The Institute of Fiscal Studies calculates since 2020 the financial return on a university education has fallen by around a third; due to declining graduate wages (across a range of subjects) & the tax/loan repayment system's higher costs.
There is also evidence that students with lower prior attainment (which may well map onto class background), also have seen more of a decline that those entering university with better results.
But, education is not just about jobs!
#universities
h/t FT
@ChrisMayLA6
Indeed, education is not mostly about jobs. Nevertheless, one has to make a living eventually even when graduating from one’s most favoured (perhaps not well rewarded) faculty.
This issue of falling entry-salaries is yet another example of #NeoLiberalEconomics at play IMO. Monetising and commoditising erudition to the lowest level possible in order to extract maximum benefits (Profits). That a lower entry-remuneration is in evidence across the board is not surpsiring. Nor is the Corporate Executive thoughtbubble dream of replacing much of the workforce with #GenAISlop
Unless human knowledge is valued above #SuperProfits, an increasing numbers of graduates vying for increasingly monopolised job offers coupled with advances in automation and computation technology make for a gloomy future. There is a balance somewhere, but it’s a precarious one, yet to be sought, which requires major changes in our economic structures as well as a strengthening of our democratic institutions.
In the end, as I often say, is we (as a country) lack a coherent understanding of what higher education might be for (across a range of dimensions).... the accelerating instrumentalisation of the last half century has left the sector unable to really defend itself in the face of antagonistic beancounters
Emeritus Prof. Christopher May
RaymondPierreL3