KCL vice-chancellor warns university degree is no longer a ‘passport to social mobility’

King’s College London (KCL) vice-chancellor and president professor Shitij Kapur has warned that a university degree is no longer a “passport to social mobility”.

Professor Shitij Kapur argued that this is because the UK now has a “surfeit” of graduates.

In a recent interview, the vice-chancellor said a university degree is more like a “visa”, rather than a guaranteed path to professional success.

Kapur also explained that AI is not the main reason for this issue, but that it’s “also because of the stalling of our economy and causing a relative surplus of graduates. So the simple promise of a good job if you get a university degree has now become conditional on which university you went to, which course you took”.

He added: “The old equation of the university as a passport to social mobility, meant that if you got a degree you were almost certain to get a job as a socially mobile citizen. Now it has become a visa for social mobility – it gives you the chance to visit the arena that has graduate jobs and the related social mobility, but whether you can make it there is not a guarantee”.

However, despite this job uncertainty, the vice-chancellor is still confident that UK universities provide the best education in the world as a result of higher tuition fees paid by international students who he described as being a “fundamental feature of our system”.

He explained that these higher fees enable the university to provide world-leading research, better access to research and a wider choice of courses.

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But the vice-chancellor also warned that older technologies and manufacturing productivity gains have “run their cycle”, adding that the UK has “to invent at the cutting edge, or apply at the cutting edge so that we are the makers and not the takers of the next technological revolution – and universities will have a central role in doing that”.

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Featured image via LinkedIn