The warning came on June 2, when the National Center for Social Research published its annual British Social Attitudes survey. Among people in England, a record 34% now agree that a university education is not worth the time and money it takes, the highest level since the question was first asked in 2005, when just 14% felt that way. As Times Higher Education noted in its reporting, it was the first time the figure had ever climbed above 20%.
The share who reject that view has fallen from 46% in 2018 to 22%, so the doubters now outnumber the believers for the first time on record. Only 36% still think graduates end up a lot better off financially, also a record low, and 77% say a degree no longer offers good value for money, up from 51% in 2014.
Alex Scholes, a research director at NatCen who leads the survey, said a difficult job market, a shrinking wage advantage and rising debt had converged to shift opinion, adding that arguments over student loan fairness and the impact of AI on jobs "have filtered through to people's views about the value of a degree."
University leaders have been making the same point. Professor Shitij Kapur, vice-chancellor of King's College London, told the Guardian earlier this year that a degree had become "like having a visa" rather than the guaranteed passport to social mobility it once was, blaming a stalled economy, an oversupply of graduates and the spread of AI for the squeeze on graduate jobs.
