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At an event Insider staged this week, looking at new opportunities in manufacturing, the conversation turned to universities and whether, from a UK plc perspective, they are offering the right courses.

One of our panelists made a very good point, which I agree with. He said that we are suffering economically from turning higher education into a market. Universities have competed with each other to offer courses that students want - because bums on seats equals money - rather than what the economy needs. Thus we are churning out thousands of media studies and sports science graduates every year, who have poor prospects of getting jobs in their chosen fields, whilst we are crying out for people with qualifications in areas such as engineering and mathematics.

A decade ago, when I was editing Yorkshire Business Insider, I remember a round table debate at which a Sheffield ‘metal basher’ bemoaned the fact that the local universities were no longer offering metallurgy degrees. This mismatch between supply and demand still exists.

I did this country’s very first media studies degree at the Polytechnic of Central London. It was very well respected course and whilst it didn’t guarantee you a career in newspapers, TV or film, it opened a lot of doors. Now media studies is this country’s most popular degree course even though jobs in print journalism are few and far between.

In my opinion turning the old polytechnics into universities was a disaster for the economy. The polys had a different brief to the traditional seats of learning. They were vocational and cutting edge. Letting them all become universities - my old alma mater is now rather pretentiously called the University of Westminster - has created an unhelpful homogeneity in higher education.

Our panelist this week suggested we have got it the wrong way round, that we should determine what the economy needs - x number of engineering students, say - and then provide the appropriate courses based on need.

It is a nice idea but would need a radical re-think of higher education policy and I can’t see that happening anytime soon. Cuts to higher education by the coalition government will mean fewer courses around but that is unlikely to mean universities will cut the most popular ones (however unhelpful they might be in terms of filling skills gaps in the economy).

The same speaker suggested more technical high schools of the type they have in Germany. This, together with funding practically-minded further education colleges and expanding the apprenticeship programme are all good ideas.

But ultimately what it comes back to is the idea that everyone can go to university even though it would be disastrous for our economy if they did. As a working class kid who become only the second from his area to go on to higher education (the first was my sister) I face accusations of pulling up the drawbridge behind me by suggesting the opportunity to go on to a university shouldn’t be there for everyone.

But unfortunately we have gone too far in the other direction. Offering Mickey Mouse degrees for reasons of profit rather than either education or vocation has created a situation where we are producing graduates looking for jobs that don’t exist whilst other sections of the economy face skills shortages.

You don’t need to be one of this country’s rare maths graduates to identify that as an imbalanced equation.

Any comments? Andy Coyne, Insider.