A leading UK vice-chancellor has warned that a university degree can no longer be relied upon as a straightforward route to social mobility, as the country faces an oversupply of graduates and tougher competition for professional jobs.
Prof Shitij Kapur, vice-chancellor of King’s College London, said that while higher education once virtually assured graduates of better careers and pay, that promise has weakened now that close to half of young people go to university. A degree, he argued, now offers an opportunity rather than a guarantee.
According to Kapur, graduate job competition has intensified not only because of artificial intelligence, but also due to slow economic growth and the growing number of degree-holders.
As a result, employment outcomes increasingly depend on factors such as the institution attended and the subject studied.
He compared a degree’s role today to a “visa” rather than a “passport” to social mobility: it allows access to opportunity, but does not ensure success. This shift, he said, was predicted decades ago by sociologists who argued that as higher education expanded beyond a small elite, degrees would lose their scarcity and wage advantage.
Although graduates in England still earn more and are more likely to be employed than non-graduates, the earnings of younger graduates have barely grown in real terms over the past ten years. Kapur linked this stagnation to weak economic performance and the 2012 introduction of £9,000 tuition fees, which placed higher financial risk on students.
He also criticised the government’s long-standing freeze on domestic tuition fees, arguing that it fails to cover teaching costs and adds strain to universities already under pressure.
Many institutions, he said, rely heavily on higher fees from international students to fund research and maintain global rankings that benefit UK students as well.
Kapur warned that tighter immigration policies and new levies on international student fees could undermine this model. While international students are sometimes portrayed negatively, he said they are now central to the sustainability and quality of the UK’s university system.
Looking ahead, Kapur argued that universities will be vital if the UK hopes to overcome its productivity slump. Economic renewal, he said, will depend on leading future technological advances rather than falling behind them and higher education will play a key role in that effort.
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