GuildHE responds to the IFS report on the impact of undergraduate degrees on lifetime earnings

We welcome efforts to describe the value of higher education, but caution against conclusions that align that value with salaries alone. The purpose of higher education is to enable personal and professional development while expanding what humans are capable of and how we can solve our greatest challenges. While graduates do typically earn higher salaries, the fact that they don’t always is more a function of the labour market and how our economy is structured than it is a comment about the value of particular courses.

Higher education delivers teachers to our schools, social workers to our communities, constables to our neighbourhoods, and paramedics, nurses, and other healthcare workers to our doors when we need them, though most don’t earn high salaries. We rely on graduates to provide our food via our agricultural industry. We enjoy our theatres, concert halls, and streaming content thanks to the work of creative arts graduates. All of us take for granted the numerous ways our daily lives are shaped, supported and enriched by all those who attend higher education and yet so many of those graduates, if judged by salary alone, would be deemed to have chosen wrong in a system that equates salaries with value.

The organisations that GuildHE represents are at the forefront of delivering local, regional and national value to communities across the country. They are focused on delivering technical and vocational higher education that addresses people’s needs, while opening higher education to people who have previously been shut out in order to build a representative society that can support us all, in all our daily lives.

It is vital that the wider benefits of a diverse HE sector are recognised and we will be engaging early with the new Government to reinforce this message.