Few things matter more to the UK’s future than higher education. It underpins economic growth, sustains our public services and remains one of the most powerful engines of social mobility.
Graduates staff the NHS, educate the next generation, and deliver the research and innovation that keeps the country competitive. These are not abstract benefits; they are the foundations of national resilience.
Yet too often, policy debates treat higher education as a cost to be managed rather than an asset to be invested in. Growth, productivity and renewal depend on advanced skills delivered at scale, and cutting effective routes to those skills does not make the problem disappear, it simply kicks it into the future.
A shift in emphasis
Degree apprenticeships offer a clear counter‑example to this short‑termism. They combine high‑quality degrees, real jobs, and a decent income, and they are in demand from both learners and employers. Evidence from Manchester Metropolitan University’s Force for Impact report shows strong earnings progression, high productivity returns for employers, and significant gains for social mobility. Almost a quarter of participants were eligible for free school meals, and many are now earning salaries that would once have been out of reach.
And yet, this is precisely where funding is being tightened. The shift from the Apprenticeship Levy to the Growth and Skills Levy is redirecting resources and funding away from higher‑level apprenticeships towards lower‑level provision.
Supporting early entry into the labour market matters, but we should be clear: you don’t strengthen the system by weakening parts that are delivering tangible outcomes for the economy. The government’s own industrial strategy is explicit: the vast majority of new jobs in priority sectors require graduate‑level skills. Weakening investment at degree and master’s levels, while talking up growth, is a contradiction, not a strategy.
Against fragmentation
The same tension is now emerging with the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE). The LLE, to be introduced from January 2027, promises flexibility, modular learning and opportunity across working lives, and those ambitions are welcome. But ambition alone does not generate demand.
Awareness remains low, and there is little evidence so far that loan‑funded modular study, taken in isolation, will drive large‑scale participation, particularly when individuals bear all the financial risk – resulting in what some have termed “the missing middle.” If the LLE fails to scale, it will not be because the idea lacked merit, but because it was disconnected from how people and employers behave.
This is the crux of the issue. We already know where demand exists, we already know which routes deliver strong outcomes, we just need to connect the funding system accordingly.
Aligning the LLE with the Growth and Skills Levy to support high‑demand degree apprenticeships would be a practical, growth‑focused reset. Learners would contribute through LLE loans while earning and therefore begin repaying once they graduate. Employers would invest through the levy in skills they genuinely need. The state would support the remainder, thus sharing the costs among those who benefit. This is not radical, but mirrors the economic logic of higher education itself and, as others have pointed out, has international parallels.
Such an approach would stop rationing success and start scaling it. It would release capacity in a system constrained not by demand or quality, but by fragmented policy design. Above all, it would force a more honest conversation about trade‑offs. We cannot ask more of our economy while offering less access to the skills that underpin it.
If the government wants a skills system that delivers growth, it must back what already works. Alignment, not fragmentation, is the solution. The cost of getting this wrong will be paid not in balance sheets, but in opportunities lost for the next generation.
