Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor.
Kemi Badenoch’s announcement today that a Conservative government would cut university places based on graduate earnings, and put the savings into apprenticeships (see 8.11am), is a carbon copy of the same policy announced by the last Conservative government in 2024.
Back in May 2024 it was the then education secretary Gillian Keegan who promised that so-called “mickey mouse” courses would be closed down and the notional savings spent on 100,000 apprenticeships. That was less than two months before the general election in July, and Keegan’s plan failed to even make it into the Conservative election manifesto.
