Mickey Mouse university degrees: what does the term mean - and which courses have been scrapped?

Universities in England are facing a crackdown on the number of students they are allowed to let study so-called ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees under new government plans.

Rishi Sunak announced he wants to cap the number of students that can be accepted to “rip off” university degrees which are studied “at the taxpayers’ expense”.

The government said limits will be imposed on courses that have high dropout rates or a low proportion of graduates getting a professional job.

A ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree is a term used for those university courses which are deemed as worthless or irrelevant with limited opportunities post-graduation.

In 2010, Durham University offered a ‘Harry Potter studies’ module which is no longer an option today after it was criticised, and a surf management degree was dropped by another university.

Speaking on Good Morning Britain on Monday (17 July), the Education Minister Gillian Keegan, said: “There are too many students not getting [good] jobs, too many students who aren’t completing, too many students who are dropping out of courses.”

However, Keegan did not name which courses fall into the category of a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree.

University Alliance’s Head of Policy, Susanna Kalitowski, said it is “ludicrous” to link the ‘quality’ of a degree to earnings and it is “no benefit to anyone” to cut the number of students enrolling onto ‘low value’ degree courses.

She said the Office for Students (OfS) already has powers to impose recruitment limits on courses which breach certain minimum thresholds for continuation, progression, and completion, and so the government is using “hyperbolic language” as the announcement will “change very little”.

Opposition MPs have attacked the new measures as a “cap” and an “attack” on young people’s aspirations, restricting them from their choices.

Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said it is “simply an attack on the aspirations of young people and their families by a government that wants to reinforce the class ceiling, not smash it.”

Over the years, certain courses at UK universities have been dropped due to being labelled a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree’.

Sheffield Hallam University suspended its English Literature degree for the 2023-24 cohort because less than 60% of graduates from the degree programme entered ‘high-skilled’ jobs.

The OfS said universities can be issued with fines if they do not get 60% of graduates into a professional job.

In its place, the university offered an English Studies degree instead which incorporates literature, creative writing and language.

In 2010, Durham University offered a “Harry Potter studies” which is no longer an option today.

The 10-week module was called Harry Potter and the Age of Illusion as part of a BA in Education Studies, which was said to study “the Harry Potter novels in their wider social and cultural context”.

Former Education minister Andrea Jenkyns accused universities of preferring their students to achieve degrees in ‘Harry Potter studies’ over construction.

She told a Tory Party conference fringe event last year that a “skilled modern economy” requires technical skills as much as it needs graduates and the “current system” favours degrees in “Harry Potter studies”.

In October 2004 a course in surf management at Swansea Institute as a BA (Hons) degree was pulled.

It was criticised as a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree and was held up by a teaching union official as an example of a degree which devalued both academic and vocational education.

Its principal at the time said the degree had been pulled to protect the university’s image.