MeCCSA and BAFTSS statement on Policy Exchange report Tarnished Towers 2026
The Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) and the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) represent students and academic staff working in communication, cultural and media studies across UK higher education. As associations representing the interests of university students, teachers, and researchers in media, communication, cultural studies and associated fields, we are deeply concerned about the Policy Exchange report Tarnished Towers published on 8th June. We are dismayed by its derisory premise that universities are not worth attending and reject the polarising proposition of setting different subject areas up against each other.
We are particularly appalled by Recommendation 10, which calls for the abolition of all teaching grant funding for price group C1.2, covering media studies, journalism, performing arts, including cinematics and music, publishing, and information services. MeCCSA and BAFTSS, as member-led subject associations, both engage constructively with debates about the challenges facing higher education. But we are compelled to challenge this recommendation directly. It misrepresents the graduate outcomes data it claims to deploy, runs counter to the Government’s stated industrial strategy priorities, and rests on a reductive account of what it means to be educated in our disciplines.
1. The graduate outcomes data does not support the report’s claims
The most recent HESA Graduate Outcomes statistics, covering the 2023/24 cohort and published on 4 June 2026, tell a substantially different story from the one Policy Exchange presents [1].
For graduates in Media, Journalism and Communications (CAH 24): 86.7% were in work or further study fifteen months after graduation, matching the all-graduate average of 86.8%; 83.3% were in some form of employment, above the all-graduate figure of 81.3%.
For graduates in Design, and Creative and Performing Arts (CAH 25): 86.8% were in work or further study, precisely matching the sector average; 83.1% were in some form of employment, again above the sector-wide figure.
It is also worth noting that the subject area recording the highest graduate unemployment in the same dataset is Computing, at 11.3%, a discipline Policy Exchange does not propose defunding. We raise this not to diminish Computing but to illustrate the selective lens through which the report views the evidence.
The report’s lifetime earnings comparisons deserve particular scrutiny. Such models are acutely sensitive to the assumptions built into them, cannot adequately capture career trajectories that mature well beyond early graduate surveys, and are poorly suited to the portfolio, freelance, and self-employed working patterns characteristic of many creative careers. Part-time employment accounts for 19.7% of outcomes for CAH 24 graduates and 30.9% for CAH 25 graduates [1]. These figures reflect the structural reality of creative industry employment, in which 28% of the workforce is self-employed compared to 14% across the UK as a whole [3]. A methodology that treats this as evidence of poor returns will systematically misrepresent the outcomes of graduates entering precisely these industries.
2. A growing sector built on graduate talent, and a government committed to its expansion
The disciplines targeted by Recommendation 10 supply the workforce for one of the most dynamic and degree-intensive sectors in the UK economy. The Government’s Creative Industries Sector Plan, published in June 2026 as a central pillar of the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, describes the creative industries as “a dynamic growth engine” contributing 2.4 million jobs and £124 billion in GVA, with a stated ambition to increase annual business investment in the sector from £17 billion to £31 billion by 2035 [2]. The most recent DCMS economic estimates show DCMS sectors have grown approximately 19% since the pre-pandemic period, compared with 7% for the UK economy as a whole [4].
The creative industries are built on graduate talent. Some 69% of the creative workforce hold a degree or equivalent Level 6 qualification, compared with 44% of the UK workforce as a whole [2]. The British Academy’s 2024 report on the field found that the top two employment destinations for graduates were information and communication (28%) and professional, scientific and technical activities (12%), precisely the high-growth sectors at the heart of the industrial strategy [5].
The Sector Plan is explicit that delivering its growth ambitions requires strengthening “the supply of highly trained creative students” [2], and commits government and industry to a partnership to do precisely that. It also identifies skills shortages as among the most significant barriers to sector growth: nearly half of all vacancies in the creative industries are reported as hard to fill, with skills shortages identified as the primary cause [2].
