If University was free almost everyone would have a degree, lessening their worth in an already oversaturated market

The argument

A university degree is valuable for what it signals as much as for what it teaches, and signals work only when they distinguish. Employers prize degrees because they mark out candidates who cleared an admissions bar, sustained years of study and paid real costs to do so. Make university free and that filter disappears: with no financial barrier, enrolment swells towards universality, and a credential held by nearly everyone distinguishes no one. The graduate job market is already saturated — large shares of graduates in Britain and elsewhere work in roles that never previously required a degree — and abolishing fees would pour more graduates into the same pool, accelerating the devaluation. The predictable consequence is credential inflation. When a bachelor's degree becomes the baseline that school-leaving qualifications once were, employers simply raise the bar: master's degrees become the new differentiator, then doctorates, and young people must spend ever more years and ever more money accumulating qualifications to stand exactly where their parents stood with fewer. The losers are not the wealthy, who can fund postgraduate arms races indefinitely, but precisely the ordinary students free tuition was meant to help. Fees, by contrast, keep the decision honest. A price on university concentrates enrolment among those for whom the investment genuinely pays — in earnings, vocation or scholarship — and sustains alternative routes such as apprenticeships and technical training that the economy badly needs. Keeping fees is not gatekeeping for its own sake, this argument holds: it is what preserves the worth of the degree itself, and that is why university fees should remain.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The signalling argument proves too much: if a degree were valuable only as a scarcity filter, then society would gain nothing from anyone actually learning anything — which is plainly false, since graduates carry real skills that raise productivity. Several high-participation systems (Germany, the Nordics) fund tuition publicly yet sustain strong graduate wage premiums, showing universality does not automatically hollow out the credential. Fees currently sort by parental wealth as much as by merit, so removing them makes the signal fairer, not worthless; credential inflation is driven by employer screening habits that can be addressed directly; and apprenticeships can be funded alongside free university rather than propped up by pricing capable students out.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A degree's value lies substantially in the human capital it builds, not only in scarcity, so wider access raises real skill rather than merely diluting a signal. [Rejecting P2] Countries with free or near-free tuition retain healthy graduate premiums, so universality does not automatically destroy the credential's worth or guarantee runaway inflation. [Rejecting P3] Fees sort by ability to pay as much as by where investment pays, excluding capable poorer students; vocational routes can be funded directly rather than sustained by a fee barrier.