A new report out showing that the expansion of higher education has led to less of a wages premium for those who go and get it:
The Government’s policy of urging an ever-increasing
number of young people into university – a record 400,000 this year –
is failing in significant respects as graduates flood the job market,
research published by the Department for Education showed yesterday.
Four
years after graduating, nearly a third of "the class of 99" were either
in "non-graduate" jobs or jobs that were not appropriate for someone
with their qualifications.
There was also clear evidence that the "graduate earnings premium" – a
measure of the financial advantage of having a degree – had begun to
fall.
Truly, who could ever have thought it would work out this way? Increase the supply of something and the price changes. Stunning result don’t you think?
The report said the dividing line between graduate and non-graduate jobs had become increasingly "blurred".
One
reason was that employers were responding to the glut of graduates by
raising the qualification requirements for jobs that would
traditionally have been done by non-graduates.
And we get an increase in credentialism. Just what we need of course, an insistence on a piece of paper as an entry ticket to a job rather than any innate ability to do the job or be effective at it. A quite wonderful addition to the efficiency of the economy.
Do go and read the full article to see quite what a horlicks of a comment this is:
Bill Rammell, the higher education minister, said: "This research
provides compelling evidence that graduates are benefiting from the
skills, knowledge and experiences that they have obtained through
higher education."
Is he actually reading the same report?
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