The UK Graduate Problem
Medium | 17.12.2025 20:20
The UK Graduate Problem
Where Did It All Go Wrong?
5 min read
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Just now
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It is September 28th 1999, and the world is preparing for the millennium.
At the Labour Party conference, Tony Blair declares, in his typically rousing style:
“Today I set a target of 50 per cent of young adults going into higher education in the next century.”
An aspirational goal, but one that at the time, made a lot of sense.
A more educated nation would mean a more prosperous one. More business owners, more white-collar workers, more growth, more opportunity.
We hit that target in 2017/18.
The Modern Reality
Yet, here we are 25 years later, more educated, more economically aware, but poorer than we’ve been in 50 years.
Wages in the UK grew consistently from the 1960s through the 2000s, but have shown no growth since 2008, the longest period of wage stagnation since the Victorian era. As the number of university graduates reaches an all-time high, so does the level of austerity.
The question must be asked. Why is the success that was forecast not materialising?
The answer lies in two inter-connected failures of governance.
