Aficionados of Sir Walter Scott’s novels will recall, in Waverley, the eponymous hero’s fraught journey up into the North of Scotland. Seduced by an impossibly romanticised view of the Highlanders, and a frustration with a seemingly intractable situation back home in England, he somehow manages to involve himself in the Jacobite cause, and the extremes entailed therein. Violence, lust, intrigue and ambition rush upon the young dreamer, and it is only several hundred pages later that Edward settles into a more measured vein – fully aware of a gentleman’s loyalties but with not infrequent glances to the revelations and excitement of his Highland adventure.

Contained, rather unexpectedly, within Scott’s pages one might well discern a lesson for today’s policy-makers and educators. Those in higher education could be forgiven for feeling somewhat under fire this week: the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has, amongst many things, complained that students can’t get out of bed of a morning and, moreover, that universities aren’t teaching them to do so. With great fanfare, then, the CBI have launched a taskforce in an attempt to encourage UK universities to teach skills more relevant to the “world of work”.

The Scottish Government, it seems, have come over a little dewy-eyed here, summarily informing universities that by “delivering outcomes relevant to our aims of higher levels of sustainable economic growth for all, universities will strengthen their future case for increasing levels of public investment.” Put simply, the government will decide which universities deserve money based on the size of the smiles they put on business owners’ faces.

There’s certainly a case for preparing students for employment. Undoubtedly, those in higher education ought to be made very aware early on that there are 10.1 million of them competing for nine million jobs. Those with desires to enter, say, retail management can be fruitfully advised that, over the course of four years, they might like to opt for courses which improve their communication and leadership skills.

But that’s a little different to the aims expressed by businessmen like Melfort Campbell, CEO of Imes Group, who said this week: "I want the HE sector to provide more graduates with degrees which are relevant to our business. Industry needs to be clear on which degree subjects are considered valuable.”

It’s hardly surprising that employers might like to transfer some, even all of the cost of training employees onto universities. Good quality training is, after all, an expensive precondition for any company to remain competitive in the global economy. But for industry to dictate which subjects have value in our society—and for the government to agree—is a little extreme.

Like Edward Waverley in his slide into one-sidedness, the government seem to have been drawn in completely, emphasising the economic value of higher education to the absolute exclusion of its other contributions. It’s a hard case to make when a degree, in some cases, fails to economically advantage even the degree-holder: a report by Universities UK reveals that, on average, male arts students would have stood to earn more if they had skipped university altogether.

Fortunately, the British Academy have stepped in to suggest a middle way, noting that to measure the value of higher education by simplistic measures will inevitably lead to distortions in the allocations of funding and the quality of research. “No single measure,” their report says, “will capture the rich and varied contributions that humanities and social sciences research makes.”

It would be foolish to brush over the economic benefits of a degree – an initiative by the Scottish Funding Council, ScotCHEM, and Chemical Sciences Scotland this week to sponsor 31 new PhD studentships in chemistry will undoubtedly benefit those 31 students and the Scottish economy as a whole. But amid the current—and necessary—panic over university funding, the Scottish government shouldn't make this their only priority. If there’s anything to be taken from Scott, it’s this sort of considered moderation which points at least in the direction of happily ever after.