Supply and Demand

Various newspapers are bewailing the fate of unemployed graduates. There are now 70 graduates for every one advertised job. This year's graduates are not only facing problems from the depressed economy, but from the massed ranks of last year's unemployed graduates. They are being advised to 'take any job - burger flipping or shelf stacking' rather than sit at home. Sound advice, of course, but jobs at the lower end of the scale are just as scarce as those at the top, and there is a tendency for employers not to take on people who they feel are 'too clever' for the job, and will therefore be unhappy in  it. When we take into account the enormous debts many of these young people will have accrued at university, it becomes obvious that in many cases, they would now be much better off if they had never attended university at all.
During the last labour government it was taken for granted that further education was a good in itself.
More people are now going to university than ever before. Polytechnics have been converted into universities to take in even more students. Result? A massive glut of graduates. The supply greatly exceeds the demand for graduates  by society.
The answer, surely is to shrink the educational sector - a notion still completely unthinkable, but which will surely force itself on to the table. We need a Dr Beeching for the universities.