EARNING potential wasn’t high on my agenda when I applied to read English at university. I was more interested in having my own electric kettle.

A kettle, a few bits of crockery and a couple of pans symbolised the independence of university. Living away from home, cooking for myself, using a laundrette, cheap pints in the Student Union bar, late-night house parties and making new friends over endless cups of tea - all that meant as much to me as my degree course.

Did studying English literature for three years lead to a lucrative career? Hardly. After graduating, I was a lowly temp in London for months, barely able to afford a tin of beans, before I came home and eventually got a job on a weekly newspaper, earning £80 a week (we got paid every Thursday, in cash in a brown envelope). With no formal training available, I later did a six-month post-grad journalism course, which I had to save up for because Bradford Council rejected my funding application (apparently it didn’t tick the ‘vocational’ box, despite the course leading to vocational qualifications).

I was a graduate, but I spent years earning much less than friends who went into teaching and other professions. So do I wish I’d left school at 18 and knuckled down in a job with prospects? Hell no. Going to university meant the world to me, and I will forever cherish that bubble of time between school and real life.

But if it had been up to Rishi Sunak back then, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to study English. His aim of assessing university degrees through salary thresholds and graduate numbers in professional jobs, and phasing out subjects that don’t meet earning targets, would put an end to studying an arts subject for the love of it. Yes, it makes sense to link degrees to industry, but isn’t there something depressing about restricting education to monetary value?

Sheffield Hallam University has suspended English literature as a degree course. It follows the University of Wolverhampton’s plan to cull over 140 courses, including performing arts, fashion, interior design, fine art and social sciences, and the University of Roehampton’s announcement of cuts to arts and humanities degrees.

Closing such courses, warns the University and College Union, is more likely to hit students from disadvantaged backgrounds. UCU general secretary Jo Grady says the universities closing arts and humanities are those with a higher number of poorer students “and it is unconscionable to deny them the chance to study subjects like literature, art, drama and music”.

Dr Mary Peace, a lecturer in English literature at Sheffield Hallam, described such degree cuts at post-1992 institutions as “cultural vandalism”. Writing on social media, she said: “What kind of society will we have if there is no place for people from all social classes to have the chance to read and think (or to work in a bar for two years while they try to write a novel) before they have to make themselves compliant with the workplace?”

I was the first person in my family to go to university. I did English because I loved books and writing and I wanted to study literature, and develop skills in things like analysis and critical thinking, for a timescale that would be gone in a flash. I had the rest of my life to knuckle down in a job.

Surely having a degree in any subject (apart from Hollyoaks or the Kardashians - there are limits!) shows you have the discipline, motivation and work ethic required to get yourself to lectures, meet essay deadlines and pass exams, while learning to stand on your own two feet. All qualities that should be attractive to employers.

As the cost of living crisis grips hard, many young people getting their A-level results today will choose degree courses with high salary potential. And I get that. But university is more than a conveyor belt churning out identikit industry graduates, and culling higher education choices is a backward step.