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University over-expansion has led to the farce of pretend graduate jobs

Employers are confining many low-skilled roles to graduates. Why should they care that this requires recruits to take on huge debt, asks Paul Wiltshire

Published on
八月 18, 2025
Last updated
八月 18, 2025
Paul Wiltshire
An estate agent holds up house keys
Source: fizkes/iStock

If readers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland happened to pay attention to any news outlet last Thursday, they would have seen the usual pictures of ecstatic school-leavers who had made their required A-level grades and have got into the university of their choice – or at least scrambled into an alternative through clearing.

Parents play their part in this frenzy with their soft indoctrination of their children into the notion that they must get into university to be successful in life. And sometimes they may be right – but that doesn’t mean that the system is healthy.

The policy of mass higher education is based on the assumption that no matter how many graduates are produced, the economy will be able to provide them all with genuine graduate jobs. But the evidence of this assumption’s falsity – at least in the UK – is mounting.

Graduate pay premiums are falling or non-existent, and stories abound of graduates struggling to find any suitable jobs even after making hundreds of job applications. Meanwhile, I have uncovered yet more dysfunction, in the form of employers advertising jobs as being for graduates only even when there is no genuine reason why you need a degree to do any of the tasks mentioned. I have uncovered for my latest report, , include trainee estate agents, customer after-care administrators, sales administrators, junior marketing assistants and shop assistants.

While these are perfectly good jobs, are these really the roles that today’s school-leavers have in mind for themselves as they jump for joy on the local newspaper photographer’s count of three? Surely not. But pity the poor kids whose three A*s at A level don’t even qualify them for these menial roles any more as employers decline to take a punt on a gawky 18-year-old, preferring to wait until they are at least 21.

And you can hardly blame them. If they only need to pay barely above the minimum wage to attract applications from more mature graduates, why wouldn’t they? It’s no consequence to the employers that those graduates have had to take on tens of thousands of pounds of debt while they’ve been maturing. And the graduates who find themselves in these pretend graduate jobs will often be happy to go along with the pretence for the self-esteem and CV purposes.

It’s a farce. We have created a system where whole rafts of graduates end up doing exactly the same jobs for the same pay that they would have done a generation ago after leaving school at 18 – or even 16. And I don’t believe for a moment that many of those jobs have become so much more demanding than they used to be that they genuinely require degrees. More training may be required, but that can be done just as effectively on-the-job; and yes, technology has moved on but most 10-year-olds are more au fait with it than their parents are.

Furthermore, my research found that the prejudice against non-graduates doesn’t just affect entry-level jobs. Non-graduates run the risk of suffering discrimination later in their careers, too, as many senior jobs also stipulate that only graduates may apply, even though candidates will also be expected to demonstrate proven ability, with several years or even decades of experience on the job. If they have proved that they can do the job, then why does it matter if they are a graduate or not?

Snobbery against non-graduates is nothing new, but governments haven’t helped matters over the years. First polytechnics were allowed to rename themselves as universities rather than proudly differentiating themselves and sticking up for the vocational training on offer. And more recently, degree apprenticeships were created, giving a clear signal that only by association with a degree do apprenticeships have any real worth. On the eve of A-level results day, the education secretary implied that school-leavers entering the workforce and not going to university are “”.

Advertising pretend graduate-only jobs is indirect discrimination by age as it unfairly excludes anybody under 21. Regulatory bodies should also be mindful that it is illegal for either employers or agencies to charge a fee to candidates for giving them a job – but with graduate-only jobs they are enabling universities to charge a quasi-fee just for the chance to be considered for a job.

Student debts are a loathsome burden, but it is a double insult if the degree is nothing more than a ticket to enter the market even for near-minimum-wage, largely unskilled jobs. The UK government needs to stop this circus and cap university participation at 25 per cent or less of the population, ban pretend graduate-only job adverts and make sure that employers open up all trainee jobs to school-leavers to give them alternatives to university.

Paul Wiltshire is the father of four UK university graduates and current?students. His report, , is published on his website,?University Watch.

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Higher education policy
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Reader's comments (16)

