Stop churning out graduates and start training workers, urges new report

• Three university graduates for every one vocationally trained young person despite apprentices netting £12,500 more than graduates of low-value degrees
• Half of all graduates – or 240,000 university freshers this year – could be better off taking higher level apprenticeships while avoiding tens of thousands in debt
• “Mickey mouse” degrees accused of ripping off students as technical routes suffer decades of neglect
• Cross-party support for ending the dominance of the university pathway as landmark inquiry launched

Britain’s education system is “profoundly unbalanced” and needs to be comprehensively rewired, says major think tank.

It warns that treating technical education as a “second class” path has left both the education system and jobs market hopelessly “distorted”.

A new report, Rewiring Education, from the influential think tank the Centre for Social Justice makes clear that the obsession with the university pathway in Britain’s education system has deeply damaged our country’s communities and economy.

The report is backed by major cross party figures including Andy Burnham (Labour), Rt Hon. the Lord Gove (Conservative), Munira Wilson MP (Lib Dem) and Danny Kruger MP (Reform).

The analysis found that for every three British young people opting for a university course, just one received vocational training. By contrast, in the Netherlands this ratio is two-to-one, and in Germany, one-to-one.

Meanwhile, under-19 apprenticeship starts have crashed by 40 per cent since 2014/15 to roughly 75,000 per year, despite new findings showing that higher level apprentices now out-earn the average degree.

Analysis by the CSJ shows that five years after qualifying in their early twenties, a higher level (L4) apprentice earns almost £12,500 more than a student graduating from a low-value university course. The same apprentice earns £5,000 more than the average graduate.

The bottom quartile of students were found to earn £24,800 five years after completing their course, rising to £32,100 for the average graduate. By comparison, a higher level (L4) apprentice earned £37,300. Higher level apprentices typically include trainee accounting technicians, child therapists or network engineers.

Even lower level apprentices were found to take home more than students five years after completing a low-value university course, with level 2 apprentices earning £24,810 and level 3 apprentices earning £28,260. Level 3 apprentices include electricians, early years staff or administrators, with service personnel, joiners and care workers typically at level 2.

The analysis suggests that half of all university graduates – translating to around 240,000 students who started their course this year – could have been better off taking a higher level apprenticeship.

Analysis by the Times has highlighted the pitiful prospects of some degrees. Performing arts graduates of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama or University of Wales Trinity St David earn less than £20,000 five years after leaving. Psychology graduates from the University of Suffolk or University of Bolton earn less than £21,000.

A separate study published this year found that in 2001 the average graduate earned 2.5 times a minimum-wage worker’s pay, compared to 1.6 times in 2023. The bottom ten per cent of graduate workers were found to earn just 11 per cent above the minimum wage.

• The CSJ says decades of neglect of the technical pathway has fuelled the UK’s welfare crisis and left the economy dangerously reliant on migration.
• 37 per cent of UK graduates are “over-qualified” for their jobs – the highest rate in the OECD
• Almost 400,000 university graduates in total are now claiming out-of-work benefits, including 80,000 16-30-year-olds, while the number of 16 to 34-year-olds off work reporting a mental health condition rose by 76 per cent between 2019 and 2024.
• Almost one million young people are not in education, employment or training, with three in five NEETs having no qualifications beyond GCSEs
• Under 25s on payrolls from outside the EU increased by 315 per cent between 2020 and 2025, while the number of young British nationals in work fell
• The construction workforce has fallen to the lowest proportion of total UK employment in over 100 years, with almost half of all vacancies due to skills shortages.

The report highlights how the academic route has come to dominate by default while the technical route has been “marginalised, misunderstood and underappreciated”. It argues that technical education must be rebuilt with its own purpose and value in mind, not treated as “academic-lite”.

Applied General Qualifications, the main vocational alternative to A Levels, remain widely viewed as second-tier. Further education colleges were found to produce fewer higher-level apprenticeships than mainstream sixth forms, while T Levels have grown very slowly with limited work placement opportunities.

In October the Prime Minister scrapped the target of 50 per cent of young people entering university, with ministers allocating £725 million to support apprenticeships for young people and funding SME apprenticeships for under 25s.

But these changes are expected to increase apprentice numbers by just 50,000, compared with more than half a million young people starting university each year. The CSJ is calling for a more fundamental approach to reform.

