When you find paprika-flavoured crisps in a pack boasting sour cream and onion, you write to the producer and they send back apologies and a free voucher. When the assisted steering on your brand-new car suddenly breaks down, the carmaker repairs it free of charge – there’s a warranty.

When you enrol in a university programme that fails to deliver what it promised, you are helpless. A university degree can influence a career by extensive proportions, but when it comes to selecting it, you have to blindly trust the institution that puts it on offers.

A postgraduate student specializing in the business-side of the media industry, I decided last year to pursue my higher education in the UK with a degree titled MA in Media Economics, at the University of East Anglia. A British degree with a name so close to what I was studying would allow for deeper explorations of my field, new contacts and a fresh perspective. The programme was new and Google returned very few information about it, but the university was well-positioned in UK league tables and in international rankings. It seemed like a sound choice.

After a two-week compulsory and costly introductory course where students supposed to be postgrads in economics were taught (in the second week) that an increase in price causes a decrease in demanded quantity, I felt something was wrong. Almost nine out of ten students came from China, where the market for media products is locked by the government. Their willingness to learn how to run a media business by European rules demonstrated their interest in the subject, I thought.

Actually, I quickly understood that they selected their MA more or less randomly. Most Chinese companies require foreign degrees for management positions. British universities know that and aggressively market some of their courses with the intermediary agencies that arrange overseas study for Chinese students.

Puppet degrees

Such incentives favour the crafting of puppet degrees, in which foreign students, motivated only by the promotion their degree will procure them, just have to wait a few months far from home, while the university racks up more than £12,000 per head. With such rules, selection standards need not be too strict. A good command of English, for instance, doesn’t seem to have made it on the list of the prerequisites for studying at UEA. Teamwork was fun, in a sad way. “When shall we meet to prepare the presentation?” I once asked. “My name is Li” was the answer [sic].

I tried to confront UEA staff several times on that matter. Reactions ranged from sympathetic (”I understand your disappointment and agree with you, but you mustn’t quote me saying that!”) to blindly rejecting my arguments (”You knew what you signed up for!”). Never has anyone been willing to discuss the fact that most students had too poor a command of English and very few skills in either media studies or economics.

All things considered, I lost the £3,400 of the tuition fees plus, considering opportunity costs, ten months of the salary I was offered last year – £16,000.

Harvesting strategies

Looking for short-term cash, universities that create such puppet degrees are harvesting their reputation. They bet that these students will go back to their country and will not compete on the job markets they usually cater for, i.e. UK-based firms. But in a world of global companies and fast-moving people, the odds are ever growing of reputable employers realizing that the emperor has no clothes.

A university name is a shortcut for hard-work and relative excellence in a person. If this signal gets too noisy because of interference from puppet-degree students, a university’s reputation runs the risk of becoming irrelevant. Employers will use other criteria for selection.

Universities need to be made accountable for what they offer. Until they are forced to do so, heads of school around the UK will continue to destroy century-old reputations and, eventually, downgrade the value of British degrees on the international job market.

My modest experience certainly doesn’t apply to all postgraduate programs in the UK. Nevertheless, I’ve come to hear similar stories across the country. For instance, a professor would have been forced by his hierarchy to take in East-Asian students despite their patchy knowledge of English. Another told me how his university lowered its standards for some courses aimed at East Asian students.

In all these instances, basic economic theory shows that nobody has an interest in speaking out. The students’ union will not, lest it damages the reputation of the whole university. Professors will not, taking a stand against the administration would put their careers in a difficult situation. Administrators will not, they’re too happy to see easy cash flowing in.

The solution will only come the day the actors on the postgrad studies market realize they’re trading a service with very, very long term implications. And that they should look outside the textbook examples on chips and cars for a marketing strategy.

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