KCL’s Vice Chancellor says degrees no longer guarantee ‘social mobility’

The Vice-Chancellor of King’s College London (KCL), Professor Shitij Kapur, has claimed there are too many graduates in the UK, which is decreasing the value of university degrees and making the job market overcrowded.

In an age where more than half of the population are now entering higher education and AI is being used more universally, Prof Kapur has said that that a university degree is more of a “visa” into the professional world than a guarantee of success.

Growing popularity of higher education will reduce the qualification’s value to employers

A degree is no longer a definite “passport to social mobility”, he told The Guardian in
an interview.

While Kapur placed emphasis on the detrimental influence of AI upon the graduate job market, he also stated that the high competition for graduate jobs can be attributed to “the stalling of our economy”, as the graduate pay premium is shrinking.

The KCL professor suggested that the promise of a job is now “conditional on which university you went to, which course you took”, rather than simply acquiring a degree.

The value of a university degree has been debated for years. Kapur cites sociologist Martin Trow’s prediction that the growing popularity of higher education will reduce the qualification’s value to employers. Kapur suggests that this theory is coming to fruition.

When discussing Trow’s predictions, Kapur added: “Social regard for the exceptionalism of university graduates will go down… [and] the graduate premium will go down, because a degree will become something that’s not scarce at all.”

[Kapur said] says that the UK government’s aim to preserve low domestic tuition fees is worsening the situation, because these do not cover undergraduate teaching costs

Reports in The Independent have also recently questioned the value of a university degree in the current cost-of-living crisis; higher education often leaves students with
large debts.

While domestic tuition fees have been raised in recent years, these still fail to cover undergraduate teaching costs, meaning staff are overstretched.

Despite rising tuition fees, the leading professor says that the UK government’s aim to preserve low domestic tuition fees is worsening the situation, because these do not cover undergraduate teaching costs.

However, Kapur asserts that, due to the higher tuition fees paid by international students, UK universities are still able to provide the best higher education in the world.

But, with the recent changing attitudes towards immigration and growing limits on student visas, many universities could see disruption that reduces the number of international students in the UK.

KCL’s Vice Chancellor says degrees no longer guarantee ‘social mobility’ Avneet Kahlon Kapur warns that restrictions of this nature would impact the ways universities fund their teaching and jeopardise the strong presence of an international community at UK universities.