A Degree of Waste: the economic benefits of educational expansion

Abstract Abstract This paper considers the view, long fashionable in academic and political circles, which sees the expansion of higher education as benefiting the country, economically. Drawing on international and national data, the article suggests that such a belief is no longer defensible. On the basis of such data, it is argued that higher education has been expanded well beyond that threshold, where further expansion could be reasonably regarded as an investment and precondition for national prosperity. It is argued that the present expansion of higher education is better regarded as a form of consumption.