I’d be the first to admit it: hair matters. Having good hair makes you feel great. Great hair is one of Donald Trump’s top hiring criteria. But are students of “hair and beauty sciences” a strategic asset? Are they as important as, say, computer scientists or engineers or biologists? And, if they’re not, might it be a good idea for our statistical authorities to remove “hair and beauty sciences” from its broader category of “biosciences” in higher education? Its inclusion, I would suggest, says something about the seriousness with which we take science policy.

I bring it up because numbers crunched by UK-China Transparency (UKCT) show that Britain’s elite universities now have more Chinese than British students enrolled in advanced science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) courses. Russell Group institutions are training about as many Chinese Stem postgrads as Brits. But our top science hubs — Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Manchester and University College London — are collectively enrolling about five Chinese Stem postgrads for every four Brits. In engineering, there are some 3,300 Chinese postgrads versus 1,900 Brits; in maths, 700 Chinese versus 500 Brits.

I can’t tell you what the ratio is in hair and beauty sciences because the data isn’t broken down that way, but given Xi Jinping’s impressively luscious locks, I think we can assume he isn’t sending thousands of bright young things over here for the sake of his follicles. Conversely, I feel it would be rash to assume that a large portion of British students statistically classed as scholars of biology are not, in fact, aspiring Nicky Clarkes. Call it a hunch.

• Chinese students ‘pressured to spy’ on UK campuses

It ought to be shocking that these venerated seats of science are contributing more to the next generation of researchers in a far-off country with a hostile regime than to the brilliance and enlightenment of their own countrymen. But aside from the warped norms of modern science, in which many scholars consider themselves above petty concerns like loyalty and national security, there is an obvious reason for this. At undergrad level, Stem courses cost more to deliver than universities are allowed to charge British students. Foreign students, by contrast, can pay their way. So, while the pipeline of Brits into advanced study is strangled, there is a vast surplus of foreign students ready to take their place.

The problem is that hosting thousands of Chinese engineers is very much not the same as getting in bulk batches of Canadians or Germans. The Chinese state has an official policy of “military-civil fusion” whereby all civil technology is put at the disposal of defence and security needs as well as technological espionage and economic coercion. Even if a vetting scheme could deal with this risk (which it can’t, because it’s a systemic problem arising from mutually incompatible and hostile political norms), Britain doesn’t have one remotely capable of doing so.

When UKCT tried to get details of how the Foreign Office checks overseas students, it was told the government would not supply China-specific data to avoid hurting “international relations”. Overall, the figures show about 1-3 per cent of applications are refused, but there appear to be yawning gaps. For example, the Foreign Office doesn’t ask Chinese students if they are members of the Communist Party. It doesn’t even seem to require them to record their names in Chinese characters and collects them only in Latinised “pinyin” form. This makes vetting using any Chinese-language resources impossible. I know because during an investigation of a dodgy, pro-Beijing figure some years ago, I came across a person of interest with a pinyin name that turned out to have 24 possible Chinese spellings, and the tantalising trail of breadcrumbs ended there.

The bigger problem is not that we are training so many Chinese scientists and engineers without knowing who they are. It is that we are training so few British ones. In a country so exposed to foreign supply chain risk, with a shrivelled defence industrial base and chronic skills shortages in cutting-edge science and engineering fields, our neglect of advanced science education is totally reckless.

• Universities can use loophole to avoid severing links with China

Given budget constraints, it ought to be blindingly obvious that we need to reallocate funding on a massive scale from cheap arts and humanities courses into high-value, productivity-enhancing Stem courses, at both undergrad and postgrad levels. The state’s insistence on being “neutral” about what our students study effectively creates a financial bias against science for our universities and an economic bias against security and prosperity for the country.

None of this should be remotely controversial. But it is, not just because it challenges vested interests in our universities, who make a comfortable living selling useless degrees, but because the fragile egos of arts and humanities graduates cannot cope with the notion that we might be better off with fewer of them and more people in lab coats and overalls. I don’t know why this should be the case. As a humanities graduate, I have no illusions about the relative utility of writing versus medicine or steelmaking. It doesn’t threaten my sense of self-worth. But apparently I’m unusual.

Just look at the reaction to a fairly sensible set of policies the Tories just announced. Among measures aiming to reallocate more money into vocational training, the Conservatives suggested cutting funding for the most worthless fifth of university courses currently on offer — about 100,000 degrees that produce graduates largely incapable of earning enough to pay back their loans. By way of example, the shadow education secretary, Laura Trott, cited data from the Institute for Fiscal Studies showing that three quarters of the value of loans funding creative arts courses have to be written off. This is taxpayer money and precious years of young adulthood sent directly down the drain by selfish and narcissistic university failings. And yet the backlash from self-styled “creative” professionals was immediate, with moaning about the “underfunded and undervalued” arts.

We need to stop listening to these people. Britain will thrive on the strength of its innovative power. The government needs to stop sitting on the sidelines letting funding crunches push universities into an increasingly disastrous pattern of flogging cheap, useless courses to British kids, while delivering top-flight scientists and engineers to enemy regimes. It’s time to lavish a bit of love and a lot more cash on our underfunded laboratories and our aspiring inventors. And, in return, we need the lab chiefs to show a little more common sense and national pride, to ensure Britain’s next generation of scientists are actually British.