Honestly, get yourself a Mickey Mouse degree

It’s an old chestnut for him, in which he cites only UK data to make his case; and even an older complaint from employers’ lobbies like the MEA, which have even been contradicted by the Chamber of Commerce who find the converse labelling of STEM subjects as ‘hard options’ “to be a major factor in discouraging students from pursuing STEM careers.”

As usual, the reduction of education to a simple equation about a “return on investment” (from taxpayers) betrays a dim view on what tax money should be financing. Public funds are already weighted towards professions deemed essential, with stipends designed to attract students to critical sectors like medicine, IT or engineering… amongst many other subjects under the sun. The suggestion that taxpayers are underwriting “fun” degrees at the expense of essential ones is factually shallow, and unfair to students who choose other paths.

It also devalues the role of taxation in our social contract: by Cassar White’s reasoning (I am taking the logic to the extreme) my tax money is used by the State for the healthcare of the most undeserving of beneficiaries, unhealthy citizens with expensive health problems and little job productivity. Are all patients made equal?

Consider that Cassar White avoids the risk of naming and shaming of soft degrees. I for one, dropped my first subject of international relations in favour of an Honours degree in anthropology, then a Masters degree in human rights ‘and democratisation’ (it’s a soft version of human rights law, not an actual law degree!), entered the world of Maltese journalism, and stayed there for 20 years amassing a ton of soft skills – one of them is to never underestimate the native wisdom and guile of the non-professional classes and to distrust the rationality and ‘common sense’ of the corporate elites.

I run my own media advisory today (shameless plug coming right up…) and work with international clients who choose Malta for boutique TV, social media productions and photoshoots. Overall it’s been a good journey that has taught me, belatedly, much about the pitfalls of the 9-5 grind.

Secondly, Cassar White overlooks the profound value of so-called “soft” subjects. Disciplines in the humanities, arts, and social sciences produce graduates with analytical, communicative, and creative skills that employers do prize – these graduates know how to shape culture, policy, and can be the acutest of observers when authority structures need to be criticised and shaken.

Admittedly, I have no graph or metrics to explain this to a banker. Then again, where’s Cassar White’s data? An anecdote about Roman taxi drivers does not a critique of Italy’s historically unequal labour market make…

Thirdly, Cassar White laments – by way of example – underemployed psychology graduates or lawyers accepting routine jobs. I have seen both in the newspaper industry for example: they were excellent writers, astute observers, who made journalism in Malta better. They did find meaningful work, and even when they left the news industry for a different pace of life, they took with them a heap of new skills. It might not have been an obvious career path, but their roles equipped them with adaptability and quick-footed problem-solving skills that I have found lacking in many other industry fields.

But they were not ‘underemployed’ by having landed a job away from their original target! So let’s talk instead about labour market reform, the property market’s inflationary rollercoaster and how it undermines real wages; why Maltese trades have fallen by the wayside; why agriculturalists are not supported for their role in food safety… the list could go on forever.

To me, dismissing other fields in the arts and humanities on the premise that we must “remove the stigma associated with vocational and technical education” betrays the structural reason why these other subjects fell by the wayside. Malta does need more vocational and technical graduates, but why pit the arts educationalist against the coder or technician? The very fields Cassar White praises as “needed” can end up being transformed by automation and AI, while the university ‘Mickey Mouse’ disciplines often cultivate precisely the critical and ethical thinking needed to navigate such change (or even to craft evil, if you consider Palantir CEO Alex Karp, a philosophy graduate with a PhD in neoclassical social theory).

If the labour market undervalues and underpays vocational roles, take that complaint to the policymakers and employers who do not dignify skilled manual and technical work with decent pay and conditions.

Education is about equipping individuals – and societies – to grow in ways that, beyond the all-important wage, contribute meaningfully throughout their life. Scapegoating those who choose other paths of study is a serious abdication of imagination. Honestly, get a Mickey Mouse degree.