Going to university is “too often” positioned as the default for school leavers at the expense of alternatives that could better prepare young people for the labour market, a major review has found.
An interim report on youth unemployment by former health secretary Alan Milburn has suggested that further education “plays second fiddle” to higher education, with per-student funding remaining about £2,000 lower for the former.
With more than one million people aged 16 to 24 in the UK currently not in education, employment or training (NEET), Milburn warned that the country is “at risk of a lost generation”.
Compared with countries in the European Union, only Romania has a higher NEET rate than the UK, the report found, and suggests that the figure could rise to 1.25 million by 2031 without intervention.
Milburn writes that a “concerning proportion” of the NEET population hold a degree or other higher education qualification, at about 13 per cent.
