When will Tony Blair drop his delusion that universities are a magical

cure-all for societal ills? His “50 per cent to university” was a great idea in
theory – level everyone up! – but in practice, it led to monster student debt
and the huge skills gap we now have. Many school leavers, who might
otherwise have gone straight into the workplace, instead attended poor-
quality courses (because not everyone can go to LSE) that left them
qualified to argue on Twitter and little else.

Now, doubling down on the mess he partly made, Blair thinks the cure
is that 70 per cent of school leavers ought to get a degree.

The productivity and skills crisis is real. According to a survey by the

Economist Intelligence Unit, 34 per cent of UK company executives say
that they are satisfied with the level of education and skill-attainment of
new-starts. There is a particular shortage in Stem (science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics), healthcare and IT, with cybersecurity
having a critical lack of qualified workers.

Considering that this is the situation when 53 per cent of school leavers go
on to university, the idea that the solution is to funnel more teens off to
London Metropolitan is faintly mad. It brings to mind a medieval doctor
recommending blood-letting as a cure and then, when it doesn’t work,
saying, “Hmm, perhaps more blood?”

The Government, for its part, doesn’t think that “more university” is the
answer. “We need to stop the obsession about whether more or fewer
people are going to university,” Michelle Donelan, the universities
minister, has said. “And instead focus on getting people into high-quality,
worthwhile programmes.”

I do understand why Blair is so in love with the idea. After all, he went to St
John’s College, Oxford, grew his hair, played in a band and met his wife. If
that’s his idea of what a university is then it’s no surprise he wants that for
everyone. And for all of us, “university” is a byword for success because,
for years, it was. For a certain class, it was unthinkable not to go; for
another, it meant you had made it.

There are now 130 universities in the UK, (according to the Good
Universities Guide), and I’m pretty sure very few resemble St John’s. Just

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because a building calls itself a “university” doesn’t mean it is turning out
employable graduates. Most years, even Oxford and Cambridge produce
an awful lot of bookshop assistants and zero-hours contract TV “interns”,
let alone the University of Bedfordshire.

There are so many universities offering so many courses that companies

tend to hire from only a quarter of them and even then they are looking for
particular degrees.

Not all degrees are created equal, even from Russell Group members. In
fact, only a degree in economics from Cambridge has been proven to
guarantee extra money on a graduate starting salary. The 160 students on
that course are alright, then – what about everyone else?

Some degrees, usually in the arts, have been shown to negatively affect a
starting salary. Male arts graduates earn on average 14 per cent less than
their non-graduate peers. And they’ve all got around £44,000 worth of debt
to somehow reckon with, no matter what their starting salary.

None of this matters if you are wealthy and well-connected and just at uni
to mess about and smoke drugs before doing a law conversion course. But
luring someone without those resources towards university, without
making it clear it’s all now kind of a gamble – sorry! – is not only a nasty
trick, it’s creating a crisis in employment.

Of course, all this is very personal. I hated every minute of my English

literature degree at Bristol University. It’s not particularly the fault of the
university. (Although with its hideous architecture, prehistoric courses
and preening academics, it didn’t help.) The trouble was that although I
looked like a good candidate for university, the thought of three more
years of academic study chilled me to the bone. I was furious at the
intellectual snobbery of it all, that there was no acceptable path from
school to work that didn’t involve trudging through a degree. I was
depressed and learnt nothing, certainly none of the “technical and ‘soft’
skills” that the Tony Blair Institute thinks that “HE” is “best able to
provide”. Yeah, right!

Whatever I have achieved in my career is down to what I learnt on the job,

which is: don’t miss deadlines and don’t confuse “coruscating” with

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“excoriating”. Journalism is not hard. You do not need a degree. I’m sure
many other jobs are the same.

One of the great ironies in all this is that it is Tony Blair’s son, Euan, who is
helping school leavers bypass this rotten system of university-or-die.
Euan’s company, Multiverse, matches school leavers with white-collar
apprenticeship schemes in companies like Morgan Stanley and Mercedes-
Benz. It gives school leavers a path to decent employment that bypasses
dingy digs and crippling debt. You could even call it a Third Way.

But it comes as no surprise to me, because Euan was also at Bristol. He had
a front row view of what an out-of-date, decrepit system it is, which does a
lot of damage for what good ever comes of it. Whatever father-son grudge
match this proxy war over university attendance is covering up doesn’t
bear thinking about, but I sure as hell know whose side I’m on.