Friday 30 January 2026 12:30 pm
Don’t Blame Universities for the Graduate Crisis, Urges Historian Eliza Filby
Blaming universities for the graduate crisis is a convenient narrative, but it fundamentally misrepresents the truth, writes historian Eliza Filby. Each week seems to bring fresh statistics reinforcing a widespread belief: that university no longer delivers financial returns, graduate unemployment is escalating into a new crisis, and higher education has let down an entire generation. Recently, research from the Centre for Social Justice revealed that 700,000 graduates are now claiming some form of welfare support – a staggering 46 per cent increase since 2019.
The Flawed Narrative of University Failure
For critics of higher education, these figures serve as proof that too many young people are being channelled into degrees that fail to translate into stable jobs, leaving them burdened with debt and exposed to economic insecurity. This conclusion appears tidy and even satisfying – even to someone like Filby, who spent nearly a decade teaching in higher education and is intimately familiar with its imperfections.
This emotive and reductive framing taps into some of Britain's current anxieties: concerns about the collapse of meritocracy, generational disadvantage, and the alleged indulgence and irrelevance of so-called ivory tower institutions. In reality, what we are witnessing is not a sudden failure of universities, but the end of a long-standing consensus on education and training that has shaped policy for decades.
The Historical Consensus on Mass Higher Education
That consensus did not begin with Tony Blair's famous pledge in 1999 that 50 per cent of young people should attend university. It actually started earlier, with the John Major government's decision in the early 1990s to transform polytechnics into universities, embedding the sensible idea that higher education should be mass rather than elite. In a post-industrial knowledge economy, the logic was clear: we needed more knowledge workers to drive productivity and innovation.
By 2017, the UK finally crossed the 50 per cent participation threshold, lagging behind countries like Canada, which pushed closer to 70 per cent. The rationale was simple and widely accepted: more education would lead to higher productivity, better wages, and even more engaged citizens. Government papers throughout the 2010s were filled with optimistic claims, suggesting that a highly educated society would be more informed, less crime-ridden, and more active in voting and volunteering. This served as prime justification when tuition fees were increased, though the promised utopia remains elusive.
The Neglected 50 Per Cent and Apprenticeship Shortfalls
For a long time, this logic broadly held sway. However, what was never properly addressed was the fate of the other 50 per cent who did not pursue university education. Governments, businesses, and schools did remarkably little to build credible, well-funded alternatives. When apprenticeships were finally reformed, the outcomes proved more complex than headline figures suggested.
The apprenticeship levy, introduced in 2017, did not increase overall learning; it merely redistributed it. Employer investment in training per worker has fallen sharply over the past two decades in the UK, is paltry compared to European neighbours, and a smaller share of the workforce now receives any structured training at all. What the levy incentivised was not mass upskilling, but targeted investment in individuals that many firms were already committed to training.
Today, more than half of all apprenticeship starts are taken up by those aged 25 and over – often existing employees being upskilled rather than young entrants. Degree apprenticeships illustrate this paradox perfectly. They now account for around 15-17 per cent of all apprenticeship starts and deliver impressive outcomes: approximately 85 per cent of these graduates are in full-time work 15 months on, with only 0.1 per cent unemployed. Yet, these programmes are often harder to access than Oxbridge and increasingly skewed towards more advantaged candidates, such as those with well-connected parents.
Meanwhile, lower-level and youth apprenticeships have steadily declined. Starts for under-19s have almost halved since the mid-2010s, and small and medium-sized employers have pulled back as funding tightened and bureaucracy increased.
A Deeply Uneven System and Its Consequences
The result is a profoundly uneven system. We have created a university funding model where almost every institution charges the same fee but delivers vastly different returns. We built a student finance system that effectively priced out mature students and continues to act as a drag on graduates long after they have left the exam hall. We have a payback system that uniquely disadvantages women who have children and lasts for the majority of one's working life.
We designed an apprenticeship system that rewards firms for training those already inside the tent, while narrowing entry points for younger and less advantaged workers. All of this sits atop a school exam system that is a leading cause of stress among teenagers – more than social media – favours girls over boys, neurotypical over neurodiverse individuals, and channels young people into a single, high-stakes pathway with little room for failure.
Redesigning Pathways for a Post-Covid, AI-Shaped Economy
Post-Covid, and in the age of AI, this situation is a disaster waiting to be addressed. What we cannot do is simply declare that a degree doesn't pay; go be a plumber. The consensus is changing, but to make it solely about universities would be to let businesses, schools, and government off the hook.
The real task now is to redesign the pathways into adulthood for a post-Covid, AI-shaped economy – one that no longer assumes linear careers, academic conformity, perfect choices at 18, or a single route to security. Dr Eliza Filby, a historian of generations and author of the Sunday Times bestseller Inheritocracy, emphasises that systemic reform is essential to address these deep-seated issues.
