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The Economist recently published tables showing the proportion of young people graduating and the levels of under-employment of graduates in a range of countries. They were almost exact mirror images. What stood out was that Germany, possibly the most successful economy in Europe, had one of the lowest proportions of graduates and the highest level of graduates in graduate level employment. Germany, as is well known, has a very strong system of vocational training and qualification. Almost everyone who does not attend university becomes a "Facharbeiter" and many go on to achieve "Meister", a qualification which, rightly, carries significant respect.

At last - common sense is appearing and it is recognised that pushing everyone to University is not the best fit either for individuals or the state. I have always suspected the real reason was that it was politicaly unpaletable to have people unemployed at 17 /18 when it's less of an issue at 22.

Hopefully one of the changes to higher education could be the establishment of balanced quotas for courses based upon a realistic supply / demand relationship and the removal of the multitudes of courses with little real value. As someone who frequently does graduate recruitment it is depressing to tell students that we only recruit from ten Universities UK wide and even then from a small number of courses within those organisations. This is for one of the biggest bluechips. I can hear the howls of anguish and objection but the Universities we work with have the highest entrance requirements and most demanding courses which results in the best graduates - it's that simple.

A better balance of vocation and useful academic courses would help everyone provided that all have an edge and that the qualifications have value. Sadly to do this people have to FAIL. Something that everyone who applies gets does not provide employers with deferentiation or candidates with a true sense of value or worth.

Yes we all know of the nepotisim employed e.g. the house of windsor! Invariably the brightest or near brightest end up seeking opportunities abroad, but my overall experience of graduates persay is not exactly shining! Some end up being leaders as per qualification criteria, and lets just say the word fragging in a work environment springs to mind. This applies either in business, politics and elsewhere.........

I used to give first-year lectures in St Andrews on the anthropology of royal ritual and what happens when someone is transformed into a king through the installation ritual. By chance Prince William was one of those listening one year... Then things in St Andrews took a rather unfortunate turn and now people are more likely to consult me for my website on Skoruspki's Law than for my book on kingship.

We need educated people to leave university with good degrees, but it seems that nowadays a degree has lost it's importance in the eyes of a lot of prospective employers, apart from those looking for specific job related qualification. Too many degree courses seem to be designed to "get bums on seats" and have little relevance when it comes to the job market. Saying that, a considerable number of jobs or non jobs in the public sector seem to be tailor made for these degrees. Perhaps if the universities were only funded for those subjects that were of use to the greater community then they would serve the nation better and would be better able to fund themselves.

Perhaps it's obvious, but you have misinterpreted the report in places:
"Across the UK, 78% of those with one degree were still not in a job that matched the skill level reached after 42 months.
(Delete "were still not in" . Replace with, "have" .
Quite a difference!
These data are nothing new. THES (October 2003) had a much more illuminating report on the subject, where there was an analysis of graduate jobs versus discipline studied.
This showed for example 99.3% graduate employment for medics; 89% for civil engineers; but only 63% for psychologists and 61% for sociologists (among the lowest).
Given the huge numbers electing to study humanities (despite the stiff competition for places) the crucial question is whether taxpayers would be better spent elsewhere.
I'd argue that there are infinitely many better uses: for a start, within the education sphere, spending money on promoting maths, science and engineering.

Never been enough jobs in Scotland for qualified people, so like generations before you end up having to move to London/SE England to work in your chosen profession or now emigrate within the EU. So it`s easy to see that one of Scotlands most important exports over the past 50 years has been higher educated people. Scotland has no pharmaceutical industry,no auto industry the biotech industry failed to grow as dreamed of. Neither does Scotland benefit from the corporate tax laws such as the Irish have. I wonder how many university educated Scots are living & working abroad( include England in this too)? Its easy to conclude that we have too many higher education institutions.

Easy way to get a better fit between degrees & jobs; put a graduate tax on employers for all jobs that require a degree, but stop the charges to students. Then it would be clear whether having a degree is as essential as it seems to be, and the system is funded by the employers who benefit from a well educated work-force. As for Graham E, the top universities would attract a higher tax....if they're worth it, companies will pay!

Actually this subject gets clouded by other factors.

It's rather become the 'game', especially within some public sector organisations, to employ people with a degree irrespective of the need for one to do the job in question.

So, some people in town halls are in jobs such as an administrator or such like in, say, a Planing Dept which demand a degree. Their degrees are totally irrelevant to the job they are doing, e.g. Zoology, or History of Music, or whatever, but a) it helps to reduce the number of applications they receive and have to hsort-llist when they recruit and b) it means the Council can give out nice sound-bites such as "46% of our officers are educated to degree level".

Of course, neither of those statements mean, per se, that recruiting degree holdrers to the exclusion of others is a good management practice or that it ensures the Council Tax (or other tax) payers get good value for money.

And that is because, despite the spin, neither one of the two reasons means the same as "we recruit the best available people for the jobs in question into our vacancies" or that "we get the most fizz for our buck" which is actually what the Counicillors and their senior officers ought to be doing.

The same applies to other organisations too, but is probably more evident in the public sector.

Surely the problem started long before now, is this not the indicator that Education has been devalued to such an extent that a degree from any University is only worth what some employer deems it to be worth to him.
In many cases graduates will take on a job that 20 years ago would have been thought demeaning, to-day they graduate with a mill stone of debt round their pretty necks. It is only if they have family funding can they wait until the right job for them appears.
One hostelry that I know of had 5 PhD graduates working the bar at one time, each leaving as a post commensurate with their degree and desires came up. Their CV’s did show that they could work and had at times had their hands dirty. How many graduates in the past left university straight into political researching and progress into parliament where they receive and injection of knowledge and an ability to produce receipts and expenses, ended up bankrupting this country?

This research should hardly come as a surprise to anyone. As someone with a 1st class Honours degree and a Post Graduate degree I have never had any job that was not either a labouring job or a customer service job. Employers are more interested in whether or not the applicant is middle class or not.

I was never asked about my degree courses at an interview but numerous questions about things that I could never have afforded to participate in. The mock outrage of interviewers on discovering that I was working a Saturday night shift whilst at University so I could afford to get to classes the following week gets tiresome after a while. Sorry but I didn't get enough money from my trust fund to go out drinking on a Saturday night or find out what the local Indie band scene was like.

There is no point in putting more and more people through 4 years plus of tedium with the sole aim of getting them into debt as is the current aim of Higher Education before channeling them into low skilled jobs to pay for it.

I graduated in 2000, and it took me several years to find a job that matched my qualification, and i have many friends who are still under-employed. I think part of the problem is that the links between education and industry in this country are appalling, so graduates are leaving university without the relevent work experience or soft skills required to get the jobs they are going for. There is also the problem that people in this country go to university far too young, just going to university for the sake of it, without really thinking about their future careers before they go, and not really prepared to think about what they will actually do when their degree finishes. More needs to be done to force under-graduates to look into career options and get relevent experience while they are studying for their degree.