Daniel Lilley: Britain must rewire the education system to end the great university con

Daniel Lilley is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Social Justice.

The UCAS application deadline closed last week, with hundreds of thousands of young people across the country scrambling to finish up their personal statements, and surely at least one or two questioning how visible ChatGPT’s guiding hand will be to admissions officers.

2025 saw record numbers of applications and this year is likely to be no different. University applications dwarf every other path at 18 by some margin. Today, over three fifths of young people in England progress into a degree in the two years after finishing their studies, according to the DfE. Decades on from Tony Blair’s famous 50 per cent target, university remains the dominant route, the esteemed route, the expected route. But should this be the case in 2026?

New analysis by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) suggests otherwise, finding that the value of university degrees, especially relative to apprenticeships, has deteriorated over recent years.

Five years after qualifying in their early twenties, a higher level (L4) apprentice will now earn almost £12,500 more than a student graduating from a low-value university course – and £5,000 more than the average graduate. Even ten years after donning the mortarboard for their graduation photo, the average graduate still earns £2,500 less than the salary taken home by a higher apprentice in half the time.

This is before we even consider the student debt that those heading to university are taking on. Apprentices not only avoid this debt, but earn, albeit modestly, throughout their training. The average student had debts of £53,000 after graduating last year, and – as has been reported this week – the interest is so high that for many earners the debt pile continues to mass well into their twenties and thirties.

As ever, the British public are ahead of the curve. Just four per cent of the public think that degrees are better than apprenticeships for gaining employment. It is clear to much of the country that we have too many people taking degrees with low-income prospects and too few people entering technical and vocational training.

We lead the OECD in “overqualification”. If you have a degree from a university outside of the top 20 (as ranked by The Times), then your chances of entering low skilled work after university are doubled.

Meanwhile our construction and skilled trade sector are creaking under chronic and severe skills shortages, accounting for almost half of vacancies. As the number starting apprenticeships has fallen, the leaky skills pipeline has faltered, and these trades have become increasingly reliant on older workers. Since 2008 the under 24 construction workforce has shrunk by 40 per cent, while the proportion over 65 has trebled. Bob the builder, at some point, will need to retire.

To end the ripping off of Britain’s young people, and build a workforce fit for the future, we need to fundamentally rewire the education system. The CSJ has embarked on a major programme of reform backed by figures from Michael Gove to Andy Burnham to develop this plan.

Crucially, this doesn’t mean throwing out the success of the last fifteen years of education reform: fewer children not achieving GCSE English and Maths, more schools rated ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’, and a decade-long climb up international rankings tables. All legacies to protect. But, as Lord Gove emphasises, “The dignity of work, the mastery of craft and the satisfaction of accomplishment are as essential as scholarship.” The ambition must be to end the hierarchical system with the university pathway at the top and technical pathways at the bottom.

First, we need to build on those reforms to create two genuinely complementary pathways, valued on their own terms. We must ask, for example, whether the £431 million of apprenticeship funding allocated to older university graduates in the last year would not have been better spent opening up routes for young people currently on track for a student finance fleecing?

Second, we must close the chasm that currently exists between the classroom and the workplace. There are green shoots here in the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate, which is being shaped directly by industry, working with local employers to steer the jobs and skills of tomorrow.

With employers such as IBM, Autotrader, Murphy Construction, the Bee Network and the NHS among the 352 employers offering T Level placements, job outcomes are prioritised earlier, built into 13-16, as well as 16-18, education.

Third, we must build on what works across Britain, the world, and from our history. From Wedgwood to Murray to Stephenson, our industrial revolution was resourced by a once-great apprenticeship system. And nations such as Germany, the Netherlands, and South Korea have thriving models today from which we must learn. While we have three university educated 25-to-34-year-olds for each one vocationally trained, the Netherlands only have two and Germany one.

University may once have been a rite of passage, but it has become a sacred cow. While a degree will continue to offer a key to a better future for thousands, the era of university domination must now come to an end. The PM has rightly abandoned Blair’s target. But what comes next?

If the CSJ succeeds, a new generation will swap UCAS statements for technical pathways that are no longer seen as second best, but the obvious choice.