#1 Submitted by p.... on August 18, 2025 - 7:04am
This article is a reasonable summary of restricting jobs that do not need a graduate to those with a degree, common in other developed countries too, because businesses do not bear a direct cost for doing so. It then lurches to arbitrary (in my view the cap is silly and given their greater costs would restrict STEM and some professional social science degrees where graduate skills are key) “solutions” in the last sentence. Why not address the core issue and make employers pay a small increase in payroll/employer NI when a job is restricted to graduates (or employs one if enforcement is otherwise not practical)? Set it at a level (perhaps 5-10 %) that doesn’t penalize too much for jobs that need graduates but discourages doing this when the job doesn’t need it.
#2 Submitted by ... on August 18, 2025 - 8:42am
But 80% of graduate only jobs don't specify what subject degree you need according to the ISE. So that is strong evidence that the hefty majority of graduates are ending up in jobs where you didn't genuinely need to spend an extra 3 years of study and get yourself into debt , just to be considered for the role. The idea of charging a levy to the employer is an interesting concept, but I would like this to go direct to the Graduate themselves to pay off their loan. So perhaps the employers should be responsible for the student loan repayments of all graduates they employ. That would make them start thinking about employing 18 years olds again I am sure !
#3 Submitted by p.... on August 18, 2025 - 8:36pm
I suspect if you looked at the details of the remaining 20 % (and, speaking as a chemist, others that require skills that since polys became universities are only available for new entrants from the later) they would be largely focused on STEM (particularly the core sciences, maths and engineering), some professional social sciences degrees and healthcare (medicine, pharmacy etc.). The expensive nature of providing these degrees (e.g. chemistry labs) means they would be first cut in the case an arbitrary cap was put in place. This would worsen the supply of these needed graduates making recruiting for key roles that don’t pay as well, e.g. science teachers that already fail to meet national targets year after year, truly disastrous. A more targeted approach that affected disciplines that are seen as being overly attractive to students for the demand for these graduates would be a more sensible approach that avoids this problem. My idea for the levy is to steer employers away from requiring graduates where not necessary, where this funding goes is a second order problem provided the employers can’t just use it to offset lower salaries (the way I worry paying it to graduates would).
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#4 Submitted by ... on August 18, 2025 - 10:41pm
I am not suggesting an arbitrary cap where the Uni's take it upon themselves to cut the expensive, but in fact, the most necessary courses. Careful planning by the Govt would have to take place to decide what caps would be required across the range of course subjects. I am not saying that the answer is going to have to be 'exactly' 25%. I am saying that it should be a drastic cut given the gross un-checked expansion that has taken place with no apparent govt control at all about what extra course places are being created.
#5 Submitted by ... on August 18, 2025 - 8:11am
An arbitrary and 'plucked from the air' 25% makes no more sense than Tony Blair's arbitrary and 'plucked from the air' 50%. Yes, agree there are serious problems, agree there are probably too many universities now and many students going to university for whom that is not necessarily the best option. State control of universities (for they are in reality locked into the current doom spiral by state control , very few options for survival other than to keep expanding and packing bums on seats) has proved disastrous all round. So I don't think the author's mooted solution of MORE state control is going to take us anywhere. How about less.
#6 Submitted by ... on August 18, 2025 - 8:47am
I agree that there should be less state control. At the moment the state exercises control by issuing an unlimited amount of student loans to pay for the fees of virtually whatever course any particular University wants to run. And the result of this state control of the market is that we have an ever growing %HE participation rate , and students are the collateral damage and used as unwitting pawns in the process of Universities extracting money from Govt funds via student loans.
#7 Submitted by bursar@... on August 18, 2025 - 8:50am
Graduate un/under-employment is an issue in many countries that have arguably over-expanded HE - often, as in the UK, at the expense of starving the proper resourcing of FE as a vocational alternative to HE required so as to have a coherent TE sector serving the needs of the economy AND of ALL young folk. But with the offer of laptops and reduced price accommodation each year Us lure evermore customers into their over-crowded seminars while complaining about being under-funded per student - and so the passing of “Peak HE” is deferred for another year and what some assert as a mis-selling scandal deepens… Sadly, no Government seems capable of delivering joined-up TE - only of talking about doing so.
#8 Submitted by oliver.... on August 18, 2025 - 9:02am
Perhaps young people see the wider value of going to university and studying something interesting, certainly more so that this dubious organisation called 'university watch' (one might well ask, what's it's point?). They do have the choice to go or not. Fees are offputting, and the graduate premium was always a fantasy for many students (say in the Humanities), but many do very well indeed.
#9 Submitted by ... on August 18, 2025 - 9:51am
They don't have a free choice whether they go to University or not. Their parents (us) will encourage them to go, so will their teachers along with all societies general messaging telling them that going to University is synonymous with success. They are encouraged to ignore the student debt. And if employers are refusing to employ them until they are 21 year old heavily indebted graduates, then what choice do they really have other than to go to University like 'everybody else'
#10 Submitted by ... on August 18, 2025 - 9:38am
