We possess an unhealthy societal obsession with obtaining a university degree

The route to work has changed, now we have too many people going to university who could perhaps benefit from not going, and too many universities that shouldn’t be universities. Blair may have the answer, Euan Blair, that is, writes Chris Blackhurst

Euan Blair has just had his fledgling business valued at £147m (Getty)

Presumably, in the present circumstances, the Blairs are the same as everybody else, and Tony and Cherie and their children can’t get together around the kitchen table. They must make do with Zoom which isn’t the same.

Because if they did it would be worth noting the atmosphere as father and son, Euan, had a chat. Doubtless, hearty and well-meant congratulations would be proffered to a 37-year-old who has just had his fledgling business valued at £147m and become a paper multimillionaire. The way Euan has achieved it, by creating a company called Multiverse (previously White Hat) that helps young people who don’t want to go to university find apprenticeships with companies and access vocational training also merits praise.

Euan has just secured a new round of funding, enabling the business to create 200 jobs in 2021 and to launch in New York. Multiverse has more than 300 clients including Facebook, Morgan Stanley, KPMG, Fujitsu, Capita and Microsoft. In the last year, the company has tripled the number of apprentices it trains to more than 2,000. It’s got heavyweight backers, among them US venture capital firm General Catalyst and Google start-up backer Google Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures and Index Ventures. All from a standing start in 2016. Euan’s folks must be justifiably proud.

Where Tony, in particular, might not feel so warm, however, is if the discussion focuses on Euan’s comment regarding the target his father famously set in 1999 of 50 per cent of young people going into higher education. It took 20 years, but that barrier was finally breached in 2019. In that period encouraging, and in many cases, packing off, school-leavers to university, acquired a collective, feverish national hold, regarded as a pre-requisite, seemingly, to success in life. For too many families, going to “uni” was, and is, a must.

We possess an unhealthy societal obsession with obtaining a university degree. Too many people are going to university who should not be going to university; too many universities should not be universities; and too many degree courses should not be degree courses (spotted, on visits to two universities, was a sign saying, “short course in Holocaust studies” and another addressed to the “students in hair-dressing skills”).

It seems that Euan agrees. “This model is fundamentally broken – too often failing to give people the skills they need and not spreading opportunity fairly across society,” he said. “We’re building an outstanding alternative to both the university system, and to a corporate training model that rarely delivers long-term impact and genuine results.”

Talk to any major employer and they will tell you that one of their problems is finding recruits with the necessary skills. The shortage holds back our economy – instead of providing vital on-the-job training we’ve been packing school-leavers off to university in ever-larger numbers. Inevitably, given the attention heaped on it, that drive has seen an accompanying devaluation in our regard for apprenticeships.

Where once pupils left school to train to be electricians, today they can leave to train as… street cleaners

As well as too many people becoming university students, too many of those who can’t go are left feeling undervalued and consigned to low-skill, low-paid jobs. Meanwhile, our employers are crying out for suitably qualified workers.

It never used to be like this. In the past, some school leavers went to university, others joined local employers to learn a craft or trade, acquiring expertise and going to technical college part-time to become electricians, plumbers, welders, carpenters. Some of them stayed with the firm they joined, others started on their own and a new generation of businesses was born. Some – and a glance at The Sunday Times Rich List illustrates this point – had bright ideas as they worked, coming up with new devices that made the task easier, and subsequently went on to earn fortunes and become substantial employers themselves.

The government did wake up to the issue, and in 2015 under David Cameron and reiterated by Theresa May, pledged that three million apprenticeships would be created by 2020. That date has been and gone – and the target is nowhere near met. Worse, the numbers have actually been falling, not rising. In 2011-12, in England, 520,600 people started a new apprenticeship. By 2018-19 that was down to 393,400, a drop of 24 per cent. This financial year was heading for a further fall until the statistics were suspended because of the pandemic. That slump comes despite the implementation of the apprenticeship levy, a 0.5 per cent tax on the payroll of large employers to fund apprentices.

It’s not only the quantity, however. We need to be looking at the quality of the jobs and training being offered. Where once pupils left school to train to be electricians, today they can leave to train as… street cleaners. We only have to look at Germany, as usual, to see how it should be done. There, apprenticeships are offered as the norm in highly skilled posts.

Multiverse’s impressive list of employers is on similar lines. Euan is right when he points to “a corporate training model that rarely delivers long-term impact and genuine results”. As bitter a pill it might be for this government to swallow, they could do worse than consult a Blair. Euan, that is.