These two conceptualisations of the value of the liberal arts put forward by student Konstantina and academic Hélène suggest very different ways of thinking about who the liberal arts are for. For Konstantina, everyone should maintain a breadth of subjects. Helene, on the other hand, expresses two sorts of reservation about this. First, she notes that the pedagogical and pastoral style best suited to the liberal arts favours a low student–staff ratio. Second, she suggests some kind of pay-off between the quality and quantity of students, such that the value of the specific type of students attracted to the liberal arts is thought to outweigh the value of a large number of students in general. She describes it as a “very specific niche degree”, precisely not one likely to appeal to, or perhaps be suitable for, the majority of students.

This tension when it comes to advocacy for the liberal arts – considering it, often, to be an ideal type of education for all and yet somehow also only appropriate for a specific type of student – gets to the heart of a set of debates about elitism in a mass higher education system that will be the focus of this chapter. Here, the concept of massification is understood not only to mean a particular proportion of young people (say 40 per cent) accessing higher education, but also, more expansively, to refer to a general narrative of aspiration towards higher education for the majority (Scott, 2012) in a context where 97 per cent of new mothers want their children to attend university (Centre for Longitudinal Studies, 2010, cited in Scott, 2021). This context of massification creates tensions for institutions, which must weigh up competing pressures to recruit large numbers of students while trying to maintain league table positions.