Target for half of kids to go to university dropped

In a sign of how worried the government is about youth unemployment, it will – quiet literally – pay firms to hire 16 to 24 year olds. But, as I say in the magazine this week, these government-funded jobs can only be a short-term fix. Any medium-term solution is going to require fixing post-16 education.

The expansion of higher education has not worked out as intended; the 50 per cent target for pupils going to university has been hit, but too many students are doing courses that don’t represent value for money. Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that men graduating from 23 universities and women from nine earn less after ten years than the average non-graduate. This is emblematic of a broader problem. As Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, pointed out in a speech today, a third of British graduates are in non-graduate jobs.