Jim Armitage: Higher-cost university degrees will hit London’s creative heart

I’m of that lucky generation that was paid by the taxpayer to swan around at college for three years reading good books, sporting bad hairstyles and, as the PM might put it, enjoying a normal university experience.

There was a fair amount of writing which arguably eased me into the world of newspapers, but English was hardly a vocational degree.

Despite that, most of my course-mates ended up in decent jobs in the media, arts and law, earning a crust and doing their bit for the economy.

Now, though, comes news that made me wonder if humanities degrees won’t become as rarified an activity as the Eton wall game.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reports that — just five years since the Coalition government upped the cap to £9000 a year, England has the most expensive tuition fees in the world.

As this summer’s Budget removed even the £9000 ceiling, we can expect to be at the top of the leaderboard for years to come.

With prices like that, it’s hard to see how any but the wealthiest teenagers will be able to justify doing humanities degrees by the time my children reach university age.

Why run up debts for fees of £10,000, £15,000 or — who knows? — £20,000 a year on a degree that doesn’t have a job at the end of it?

Courses like George Osborne’s — modern history — will be the preserve of only the most privileged, like, well, George Osborne.

While that’s no great loss to the manufacturers and engineers that politicians are now desperate to befriend, it can’t be healthy for the creative businesses that drive the London economy.

Industrialists may not mourn an end to the floppy-haired arts graduate, but pretty much every engineering and construction chief you meet bemoans the shortage of skilled workers coming out of our further education colleges.