In Britain the graduate premium has eroded not because intelligence or capability have diminished but because the upper tier of the job market has failed to expand in proportion to the influx of degree holders.
This is not inevitable. Countries that have managed to align higher education growth with the expansion of high productivity sectors have sustained strong returns for graduates. The UK has instead seen a concentration of opportunity in a few metropolitan areas and a hollowing out of mid to high skill roles across the country. The signaling model works when the signal is rare and when it maps onto genuine scarcity in professional positions. Flooding the market with degrees without reforming industrial policy and regional investment strategy ensures that more graduates will end up in roles they could have secured without university in the first place.
In that sense expanding university access without parallel reform in the structure of the economy is like building more airports in a country where flight demand is flat. You increase the supply of something whose utilization is capped by forces outside the educational system. The result is inevitable downward pressure on its value. The conversation needs to move away from universities alone and toward how Britain can create more high skill high wage jobs across sectors and regions.
In Britain the graduate premium has eroded not because intelligence or capability have diminished but because the upper tier of the job market has failed to expand in proportion to the influx of degree holders.
This is not inevitable. Countries that have managed to align higher education growth with the expansion of high productivity sectors have sustained strong returns for graduates. The UK has instead seen a concentration of opportunity in a few metropolitan areas and a hollowing out of mid to high skill roles across the country. The signaling model works when the signal is rare and when it maps onto genuine scarcity in professional positions. Flooding the market with degrees without reforming industrial policy and regional investment strategy ensures that more graduates will end up in roles they could have secured without university in the first place.
In that sense expanding university access without parallel reform in the structure of the economy is like building more airports in a country where flight demand is flat. You increase the supply of something whose utilization is capped by forces outside the educational system. The result is inevitable downward pressure on its value. The conversation needs to move away from universities alone and toward how Britain can create more high skill high wage jobs across sectors and regions.