The UK “needs a lot more people getting a good post-secondary education” but does not need “more people going to university”, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s head of education, as political debate over higher education expansion intensifies in Westminster.
Rishi Sunak, the UK prime minister, said recently that the Labour government’s 1999 target for 50 per cent of young people in England to enter higher education was “one of the great mistakes of the last 30 years”, leading to “thousands of young people being ripped off by degrees that did nothing to increase their employability or earnings potential”.
Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s director for education and skills, said that the organisation’s data for the UK showed the earnings advantages of tertiary education were higher than in many comparator countries. But there were also “low marginal earnings returns”, he said.
Earnings and employment returns, he continued, “used to be very strong for the UK…It was almost a sure bet to go into university. I don’t think you can say that now. It works for some. But the variability in earnings for university graduates is very high. It’s still a great investment for some, but certainly not for all of them.”
