I'm pretty sure that in the UK the massive increase in higher education and the introduction of tuition fees was intended to keep unemployment down and get people to take on the financial burden of keeping themselves off the dole.
> I'm pretty sure that in the UK the massive increase in higher education
The increase in numbers going to higher education reduced those available in the workplace. Rather than everyone aged 16-65 being available for work (say 50 million), half of those ages 16-22 went to university, meaning about 2-3 million were taken out of the pool of available people.
> and the introduction of tuition fees
Tuition, when Labour first introduced it, was charged upfront - albeit at £1700 a year (in today's money).
When they tripped it in 2005, to £4300 a year, it started being repaid on every penny over £18k (in today's money). However this came from the same repayment as the cost of living loans, which meant the treasury only got a return on the tuition when the graduate was earning a decent wage when they were much older (if tuition was £100k or £0k, you paid the treasury the same amount per year until you'd repaid your £20k of cost-of-living loans)
When Cameron changed them to £10k a year (in today's money) in 2012, the repayment threshold was higher - if you unless you earn an average of £40k (median salary is £27k) you don't pay a penny back in tuition.
Since Labour introduced the 2005 tuition increase, tuition has been a graduate tax in all but name.
> was intended to keep unemployment down and get people to take on the financial burden of keeping themselves off the dole.
The number of unskilled jobs will only decrease in the future. However undergraduate degrees isn't the solution. While jobs on a supermarket checkout vanish, and jobs assessing insurance claims, an even legal jobs, electricians and plumbers aren't going to be automated away any time soon.
A big problem is that there is still a mentality that you need a degree to do a job of a given level - even if you're age 40.
My own company seem to be doing well here, we employ apprentices at age 18, and giving them a lot of training and some university based education, and at the end they come out as a qualified broadcast engineer, with a degree. They've had 3 years of real world experience, but also have the piece of paper which serves as an insurance for obsolete companies in the future who won't look at a CV which doesn't have 'bsc' at the top.
