Is College Becoming Devalued?

Will more college education for more people make Britain more meritocratic and shrivel the class system? Nope. “Employers are becoming less interested in educational qualifications. That’s happening for two reasons. Part of the job of higher education is to send a signal to employers—that someone has learnt to think, to persevere, to absorb information and to present ideas. As the supply of graduates grows, and the quality of teaching in Britain’s shabby, crowded universities declines, this signal is fading. At the same time, services have been growing at the expense of manufacturing, and, increasingly, the qualities that employers in the service sector want are those the middle classes acquire at home: articulacy, confidence and smartness.”