Universities have been warned against running low quality, "threadbare" courses just to get "bums on seats".
Universities Minister Sam Gyimah said there were a "clutch of underperforming degrees" where students would have poor job prospects when they graduated.
The minister was speaking at the launch of a survey indicating that fewer than two in five students felt they were getting good value for money.
Universities UK said getting a degree remained an "excellent investment".
Mr Gyimah urged universities to work harder at ensuring the quality of all their courses.
He called for them to look more carefully at the future job outcomes of their students.
And he warned of complaints from students that some courses had been expanded so much there were not enough desks or spaces in lecture halls.
Mr Gyimah said that for any future courses, universities should be "thinking very carefully, 'Is this about, 'I want to expand'?' or 'Is this really about offering a high quality degree worthy of our university sector and higher learning that students will benefit from?'"
He said universities were autonomous but needed to exercise more "responsibility" in terms of the quality of courses and to guard against "grade inflation" in how many top degree grades were awarded.
His comments accompanied a new analysis of data published last year showing big differences in students' likely future earnings, depending on the university they attended and the subjects they studied.
