[billyoyo]

You state that "a drop in overall intake as more students realise it likely isn't worth the money". This is completely unfounded and not supported by statistics at all [1]. University intake in the UK across all ethnicities has been on a steady increase.

Also, I'm not sure it's true to say UK degrees don't care about the beauty of number's. Again, the statistics show that the number of mathematics students have been according to the overall trend [2]. And anecdotally, comparing with friends from other countries the UK actually seems to have a university system unusually geared to purely academic degrees.

It's my personal belief that while of course university is about getting a job, it's also about learning about adulthood for many people. People use it to delay the start of their working life and enjoy a few years of adult freedom, as well as to get a degree. Anecdotally, I know a lot of my friends went to uni almost entirely for this reason and had no idea in their head about what they'd do after yet. But I don't think there's anything wrong with that. In fact with increasing lifetimes I think it only makes sense we continue to delay the age at which we enter the workforce.

[1] https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education...

[2] https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/16-01-2020/sb255-higher-educatio...