If university was free then far more people would have a degree, making their worth reduce

The argument

This argument holds that universities should not be free because free university would push far more people into getting degrees, and the resulting flood of graduates would devalue the degree itself — defeating the purpose of obtaining one. The reasoning rests on scarcity and signalling. Much of a degree's economic value comes from its relative scarcity: it distinguishes its holder in the labour market, signalling ability and commitment that fewer people possess. If university were free, participation would rise sharply, and as the proportion of the population holding degrees climbed, the qualification would become commonplace — and a credential that almost everyone has signals almost nothing. Employers, faced with a glut of graduates, would simply raise the bar, demanding master's degrees or further qualifications to make the distinctions that a first degree no longer makes. This is the dynamic of credential inflation, and it has already been visible as graduate numbers have grown: jobs that once needed no degree now demand one, not because the work changed but because the supply of graduates did. The argument holds that this makes free university self-defeating for the very people it means to help. Students would invest years acquiring a qualification worth less than the one their predecessors earned, and the advantage they sought would erode as everyone else obtained the same thing. Worse, the arms race pushes the goalposts further out, so that ever more education is needed to achieve the same standing — more time, and under any funding model, more cost somewhere. A degree's worth depends partly on not everyone having it. From this standpoint, universalising the degree undermines the value that made it worth pursuing. Because free university would give far more people degrees and thereby reduce their worth, this argument holds, universities should not be free.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that the mechanism is not gated by tuition, so the policy conclusion does not follow. Credential inflation has proceeded steadily in systems that charge substantial fees — England trebled tuition while the graduate share of the workforce continued to rise — which suggests the driver is labour-market demand and the expansion of higher education generally rather than the price paid at the point of entry. The comparison also runs the other way: countries with free or near-free tuition, such as Germany, Norway and Scotland, do not have universal degree attainment, because participation is bounded by entry standards, institutional capacity and prior attainment rather than by cost. They add that the premise about worth is empirically testable and has not held: the graduate earnings premium has persisted across decades of large expansion in most OECD countries, even as the proportion of graduates roughly doubled, so a rising share of degree-holders has not eliminated the return. The deepest objection is that the argument's own logic points at a different policy. If scarcity is what confers value, the way to preserve it is to restrict the number of places — which is a case for capping admissions, not for charging tuition to those admitted.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] If a degree's value came chiefly from scarcity, the graduate earnings premium would have collapsed as the graduate share roughly doubled across the OECD; it has instead persisted, which suggests much of the value lies in the skills and productivity the qualification reflects. [Rejecting P2] Credential inflation has proceeded in systems charging substantial fees — England trebled tuition while the graduate share kept rising — so the driver is labour-market demand and expansion generally, and free-tuition countries such as Germany, Norway and Scotland do not have universal attainment, because entry standards, capacity and prior attainment bind rather than price. [Rejecting C] Even granting the scarcity premise, it argues for capping the number of places rather than for charging those admitted — a different policy from the one the conclusion asserts.