Perhaps the near-tripling of tuition fees might just be doing young people a favour. And it could also be beneficial to industry and the economy as a whole. After all, what's the point of splurging out over fifty grand (which may or may not include other costs like food, accommodation and perhaps even an evening or two at the student bar) for a Mickey Mouse degree which might just get a hopeful graduate into the kind of employment that going to uni wasn't going to prepare them for?
Unless, of course said graduate went to the educational institution run by a well-known fast food franchise in the first place. Correction, make that "either of the educational institutions", because now there are two - one in Oak Brook, Illinois and the other in Shanghai. Yes, of course we're talking about Hamburger University - thank you, McDonald's. However, we digress.
We were talking about the favour that tripling tuition fees might be doing young people, industry and the economy. Those high tuition fees may well have played a major part in the reduction - by 60,000, so far - in the number of new university students at the beginning of this academic year. It could be that young people (and their parents) might just be getting the idea that uni isn't the pre-career be-all and end-all. And that could explain why there were 1.12 million applications for the 106,000 apprenticeships advertised online in 2012.
Of course there are some professions for which a stint of further academic study are necessary. Would you, for example, really want treatment for an unpleasant and painful tooth situation from someone who hadn't graduated from dental school? However, the government seems to be getting in on the "apprenticeships for the professions" act, by applauding apprenticeships in the legal profession, as opposed to several years at law school. Nothing new there, you might think, since articled clerks were around long before this government, learning their profession while serving in solicitors' offices. Which means, now, "apprenticeship" no longer automatically means "too stupid for university", and that's a definite start.
In Europe, apprentices are respected, no matter what kind of trade they're training for - and that's the kind of cultural shift that needs to happen here in the UK - especially when it comes to the medium-to-long-term perspective. An apprenticeship can last for several years. If enough apprenticeships aren't created right now, the prospect for the nation at the end of those several years looks, thanks to the resultant shortage of skilled workers, to be very bleak indeed.
So perhaps we should let universities raise their tuition fees even higher, so even more people start seriously considering an apprenticeship as a viable alternative ... ... but we should also encourage UK businesses - both great and small - to see the wisdom of creating more apprenticeship vacancies, and to do so. Right now.
