Manchester United and Greggs’ famous sausage rolls are no match for the financial firepower of Britain’s leading universities, despite many members of the public thinking otherwise, according to research.
The study by King’s College London’s policy institute revealed that many people have a string of misperceptions about the higher education sector, ranging from its size to the lucrative career boost it gives to graduates.
KCL’s survey of 2,000 people found that many picked Greggs and Manchester United as bigger earners than the likes of the University of Oxford, when the balance sheets show that Oxford takes in over £1bn more than Greggs – despite selling approximately 140m fewer sausage rolls – each year.
Asked to rank a list of organisations by annual revenue, Manchester United and Manchester City football clubs were the most popular choices, followed by Greggs and the owners of the Daily Mail, while only 6% correctly identified Oxford as the highest earner on the list.
Asked to rank the UK’s exports by sector, a third of those surveyed named aircraft manufacturing and telecoms as the highest earners, despite higher education earning billions more from overseas sources.
Prof Bobby Duffy, the director of KCL’s policy institute, said: “These surveys of misperceptions are not meant to be general knowledge quizzes – we don’t expect the public to have a detailed understanding of the university sector, they have many more directly important things to focus on.
“Instead what they do is send signals about how we really feel about an issue, which will be based on what we hear from the media, social media, politicians and our general conversations with friends and family.”
The misperceptions extended into areas such as graduates’ attitudes and pay, with more than a quarter of those surveyed convinced that graduates earn the same or even less than those without a degree, when the evidence shows additional lifetime earnings for graduates running into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Duffy said the results showed that the public is being influenced by “negative rhetoric” about university education and its costs, even if most parents remained positive about their children going into higher education.
“The standout finding for me is the huge overestimation of the sense of regret about going to university among graduates: only 8% of graduates say they wouldn’t go if they could choose again, but the average public guess is 40%,” Duffy said.
“This will be driven by vivid, individual stories of graduate regret and the generally negative background noise about the declining value of a degree.”
Duffy said the survey also showed that many “hugely overestimate the proportion of overseas students who claim asylum once they are here, because of the vivid stories of boat crossings that dominate headlines.”
One in six surveyed guessed that most international students “remained in the UK to seek asylum or for other humanitarian reasons” after graduation, when in reality just 0.5% did so.
The results “illustrate the challenge of shifting these misperceptions and getting this more positive message across. It’s extremely difficult to first get public attention, and then cut through the noise of individual negative stories that are much more likely to stick in our minds,” Duffy said.
However many graduates also struggle to grasp the intricacies of the UK’s student loan system. Half of graduates aged 35 and under falsely believed that those who fall behind on their repayments can have their belongings repossessed by the Student Loans Company, compared with just 27% of the general public.
UK higher education facts
University of Oxford’s annual revenue in 2022-23 was more than £2.9bn, far above Greggs bakery chain’s revenue of £1.8bn.
University of Manchester had annual revenues close to the combined incomes of Manchester City and Manchester United football clubs: £1.35bn compared with £718m and £649m respectively.
UK higher education employed 550,000 people in 2022-23, more than the Tesco (330,000) and Sainsbury’s (148,000) supermarket chains added together.
Higher education generated £24bn in export earnings for the UK in 2022-23, far above aircraft manufacturing with £12bn, legal services with £9.5bn and telecoms with £8.8bn.
Of the public 68% have a positive attitude towards universities, while 13% have a negative view. Among respondents, 67% agree that “UK universities are amongst the best in the world” while only 8% disagree.
Source: King’s College London policy institute
