Oliver Dean: Releasing LEO data would stop the rise of ‘Mickey-Mouse’ degrees

Oliver Dean is a political commentator with Young Voices UK. He studies History and Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where he is the President of the LSE Hayek Society

There was once a time wherein a university education was the best investment a young person could make. That time has since passed. Tuition fees have soared, graduate debt has ballooned to an average of £53,000, and courses that offer neither serious career prospects nor meaningful wage returns continue to attract thousands of applicants annually. This could be fixed if the government released the necessary data to transform higher education – yet it refuses to do it.

University used to be a rite of passage.

One would leave home, perhaps freckle-faced and optimistic about their life chances, and have their ideas and opinions challenged by world-renowned professors. They would emerge from university, equipped with the skills and ideas needed for a career. Yet this is no longer the case. Graduates now become ensnared in a student debt trap, trying to put a dent in the balance which just keeps rising. Indeed, higher education has stopped being about intellectual transformation and started being about financial survival.

Such a shift is worrying for the state of tertiary education in Britain, yet there is a way in which the government can begin fixing such an issue. However, since 2015, they have refused to do it.

The government holds a centralised database of Longitudinal Education Outcome (LEO) data. Simply put, it is a breakdown of what graduates actually earn, by university, by course and by year, grounded in tax receipt data. It is exactly the information a would-be student needs before committing to a £50,000 decision. And yet it remains locked away, accessible only to a handful of approved researchers. Everyone else is left to piece together a picture from a patchwork of university brochures and a select through higher education-focused websites.

The consequences of keeping such information under lock and key are predictable. Without reliable data, students make choices based on university marketing and vibes rather than market reality. The explosion of so-called “Mickey Mouse degrees,” courses that leave graduates worse off financially than had they never enrolled, is not an accident. More than 27,000 young people have been funnelled into qualifications that don’t deliver since 2022. And in return, they have been gifted a lifetime of debt and little in the way of career prospects.

Some will argue that the data is already available and, technically, this is true. But scattering figures across dozens of competing websites, presented in incompatible formats, is not the same as making information available. It is bureaucratic cover for the status quo. If the government genuinely believed in informed choice, it would provide a single, accessible platform where students, parents and teachers could compare outcomes clearly and honestly. In the current system, the only groups that benefit are the universities that are pulling the wool over students’ eyes.

By publishing the data, universities that do not offer value for money would face accountability. Students would punish them by going elsewhere, or opting not to go to university whatsoever – instead focusing on building real-world skills in an apprenticeship or full-time employment. The degrees and institutions which provide real value would be allowed to thrive, and those that don’t would be phased out. This would not only ease the strain on British universities, but it would prevent the rise of credential inflation and save thousands of young people from becoming entangled in a lifetime of debt.

The government spends billions subsidising student loans it knows will never be repaid. The least it can do is give students the information to make better decisions in the first place. Releasing the LEO data won’t solve the higher education crisis overnight. But it would be the first honest thing done about it in years, and could be the first major step to fixing the higher education crisis.