to those young people today getting their results, my advice to those grandparents and those parents looking at the young people in their families who may be getting their results today: Be careful, don’t get ripped off by the great university scam.
“Don’t waste your time studying for a pointless degree at a mediocre university.
“If you want to work hard, if you want to move forward, earn a wage, and have opportunities in your life, take up and look for apprenticeships.
“And a Reform UK government will ensure that those opportunities exist. Your success is our country’s success. We’re on your side, and when I said I wanted a skills revolution, I meant it.”
Asked to give an example of the so-called Mickey Mouse degrees which Reform would crack down on if it was in government, Ms Braverman pointed to gender studies and golf course studies.
She told reporters: “Whether it’s gender studies, whether it’s golf course studies, I think I’ve seen there’s not a necessity. There’s not a value in many of these degrees.
“Now I know that might be uncomfortable to those people who have those qualifications, but the reality is you’ve got to ask yourself: what are your graduate outcomes looking like?”
Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, meanwhile defended plans to prevent foreign students accessing student loans.
The value being generated by student loans is “not what it should be”, he said.
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Reform hasn’t costed this. It’s a number plucked out of thin air.
And cutting gender studies, there you go, on target for reform. Nasty spiteful party.
Can’t have the great unwashed getting too educated to vote for Reform, can we, Suella (alma mater Queens College Cambridge)?
No such thing as a pointless degree. The life experience of university, friends, learning and education is an invaluable stepping stone in a person’s early adulthood.
I urge GCSE students not to listen to the claptrap spouted by Reform politicians. No degrees are pointless. Today’s organisations need people who can think differently whether you study fine art or physics everyone can positively contribute to successful innovative organisations.
Yes, students may have to check what SHE deems to be a ‘pointless degree’ as if she becomes the ‘education’ secretary, she will scrap them two thirds of the way through and force you onto your knees in front of a Union Flag singing GSTK under instruction that if you find a non white person next to you, to dob them in for expulsion and for your total indocrination, be forced to attend all UTK hate rallies – mandatory. If a twisted Cruella dystopia comes to pass, there must be mass witholding of children from school. Mind perverting psychological abuse… Read more »