What do you call 5000 degree courses at the bottom of the bin?

A start.

Universities have axed 5,000 degree courses in preparation for cuts in state funding and the trebling of tuition fees, due to take effect in 2012.
Figures show there are 38,147 courses on offer through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service for entry in 2012, down a staggering 12 per cent, from 43,360.
Vice-chancellors have targeted their least popular non-academic courses – 'soft subjects' that offer poor employment prospects such as Caribbean Studies – because they are loss-making.

And a good start, but obviously still a long way to go. Most of these Mickey Mouse courses will never see people in employment, they are just a way of avoiding work for a few years. Others are directly related to jobs, such as your nails and beauty stuff, but these careers don't require education anywhere near the degree standard.

I imagine 'Carribean Studies' would be for British people of quasi Caribbean descent to get in touch with their culture or some rubbish. Probably to then use that to demand everyone respects their culture and makes allowances for it at the expense of the indigenous Brits.

If that's what you want to do then it's best to join a library, or even travel abroad, but at your own expense of course.

Some universities, such as London Metropolitan, have slashed more than 60 per cent of their courses, including philosophy, performing arts and history.

I would imagine that performing arts and history would be valuable to a person who wants to be an actor or a historian, so why would these courses not be viable. Could it be because they have changed over recent times?

Has History been watered down into some kind of 'Don't mention the Empire', politically correct puke fest? Is performing arts no longer about a serious career in stage and screen, rather than an audition for the X-Factor? I don't know, I'm just making an educated guess.

The University of East Anglia has announced the closure of its music school, which was opened in the 1960s with the help of Benjamin Britten.

Being a regular reader of Dick Puddlecote, I know why a music school opened in the 60's will no longer be viable. If it's anything like the little Puddlecotes school, where music has become some pansy arsed celebration of cultural diversity, with every bongo and steel drum under the sun but no traditionalism then no, it isn't going to churn out anything with any talent other than one for sitting in a tent outside St Pauls wailing the 'lifes unfair' song.

The figures, from Supporting Professionalism in Admissions, come as universities fear applications for so-called 'Mickey Mouse courses' will reduce to a trickle when students face the prospect of £9,000 a year fees.

That's why tuition fees are a good thing. When someone else pays you have a good reason to to do any work for a few years. When you pay yourself, you have to do a course that will get you a career suitable enough to cover the costs.

Business Secretary Vince Cable has warned that ailing universities will not be propped up and will be allowed to go bust. They all face losing about 10 per cent of state funding.

Hopefully that will reduce the number of these silly courses even further.
The economy as a whole will benefit greatly for people leaving higher education with real qualifications that are necessary in the real world.

It will also benefit from those people who would have taken up Caribbean Studies or David Beckham studies taking on the more labour intensive and less intellectual jobs four years earlier.

It will also help the individual as they progress through uni. They will be working hard for their own future rather than being taught to expect life on a plate. They will be heading for a degree course that will really make their lives better, or they will be joining a realistic career that they can handle rather than wasting years believing the rubbish they are learning will supply a job at the end of it.

The University and College Union, said: 'This government reforms have been a complete mess. It’s particularly going to hit students planning to live at home to minimise expenses.
'It'll be a real tragedy if they suddenly find cuts at their local university mean they can no longer study the subject they have always wanted.'

Tragedy is not the word I would have used. Disappointment is more appropriate.

It's not a bad thing though. A much bigger disappointment would be spending six years studying forensic science in order to be like Haratio Cain, only to discover at the end of it all, that life is not actually like TV and you've just wasted a large portion of it.