The State of the Nation report marks the start of this inquiry. Future publications will examine the most effective models internationally – including Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore and others – as well as Greater Manchester’s trailblazer “MBacc” scheme to inform options for a radically strengthened technical pathway across the UK.

In a foreword to the report, Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, said:

“Nationally, we don’t have the technical education system we want yet. This is not a failure of one political party or another. The 1999 decision to target 50 per cent of young people going to university, without having anything to say to the other 50 per cent, was an error. I didn’t support that then, and I am happy it has been abolished.

“But this pledge was only one moment in decades of governments of both parties reinforcing this disparity of esteem between technical and university routes. The result has been many of our young people losing their sense of belonging and purpose as they go through education.”

In another foreword Lord Gove, former Conservative Education Secretary, said:

“Greater school freedom and sharper accountability, a more rigorous curriculum, an emphasis on phonics in teaching reading and maths mastery, as well moving teacher training to the best school all contributed to raising standards. But while we made progress there is still unfinished business. Particularly in the realm of technical and vocational education. We did, of course, simplify vocational pathways and reduce the number of low-value qualifications that do not serve young people. But it remains the case that there is much more to do to give technical education the place in our system it deserves.

“The challenge now is to elevate the value of technical learning, and of the real practical and technical skills that can help young people succeed. The dignity of work, the mastery of craft, and the satisfaction of accomplishment are as essential as scholarship. We must be bold as we look to the future to improve our technical education system, and we must do so by looking at its unique value. I am excited that the CSJ is taking on this long-term mission to fix our technical education system in a way that builds on, instead of betraying, the advancement of the last fifteen years.”

Danny Kruger, Reform MP for East Wiltshire, said:

“We must fix our technical education system. We have built an education system obsessed with the academic pathway into university and detached from the needs of our communities and country. Our system detaches talented young people from where they grew up, starves the economy of practical skill, and leaves those who fail to meet the academic standard with no place for them.”

Jonathan Gullis, former education minister and Senior Fellow at the CSJ, said:

“Britain doesn’t have a graduate shortage, it has a skills shortage. The system pushes too many teenagers into university and too few into high quality technical training, leaving young people with debt, employers with skills gaps, and our economy weaker.

“Serious reform can fix this. Ideas like Andy Burnham’s MBacc show how mayors, employers, schools and colleges can build a high-status technical route into skilled, well paid work, so practical talent is prized, not pushed aside.”

Daniel Lilley, Senior Researcher at the CSJ, said:

“For too long we have pushed young people towards university whether it suits them or not, and failed to offer a respected, serious technical alternative. This inquiry will look at how to create a route that is valued by young people and employers, providing all main parties with a plan to fundamentally rewire our education system.

“We must bring the era of low-value degrees to an end to repair our broken labour market and get Britain growing again.”

Methodology

The CSJ used data from the Department for Education to compare the earnings of graduates (DfE, 2025) with the earnings of apprentices (DfE, 2025) five years after qualifying. The earnings of graduates in tax year 2022/23 are drawn from UK-domiciled first degree graduates who started their degree before the age of 21, five years after graduation. The earnings of apprentices in tax year 2022/23 are drawn from apprentices who qualified between the ages of 19 and 24, five years after obtaining their qualification. Ten years after qualifying, lower quartile university graduates were still found to be earning £11,700 less than a L4 apprentice five years after qualifying (£25,600 compared to £37,300) although a direct ten year comparison is not possible without further data.

The estimate that half of university graduates could be better off taking a higher level apprenticeship is derived from the median earnings of earners five years after obtaining their L4 apprenticeship, which is £5,000 higher than the median earnings of graduates five years after graduation. To estimate the earning outcomes of students on lower-value courses, we adopt the bottom quartile of graduate earners. To estimate the total number of university starters in 2025/26 who could be better off taking a higher level apprenticeship, we estimate the total number of students enrolling (around 480,000 based on recent data:HESA, 2025), and then reduce this to those earning below the median graduate salary, which translates into 240,000.

Table 1. Highest educational attainment aged 25-34 (%)

Source: CSJ analysis of OECD, 2025. We approximate the German ratio of 1:1.05 as 1:1, the UK ratio of 1:2.92 as 1:3, the Netherlands ratio of 1:1.87 as 1:2, and the OECD ratio of 1:1.46 as 1:1.15.