Why Burnham needs to reform higher education

Concerning data from August shows the graduate job market has collapsed by 45% in the span of a year, with fewer than 10,000 roles available for university graduates. Meanwhile, university acceptance rates increased 3% in 2025, with a record 262,820 students receiving an undergraduate place. This disparity is something Prime Minister Burnham must address as a priority of his education reform, as this crisis of outcomes for young people deepens.

It was encouraging to hear, only a week into his premiership, Burnham expressing the need for Britain to “value the hard hat as much as the graduation cap”. This is a message schools and colleges across the land needed to hear and now must heed, as for too long they have sold university as the be-all and end-all for their students. I remember, from my own experiences, the only careers or options talks we had at school or college centred around university. There were few, if any, sessions put on to discuss alternative pathways. Those who did not go down the now-conventional undergraduate route have been widely successful, having taken that crucial first step into industry. But they only found these opportunities on the basis of their own research, rather than it being a pathway championed by their sixth form or college.

So many young people who felt obliged to go down the university route in the belief it was their best route to decent employment would have been better off on an alternative, high-quality vocational pathway if it had been more readily available. Not because they lack in any way in terms of their academic ability or intellect, far from it, but because they would have learnt more from gaining that vital real-world experience, getting their first exposure to industry. Many would also have been more fulfilled by practical experience than academics, which they are only doing because they have been told they must in order to achieve their ambitions. It is time to end this university bias.