England has highest proportion of adults ‘overqualified’ for their jobs – report

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1. To avoid cookie “paywall”, article contents:

   England has one of the highest rates in the developed world of workers overqualified for their roles, a report has suggested.

   Nearly two in five (37%) workers in England are overqualified for their current job, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Survey of Adult Skills.

   This compares with 23% of workers who are overqualified across OECD countries, with data available.

   The report, which assesses the literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills of adults from 31 countries and economies, ranks England as having the highest percentage of overqualified workers.

   Being overqualified is associated with economic and social costs, it said.

   **There are clear signs that the rise in numbers of people going to tertiary education, to college education, to university in England has been matched by a decline in the skill levels of that group**
   *Andreas Schleicher, OECD director for education and skills*

   In England, overqualified workers’ wages are on average about 18% lower than peers in well-matched jobs who have similar educational attainment.

   A worker is classified as overqualified when the level of their highest qualification is above the qualification level typically required for their job.

   The findings of the OECD study, which assessed about 160,000 adults aged 16-65 in 2022-23, will be launched at an event on Tuesday in London where skills minister Jacqui Smith will speak.

   Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the OECD, said there could be “better use of alternative pathways” in England as efforts to strengthen these routes had “not been terribly successful”.
   When asked about the high rates of overqualification and participation in higher education in England, he said: “I do think there are signs that the British university system has been overextending itself.”

   Mr Schleicher, who highlighted data which showed that high school graduates in Finland have similar or better skills than university graduates in England, told the PA news agency: “I do think there is reason to give young people a more varied choice of further education than currently exists.”

   He said: “There are clear signs that the rise in numbers of people going to tertiary education, to college education, to university in England has been matched by a decline in the skill levels of that group.”

   He added that England should consider giving “more prominence to other ways of learning than just academic learning”.

   The study, in which 4,941 adults in England took part, also found that about a fifth of adults in England scored no higher than Level 1 in literacy and numeracy, the lowest level on the OECD’s scale.

   In numeracy, 21% of adults scored at or below Level 1 proficiency, compared with an OECD average of 25%. This meant they could only do very basic sums.

   In literacy, 18% of adults scored the lowest level, compared with an OECD average of 26%. This meant they could understand short texts.

   Jacqui Smith, minister for skills, said: “We are determined to break down barriers to opportunity by developing a culture of lifelong learning, and this report shows that we can and must do more to ensure everyone has the skills they need to get on in life.

   “There are few skills more important to life chances than literacy and numeracy so, whilst it is good that England has improved, the number of adults with low basic skills remains stubbornly high.

   “We need to harness their talents if we want to kickstart growth, and our Plan for Change outlines how we will break down the barriers to opportunity.

   “We will continue to support adults without English and maths qualifications to study for free, and our Youth Guarantee will ensure 18-21-year-olds can access high quality training and employment opportunities.”

   Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK (UUK), said: “Government research shows increasing levels of highly qualified skills and labour were the only factors making a positive and consistent contribution to increases in productivity in recent years.

   “The UK’s productivity challenges have a strong regional character, with areas of high participation in higher education reporting the highest levels of productivity, while other regions lag behind.

   “Across all regions, there is a strong association between productivity and the share of workers with a higher education qualification, a metric that has been increasing over time.

   “All of the growth sectors identified in the Government’s industrial strategy are powered by a graduate majority workforce.

   “This includes the life sciences sector with 73% graduate workforce and digital and tech sector with 70%.

   “Indeed, the Government’s own analysis shows that, by 2035, we will need 11 million more graduates in the UK to fill our skills needs.”

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3. This is concerning:

   > Mr Schleicher, who highlighted data which showed that **high school graduates in Finland have similar or better skills than university graduates in England**, told the PA news agency: “I do think there is reason to give young people a more varied choice of further education than currently exists.”

   > He said: “There are clear signs that the rise in numbers of people going to tertiary education, to college education, to university in England has been matched by a decline in the skill levels of that group.”

   Tuition fees go up while the quality of education goes down l

4. Sounds like a cultural failure of our nation’s business class to make use of what the work force has to offer.

5. Well simple sums?

   How many people are we pumping through higher education every year and how many high level jobs are there?

   If you’re pumping 10 people through a day but there are only 100 jobs and people stay in those roles for 10-30 years you’re going to have…. Too many people.

6. I don’t think this is overly surprising. We have greatly increased the number of people graduating university while at the same time productivity has stagnated. Without productivity improvements we simply won’t have jobs that require tertiary education, so a gap emerges.

   The solution is complicated to say the least. Education, education focus, immigration, business development and entrepreneurship support all play roles in this calculus.

   I would be more surprised if the U.K. wasn’t near the top of this metric.

7. Blame mr Blair for having people go to uni for shitty degrees

8. Well ofcourse it does. When people are asking for 10 years experience and a masters degree for a bloody minimum wage job lol.

9. That’s because there’s low wages for anything higher tier than minimum wage type jobs. Why take on a whole bunch of stress and responsibility and get next to nothing for it?

10. It’s almost as if your pay and job title are directly tied to how replaceable you are and not the level of education you have or the value you bring… who’d have thought ay? Oh yeah businesses knew that all along, that’s why the lobby like fuck for high immigration and easy visas for overseas workers.

11. I know people that have been rejected from their jobs because they’re “too good” and it threatened the managers.

    so yeah this is believable

12. It’s almost as if most of the million kids we send to uni per year don’t need to go to uni…

13. Unsurprising. There’s always the “joke” of how a degree in English Literature isn’t useful in the workplace, but I know far too many STEM graduates who are overqualified for what they do, simply because it was the only way to convince employers to give them the week worth of training necessary to do their job fully.

14. Probably three problems identified here:
    – Too many people are getting higher education “unnecessarily” – air quotes because I think higher education is meant to be about more than just paying for a piece of paper to say you’ve got a degree on it.
    – Too many businesses aren’t able to properly utilise the skill set that the education sector is providing.
    – The report has erroneously used job descriptions as the be all and end all of job requirements.

    I think there are people who go to university without putting enough thought into it. It’s not for everyone and there are vocational skills, apprenticeships, or on the job training some would prefer. Further, the term “panic masters” is well known by third year students, even if you’ll never do anything with your masters. However, some people want to learn for the sake of academics (rather than it must be for working skills), and university teaches a wide variety of life skills that many benefit from.

    Speaking from experience, there are a wide variety of job roles that probably don’t specify university education, for example, and there’s a lot that just ask for Maths and English GCSEs. However, I think in many of those roles it’s understood that university graduates often skip a few of the lower rungs in industries that still reliably hire school leavers, and in more senior roles your formal education matters little and less. It also doesn’t account for people who change careers (someone who thought they’d love law at age 17 and got burned out by 30) nor does it account for the fact that some form of education is required after the age of 16, whilst a lot of jobs only have GCSEs as formal requirements.

    This feels like a piece meant to take a hit at “Mickey Mouse degrees” whilst not really understanding the nuances of the labour market.

15. A big issue in biological sciences. A BSc will get you a basic lab assistant job at best. You need an MSc or PhD to get a decent-paying job in the field, along with a lot of experience. Then there is the issue with biomedical sciences degrees being unaccredited by the IBMS, meaning we have plenty of people who could be biomedical scientists unable to apply for the job in the NHS because of a needless barrier to entry. Even STEM is not safe from this phenomenon.

16. The Oxbridge graduate has no worries. Someone please prove me wrong …

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