Keir Starmer¡¯s decision to scrap the Labour Party¡¯s Blair-era target of 50 per cent of young people entering higher education is surely a step in the right direction. We cannot go on insisting to school leavers that it¡¯s university or bust. It is bad for universities, and it is bad for the young people this idea is hammered into.

There is a crisis of standards in UK universities. Their business model seeks to maximise revenues by recruiting ever more students regardless of their actual motivation to learn. Hence, higher education is generally treated as a transaction: tuition fees for degree certificate.

And universities are happy to hold up their side of the bargain. They are rewarded in domestic rankings for high progression and graduation rates, high satisfaction scores and high numbers of firsts and 2:1s ¨C the coveted classifications sought by hiring committees. And a high ranking helps get them more students next year.

This does not incentivise universities to mark assessments or judge academic misconduct fairly. Nor does it incline them to let failing students leave. Better to keep them happy and paying the fees. This inevitably means grade inflation and very low fail rates.

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I¡¯ve caught students fabricating and plagiarising work, which sent them through the official channels to be formally judged to have committed serious misconduct. But they are not failed or removed from the university, as written guidance might suggest. These students come back quietly the following year and are allowed to redo the work ¨C as long as they pay the tuition fee.

What of students who simply perform poorly? We as staff experience high pressure not to fail them either. We are told to assign points for almost any reason. And, each year, we are asked to bump them up to the next marking band because they tried really hard.

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Official guidance denies all knowledge of such practices but, in reality, we are pressured every year to bump students up, especially if they fall in that tricky lower-second area of a 58. We are expected to simply nudge those up to the golden 2:1, or else face administrative backlash and hours of back-and-forth email exchanges that are certainly not counted in already overtaxed workloads.

In the rare cases that students don¡¯t even pass, they are given a chance to resit. And if they fail that, they can resit again. And again. I¡¯ve witnessed some students being allowed chance after chance to pass, years after they should have graduated ¨C as long as they pay the tuition fee.

But what about students with extenuating circumstances, who absolutely should be accommodated with reasonable adjustments? Unfortunately, the business model of universities has flown past ¡°reasonable¡± into solidly unreasonable territory.

I¡¯ve witnessed an extreme situation in which a student who experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI) part way through his studies was so effectively convinced by university administration that this need not end his dream of getting a degree that he continued years past his initial graduate date, even though the TBI seriously impaired his capacity to study. Last I saw him, he had not been able to pass his examinations to graduate. But they¡¯ll let him keep at it ¨C as long as he pays his tuition fee.

Part of the sales pitch to students in distress is that if they don¡¯t get a degree, they won¡¯t be able to get a job. And it is clear that that idea is deeply embedded in students¡¯ minds. So much so that it is not uncommon to read news stories about students taking drastic measures following perceived failures. Just recently, there was the of the University of Glasgow student who took his own life because the university (mistakenly) told him he had not done well enough in his classes to earn his degree.

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Yes, this was an extreme reaction by a mentally unwell individual, but the system is set up to put extreme pressure on people to succeed in?one specific?(and systemically flawed) way. If we care about well-being, the system needs to change. And, at the cost of sounding like a nostalgic old fart, maybe even go back a few years.

The old days definitely had their pros and cons ¨C more cons if you had any EDI needs. But let me tell you about the close friend who, 15 years ago, tried out university. She came with a curiosity to learn, a goal to get a job in a specialised sector and a full commitment to the programme. But she failed every exam in her first semester. And the university simply let her leave.

Did she end up a permanent squatter in her parents¡¯ house? Actually, no ¨C she changed her plans and went on to become a successful businesswoman. She was smart, creative, capable and driven. She failed at university ¨C but this allowed her to get on with her life.

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Starmer said that ¡°while you will never hear me denigrate the aspiration to go to university, I don¡¯t think the way we currently measure success in education ¨C that ambition to get 50 per cent of kids to uni¡­is right for our times. Because if you are a kid or a parent of a kid who chooses an apprenticeship, what does it say to you? Do we genuinely, as a country ¨C afford them the same respect?¡±

Labour¡¯s new target is for two-thirds of children either to go to university or do a ¡°gold-standard apprenticeship¡±. It won¡¯t remove the perverse incentives for universities and students overnight, but it is a good start.

Failing at university is not failing at life. Young adults have other options, despite what corporatised administrators will tell you. Passing unmotivated or unfit students is not good for them, potential employers or anyone else.

And for those who try out university and fail, my radical suggestion is to give them the freedom to quit. Let them save their fees and get on with their lives. Let them do an apprenticeship or start a business. Let them learn how to be adults. Let students fail.

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The author is an academic at a UK university.