What does Theresa May want post-18 education to look like? The Prime Minister’s plans for tuition fees are getting the most attention today, but her big education speech has a lot more in it than just the cost of university degrees. Indeed, May is criticising the ‘outdated attitude’ that university is the be all and end all, and promising reform of vocational training, including apprenticeships.
A focus on vocational training is something all prime ministers tend to meander into, before realising that higher education is so devilishly complicated that they retreat before achieving said reform. In May’s case, it may not be the complexity of the sector so much as the confusion in her own government that causes the most trouble.
Here is a brief meander through the complicated post-18 landscape. Even though a majority of graduates are in ‘non-graduate’ jobs (it’s worth noting that according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, which examines the problem of over-qualification in the jobs market, ‘non-graduate’ includes press officer, which may insult those government employees currently trying to explain to baffled journalists what on earth May wants to achieve with her education reforms), university is still sold as the gold standard for the most able graduates.
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