“The penalty for not having a university degree in Britain is high,” you quote Robin Naylor of Warwick University, “but the penalty for getting the wrong one can be even higher” (“Making it Pay,” September). And the worst one you can possibly get is in the arts. As your chart shows, men with an arts degree stand to earn less over their lifetimes than those without any degrees, while women with such degrees fare somewhat better not because they earn more than men, but because women without degrees earn very little. “But if you study something you like,” Naylor continues in a conciliatory tone, “then even if you don’t earn so much, there is a better chance you’ll work in a field you love.” It seems he s talking about the arts, but this is far from the case. Most graduates with recent arts degrees abandon the field in anger and despair after only a few years of banging their heads against all sorts of walls. Their predecessors could at least daub and fool around with clay for their own fun. In short, an arts degree is to be avoided today like a plague.