Recommendation 10 would dismantle the higher education pipeline at the very moment the Government is most urgently seeking to build it. It is incoherent as a policy. The Sector Plan explicitly commits to tackling “misperceptions of the sector’s value, in areas from bank lending to career choices” [2]. The Policy Exchange report is a precise instance of the misperception the Government’s strategy identifies as a barrier to growth.
3. What it means to study our subjects
MeCCSA and BAFTSS do not reduce the value of these disciplines to their contribution to economic growth, however substantial that contribution demonstrably is.
Our degrees produce graduates equipped to think critically about the world they inhabit, to understand how meaning is made and contested, to interrogate the institutions and platforms that shape public life, and to communicate with precision, creativity, and ethical awareness. The British Academy report notes that graduates from our field are “highly literate in media and digital skills that are transferable to a broad range of industries” [5]. But the case goes further than transferability. At a moment when generative AI threatens to flatten communicative competence, misinformation circulates at industrial scale, and trust in public institutions is under sustained pressure, the ability to analyse and interrogate the media environment is among the most consequential capacities a university can develop.
Ofcom data show that UK adults spend more time each day engaging with media than they spend asleep. Nearly four-fifths of UK higher education institutions offer courses in our field [5]. That breadth of provision reflects what students, employers and society have consistently judged to be important: not a market distortion, but a considered response to the centrality of media and communication in contemporary life.
4. Recommendation 10 would cause disproportionate harm
MeCCSA intervened when the Government’s 2025-26 Strategic Priorities Grant guidance sought to redirect teaching grant funding away from our subjects [6]. The damage from that direction of travel is already visible: courses closed, departments restructured, academic posts lost. Recommendation 10 would accelerate this process.
The effects fall disproportionately on students from less advantaged backgrounds, for whom universities outside the most selective institutions represent the primary route into the creative and communication industries. And they fall on an industrial strategy that requires exactly the graduates these subjects produce. Defunding the disciplines that develop creative, analytical, and communicative talent is not a route to growth. Instead, defunding the disciplines will exacerbate the very skills shortages the Sector Plan exists to close.
Conclusion
The disciplines targeted by Recommendation 10 are producing graduates who are active in the labour market at rates that match or exceed the sector average. They feed into an industry the Government has committed to growing substantially. They develop capacities that are more valuable, not less, in a world that is being reshaped by artificial intelligence and information disorder. And they serve students who have the most to lose from another round of politically motivated defunding.
MeCCSA and BAFTSS call on policymakers, parliamentarians and the Office for Students to reject Recommendation 10, and calls on the Government to honour the commitments made in its Creative Industries Sector Plan by protecting the higher education pipeline on which those commitments depend.
The MeCCSA Executive Committee, June 2026
The BAFTSS Executive Committee, June 2026
Download a PDF version of this statement.
References
[1] HESA (2026). Higher Education Graduate Outcomes Statistics: UK, 2023/24. Published 4 June 2026. https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/04-06-2026/sb275-higher-education-graduate-outcomes-statistics
[2] Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2026). Creative Industries Sector Plan: The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy. June 2026. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68920e22dc6688ed50878479/industrial_strategy_creative_industries_sector_plan_accessible.pdf
[3] Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (2026). National Statistics on the Creative Industries. https://pec.ac.uk/news_entries/national-statistics-on-the-creative-industries/
[4] Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2026). DCMS Economic Estimates: Monthly GVA to March 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dcms-economic-estimates-monthly-gva-to-march-2026
[5] The British Academy (2024). Media, Screen, Journalism and Communication Studies: Provision in UK Higher Education. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications/media-screen-journalism-and-communication-studies-provision-in-uk-higher-education/
[6] MeCCSA (2025). MeCCSA Intervention on OfS Strategic Priorities Grant Funding 2025-26. https://www.meccsa.org.uk/news/meccsa-intervention-on-ofs-strategic-priorities-grant-funding-2025-26/