It’s an election year. Politicians are giving us a barrage of policies. But we often forget to ask the most important question: will they actually work? In this column, Sam Fowles takes policies on their own terms and ask whether they solve the problem they’re supposed to solve. This week, cuts to university arts funding.

What’s the plan?

Education secretary Gillian Keegan has cut university funding for creative subjects, diverting the money to STEM. With Labour promising to expand arts education, it’s a prominent policy divide between the two main parties. Keegan wants students to “pursue higher education studies that enable them to progress into employment, thereby benefitting them as well as the wider economy”. Keegan’s plan will see top-up grants for arts courses such as music, drama and fashion frozen at £16.7m, a figure which is already at half its 2020 level. Resources will instead be focused on “strategically important subjects” such as medicine and engineering, which will receive an extra........

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