Well Mr Wiltshire seems to have rattled a few cages here, and no mistaking!! Yes the basic thrust of his research is correct in my view, but he does seem to have a few axes of his own to grind along the way. I mean what can one say anmy more. Students go to University these days because it is the expectation and not to go for many would be an admission of failure of a kind. I dont think they actually seriously work out the financial and career implications (which are devilishly complex now and get more arcane as the systemis patched up an tinkered with), they probably think it it will all work out Ok in the end, everyone else is going to Uni, then so are they!! In future years of course, when reality bites, then we will have a serious Debt Forgiveness campaign like in the US. Are they really paying off over 30 years now instead of 20? What does that mean for their pensions? It's just a mess with bad decision after bad decision, removing the cap, selling off the Student Loan Book, etc etc and every year adds more debt and obligation. I can't believe those arguing for less state control of our higher education system, look at rail, water, practically every marketization and privatization of our utilities has been disastrous and the only solution, billions more of tax payer's money to sort them out. We really do need to know how many graduates we need and in what areas (this will change over time of course).
#11 Submitted by ... on August 18, 2025 - 9:55am
Well yes exactly. You have hit the nail in the head here. Most young people seem to be going to "Uni" as they say because it is the norm and expectation for most of them. From my experience few of the students I teach have the kind of work ethic that my cohort had (with some very notable exceptions!). I doubt most of them work out the financial implications of their choice, they just do what their peers are doing and the process is normalised. Many will opt for the degree subjects they find "easy" I am afraid and avoid the hard ones (languages for example) treating the experience more as a lifestyle issue. A large number will find the discipline of work hard and will have issues with their "mental well being". The system over expanded in an uncontrolled way with concimitant abuses (senior management pay out of control) and the consequences of this process (which were predicted) are now blindingly obvious. Like the rest of our services (health prisons justice transport) this would take billlions and billions to out right and people don;t like paying taxes as it is. I am for more state control of HE and education more widely, but the quality of our current politicians (from all parties) is so abysmal, directionless, short termist and, frankly, impotent across the board to effect any change one has little confidenrtce in any interventions made
#12 Submitted by i.... on August 18, 2025 - 12:27pm
I very much liked author Naomi Alderman's contribution on this topic this weekend, which I quote in full: "here is the Jewish cultural perspective: you don't get an education in order to become rich. you try to make money so that you have more time for education, the greatest and most reliable joy in life. this is like complaining that raising children or falling in love isn't better paid" I agree that demanding a degree for a job that doesn't require one is a bad. I also think that what has happened on FE and vocational training is a disgrace. Howver, I very much disagree that the solution is restricting access to education. While going to University shouldn't be a requirement for most people to succeed financially, it should ideally be availalbe to everyone that does wish to go (or as many possible). The quesiton is then how is this funded? Saying that only those that can afford it restricts this benefit to only the rich. But it also seems poor to ask the state to pay if we are only doing it to allow people access to the "greatest and most reliable joy in life" . This is where the loan system come in, I guess. You charge people now on the basis that they will have to money to pay later.
#13 Submitted by ... on August 18, 2025 - 1:47pm
It is a completely false premise that University has a monopoly on the process of Education. Don't you think the you can enjoy the benefits of Education simply by being part of a collective of human beings working as a team to achieve common aims - i.e. By going to work. Education is about developing your mind , you can do this very effectively without a further three years of formal study simply by engaging in normal life with all of it's richness, possibilities and interactions. Education doesn't stop just because you don't choose to go to University.
#14 Submitted by ... on August 18, 2025 - 1:37pm
It is irresponsible to encourage and allow everybody to get into debt to get an education that will prove little use to them. My research shows that 200k of the 500k students who currently go to Uni will get no better career pay prospects, but just the debt. And it is highly likely that at least half of those who do get better pay, they will be doing a job that is nothing to do with their degree they have studied for , so it is questionable whether actually studying for the degree played any part. We have to face up to the reality that the current system is not working and that it is piling up hundreds of thousands of young adults with a pointless debt before they have started out in life every single year. Advocating the possible benefits to a further three years HE is all well and good, but there is always a limit and we have definite gone way past it. Do you really think we are doing any favours effectively allowing everybody to enter HE with a bare minimum of academic entry requirements in place, knowing full well that they are highly unlikely to benefit financially and instead will have their finances stuffed by an extra 9% tax for 40 years and for the general tax payer to pick up a tab when the loan is written off?
#15 Submitted by wlarge@... on August 18, 2025 - 9:39pm
36% partipation rate in the UK. In China it's 60%. I know of no advanced economy that is cutting university education. As for student debt, that's a political choice not an economic one. Finally, the purpose of education is to benefit society as a whole. Not the individual.
#16 Submitted by ... on August 18, 2025 - 10:31pm
But why are you so determined to ignore the reality of the facts in front of you ? We have hundreds of thousands of our young adults entering HE for whom it is proving no use at all at great cost to themselves and the general tax payer. How does that benefit society ? Wouldn't society and the young adults themselves be far better served by them entering the workplace aged 18? It's not as it they have had no education at all at this point in their life - they have been in full time school for 13 years.

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