According to a survey carried out my global consulting firm McKinsey and Company, over a third of young people in the UK are put off post-secondary education by the cost.
More than eight thousand young people, employers and education providers, in nine countries, participated in the survey, titled "Education in Employment: designing a system that works". And the report makes interesting - if not depressing - reading.
For example, even though it's estimated that 75 million young people around the world are unemployed, fewer than half the employers responding to the survey said they could find skilled entry-level workers. But then again, fewer than half the young people surveyed in the UK said their post-secondary education had improved their chance of getting work - the lowest proportion for any country. Now, whether that's because McKinsey and Company were concentrating on recent graduates, fewer than half of whom have managed to secure the graduate position they'd studied for at university, who's to say?
But let's get back to the cost of further education: the government calculates that student debt is repaid to the tune of 9% of a graduate's income once they're earning £21,000 a year or more. The average student debt is said now to be £53,000. However, a woman who's going to earn less than £300,000 over the course of her working life is going to have to repay nearly £62,000 if she works for 28 years, thanks to interest charges racking up in the background. However, if a graduate's salary doesn't make it to that £21,000 threshold for the next 30 years, that debt - plus interest charges - will be written off entirely, leaving somewhat of a hole in the governmental purse. Which we, as taxpayers, will have to fill. And nobody is taking inflation into account. The way things are going, what £21,000 will buy us now is going to cost double that in just a few years' time. It could even be that £21,000 will end up being close to the national minimum wage not too far from now.
Financial Director of Berkshire computer company Portal, Peter West, sums it up: "No one is aware of the long-term implications of this accounting wheeze. Higher education reform is a victimless crime and a massive tax time bomb. The Government has simply shifted all the debt off the accounting sheet for now – but, my God, will it come back and hit us in 30 years' time." So let's hope that - long before then - people will realize that an apprenticeship is a much more cost-effective way of training for their chosen career and choose that option, rather than dropping themselves - and, later on, the rest of us - into a bottomless financial hole.
