In the sense that University places are being replaced with apprenticeships under current government policy

Two recent sources suggest an significant drop in UK students intending to go to unviersity – recent UCAS stats show a 12% drop in applications – 52 000 applicants so far this year, compared to 59 000 last year in that while a recent survey suggests that 1/10 students are being put of going to University.

What I find extremely interesting here is that 2/3rds of students currently doing A levels are considering doing apprenticeships instead of degrees. The rate at which these apprenticeships are growing in modern Britain recently took me my surprise – the number available for 16-19 year olds in now around the 400 000 mark – and  number of ‘higher apprenticeships’ for 18-21 year olds ( or older) are growing – The government has recently found £25 million to support them, enough to fund 10 000 positions

So err, hang on, that’s roughly 10 000 fewer people going to university to learn critical thought – and an additional 10 000 people going straight into training with businesses, paid for by the government. Isn’t this an example of the government just cutting critical, academic education, and using the cash to pay for cut-price youth-labour for businesses?

So fastforward a decade – and what we’ll have are thousands of more 18-20 years olds working for large corporations doing ‘apprenticeships’ either earning nothing or paying for the privilege, and tends of thousands more 20 somethings who have gone through apprenticeships having missed out on the broader, more critical and academic education that they would have got had they gone to unversity.

And Ok I know there are arguements for more vocational education and then theres the fact that many graduates are underemployed but what I’m talking about here is the decline of education for the sake of education, and its replacement with education for the sake of supporting business (note, I don’t say industry – because I’s sure many of these apprenticeships are not actually that productive.