Festival of Economics: Degrees, debt and disruption

With AI-driven educational and labour market disruption and disquiet over mounting student debt, we assess the role and value of higher education degrees and ask: it is still worth getting a degree?

An event held at Watershed on Wednesday 18th November. The event starts at 11:30.

The value of a higher education degree has increasingly been under the spotlight since undergraduate tuition fees were first introduced in 1998 and particularly since they were trebled in 2006 and again in 2013.

Throughout this time participation in higher education has increased, such that around one in two young people now go to university by age 25, and the Government estimate than just under one-third of the costs in tuition fee and maintenance loans will be picked up by the taxpayer.