UK must stop “conveyor belt” of graduates, says new report
The UK government should end its commitment to increasing the number of people with a university degree, according to the professional body for human resources.
According to a report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the cost of a degree now outweighs the economic benefits for many professions, with the average student graduating with debts of £44,000.
The CIPD also argues that graduates are “colonizing” jobs which do not require graduate skills, at the expense of other workers. For example, the report finds that 35% of new bank and post office clerks in the UK now have a degree, compared to just 3.5% in 1979.
The CIPD urges the government to develop apprenticeships in order to “create a meaningful alternative route to university”, and improve the quality of careers advice to school pupils.
CIPD chief executive Peter Cheese commented: “Governments of all colors have long had a ‘conveyor belt’ approach to university education, with a rhetoric that has encouraged more and more students to pursue graduate qualifications. However, with this research showing that for many graduates, the costs of university education outweigh its personal economic benefits, we need a much stronger focus on creating more high-quality alternative pathways into the workplace, such as higher level apprenticeships, so we really do achieve parity of esteem between the two routes.”
Graduates working in roles that do not require a degree is not confined to the UK, as Peter Sloane’s article for IZA World of Labor on overeducation and labor market outcomes for college graduates shows. Sloane writes that: “Drawing meaningful conclusions about [skill] mismatch, its dynamics, and its relationship to wages, job satisfaction, and job mobility requires panel data, which can reach more nuanced conclusions by allowing for individual differences, e.g. choosing a job because it offers compensation.”
The CIPD report, Alternative Pathways in the Labour Market, can be accessed here.
Related articles:
Overeducation, skill mismatches, and labor market outcomes for college graduates by Peter J. Sloane
Is the return to education the same for everybody? by Douglas Webber
Does vocational training help young people find a (good) job? by Werner Eichhorst
Find more IZA World of Labor articles on education and human capital