Market saturation

The argument

This argument holds that the saturation of the job market with degree-holders has turned a university education from a luxury into a baseline requirement — and once a credential becomes effectively mandatory for ordinary employment, charging heavily for it cannot be justified. Over recent decades the proportion of people holding degrees has risen enormously, and employers have responded by making a degree the default filter for jobs that once required none — so-called degree inflation. Roles in administration, management and many other fields now list a bachelor's degree as an entry condition even where the work itself has not changed. As graduates saturate the market, the degree no longer confers a special advantage; it merely keeps a candidate from being screened out. Not having one, however, is an acute disadvantage. This changes what university education is. Where a degree once functioned as an optional investment in advancement, market saturation has made it closer to a necessity — the price of admission to a large share of the labour market. The argument holds that it is unjust to charge tens of thousands for something young people effectively must have: those who can afford it buy their way past the filter, while those who cannot are locked out of jobs they are perfectly capable of doing. A requirement in practice should be treated like other requirements — schooling, for instance — which society provides without charge. From this standpoint, the saturated graduate market means university is no longer optional in any meaningful sense, and necessities of participation in economic life should not be sold. Because market saturation has made a degree a baseline requirement rather than a luxury, this argument holds, university should be free to attend.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Even granting that degree inflation has turned a bachelor's into a common filter for jobs that once needed none, it does not follow that university should be free — and free tuition may aggravate the very problem the argument identifies. If the trouble is that degrees have become an inefficient screening device, wrongly demanded for work that has not changed, then making university free subsidises still more credentialing, intensifies the arms race to acquire the signal, and tends to push the effective filter upward to master's degrees — treating the symptom while worsening the underlying misuse of qualifications. Remedies aimed directly at the saturation would fit the diagnosis better: discouraging employers from requiring degrees for roles that do not need them, expanding apprenticeships and vocational routes, and promoting skills-based hiring. The analogy to compulsory schooling, which society provides free, also strains: university remains selective and non-universal rather than a mandatory stage everyone completes, and a large share of its returns accrues privately to the graduate in higher lifetime earnings — a standard reason for shared funding between the individual and the state rather than fully public provision. So 'a degree has become a baseline requirement' motivates tackling degree inflation, not automatically making university free.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] If degrees have become an inefficient job filter, making university free could intensify the credentialing arms race and push the filter to master's degrees, worsening the misuse of qualifications rather than fixing it. [Rejecting P1] University remains selective and non-universal, unlike compulsory schooling, and much of its return accrues privately to the graduate — a standard argument for shared rather than fully public funding, so 'baseline requirement' does not entail 'free'.