One in five graduates earn less than someone educated to A-level standard

One in five graduates earn less than the average worker educated to A-level standard, new figures show.

Data released today by the Office for National Statistics show that the worst paid 20 per cent of graduates had lower earnings than those who left school with qualifications at 18.

At the same time other Government figures showed almost a million young people are not in school, college or work.

One in six 16 to 24-year-olds are now considered "Neet" – not in education, employment or training, according to figures published by the Department for Education (DFE).

The new figures come just a week after Government figures showed that the youth unemployment rate (for 16 to 24-year-olds) has soared to 20.2 per cent, up 0.2 percentage points from the three months to March.

Skills minister John Hayes insisted: "We're taking action to get our young people into work, helping restore a sense of responsibility and pride in our communities.

"Having built the largest apprenticeships programme our country has seen, we'll now do more to get young people who lack basic skills up to speed."



But critics claimed the government needed to do more to support youngsters.

“These figures confirm that the Government is not doing enough to support young people," said Dalia Ben-Galim of the Institute of Public Policy Research think-tank.

"While the planned expansion of apprenticeships is welcome, it is clearly not enough and the Government needs to provide more places in Further Education colleges and a job guarantee for every young person out of work for more than a year.”

Other statistics from the ONS show fifteen per cent of graduates also earned less than those who left school at 16 with only GCSEs or equivalent qualifications.

However, overall employees educated to degree level earned 85 per cent more on average than those educated to GCSE level.



On average, those educated up to GCSE level were paid an average of £8.68 while those who held a degree earned on average of £16.10 an hour – nearly double.

Those with no qualifications earned £6.93 on average.

Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK, said: “Looking at all graduates, degree holders continue to earn considerably more than non-graduates over a working lifetime, and are also more likely to be in employment.

“Despite the exponential growth in the number people gaining a degree since 1993, there still remains a considerable pay premium for graduates.

“The recession has been very hard for the whole jobs market, including graduates, but there are signs that things are improving. A recent survey by the Association of Graduate Recruiters showed that graduate vacancies are predicted to increase by 2.6 per cent this year and that there had been a boost in starting salaries for the first time in two years.

“UK graduates are still in a better position to succeed and remain highly valued by employers, here and overseas.”

Just because somebody takes a degree in a subject, it doesn't necessarily mean that they want to do a job with that degree as a requirement later on in life.

Well that's a huge waste then. Why spend the best years of your life for nothing in return when you can learn it all in your own time later?

Not sure what your problem is there.

I'd rather have a nation with highly educated plumbers, electricians, cleaners, salesmen, clerks and other 'non-graduate' workers alongside professionals, bureaucrats and others in 'typical' graduate jobs such than a nation of poorly educated plumbers, electricians, cleaners, salesmen, clerks and other workers with a higher education only available if you're going to join an elite section of the workforce.

I will point out that I do think that many higher education courses are just about worthless though and don't really contribute to making a highly educated national population but I feel the main failure is at earlier stages. I think a goal of 50% or more of college leavers into University was a good one but the way it was achieved, by lowering University standards, was not the right method.

Seriously?



Articles and **** like this are useless anyway. Including people that got 'degrees' through colleges with people that have 1sts from well established universities is silly.

I have a degree in English and Drama and most of the time I wonder why I bothered. As I cannot get a job with a useless academic degree.
It is better, I think to do a degree in a specific career for example business/law or computing, you might have more luck.