When I saw the headline that maintenance grants were making a comeback I was thrilled. Finally! A Labour policy not dressed up in Thatcherite cosplay. Although I won’t feel the benefits given its anticipated return by 2029 (the government’s taking a leaf out of Netflix’s book it seems), I was encouraged to see a positive, tangential step towards breaking down the steep barriers for lower-income students, especially when our own University is turning more and more students away from its Financial Assistance Fund.

But then I read the fine print. These grants will only apply to those studying selected courses – courses that support Labour’s industrial strategy to ‘renew Britain’. Safe to say, as an English student, my confidence was knocked. What can I bring to an industrial site? A hard hat and a copy of Jude the Obscure? Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are now supposedly being encouraged to make their university choices based on genuine passion and ambition rather than financial anxiety, but god forbid those interests aren’t python or pie charts. Always dreamed of studying ASNAC? No, pointless, be useful and train as a doctor instead.

This ethos is one, I think, Cambridge implicitly echoes. Look at the graduate and internship fair: there were enough tech and financial consulting companies to make me question whether I was in the Student Services Centre or a cheap Canary Wharf cosplay. Creative careers get little more than the odd webinar which, even with the cultural capital of a Cambridge degree, doesn’t really encourage disadvantaged students that following their passions can materialise into a supportive foundation for their futures. The message we’re left with is ‘join the Civil Service! Or do…nothing? ’

“Studying the humanities at Cambridge will seem something unachievable and useless, locked behind a paywall”

Such attitudes do nothing for social mobility. Every degree not deemed a priority by the government (or not equally advertised as ‘employable’ by our universities) will simply be translated to a waste of time. Not a priority equates to not getting a job. And so we are stuck in the same bitter spiral: the humanities (the irrelevant, shunned, ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’) remain firmly in the grasp of the elite. Working-class students are scared away from pursuing the arts because there is no clear vocation promised at the end of their degree nor will they receive any extra funding to help them through it (except maybe a college grant which most prospective students don’t even know about unless they apply and get in). Yes, of course it is good that action is being taken so that the poorest students do not graduate with the highest debts, but this selective approach to equalising access to higher education is really just a policy enactment of that ‘your next job could be in cyber’ ad.

I am tired of this message that working-class students must do vocational courses. I know we need people in STEM. I know the NHS is understaffed. But why can’t we also pursue our intellectual curiosities? Why is that becoming a freedom for just a privileged few? The comments I have received about studying English, even from Cambridge students who you think would know better (what is this university but a geek commune), telling me I’m going to be a barista (which only confirms their own snobbery – anyway I think I’d make a mean mocha so there) or a teacher (a highly respectable and important job, oh no!), perpetuates that such courses should only be for certain people. Those with money to burn, not money to make.

“I do find myself clinging to the shiny Cambridge degree label to justify my choices, to justify my degree’s worth”

If the humanities don’t make it onto this ‘priority’ list, and it sure doesn’t seem like they will, the only people studying them will be those who can afford it. I love English but I do find myself clinging to the shiny Cambridge degree label to justify my choices, to justify my degree’s worth: yeah it might be unemployable but this is Cambridge so it’s different I swear! But an institution shouldn’t define a discipline. Students should be free to study any course anywhere with the help and encouragement to do so. It irks me that every politician and their nan did a PPE degree for free growing up, but are now shaking their heads and tutting at young people who deign to follow in their footsteps. Why don’t you go back to university and become an engineer?

The maintenance grant shouldn’t operate on a give and take basis. Working-class students should have the freedom to study any degree without overt stress about funding themselves during their course and the debt they’ll face after. If anything, they need more access to the arts. Where are the working-class Classicists in Cambridge? Or History of Art students? Let’s show that these disciplines are accessible and worthwhile rather than keeping them behind opaque gallery displays of classist snobbery.

The government needs a diverse graduate workforce if it wants to renew Britain. Prioritising and bankrolling STEM alone will not achieve that. Humanities students are taught a unique set of skills in their own right – critical thinking, communication, how society works and how we can deal with its challenges – and these provide much-needed balance and benefits. Only a select privileged few will be equipped and encouraged to do that if the government keeps to this course of action. Studying the humanities at Cambridge will seem something unachievable and useless, locked behind a paywall. That doesn’t look like levelling the playing field to me. Dangling financial incentives over disadvantaged students’ heads only limits their choices and fosters more division; until the government rolls out maintenance grants for all students on any course who need it they are simply taking us one step forward and three steps back.