By Golo Henseke (LinkedIn) Associate Professor in Education, Practice and Society at the Institute of Education (IoE), UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, and Francis Green, Professor of Work and Education Economics, also at the IOE.
A recent report by the Organisation of Economically Developed Countries (OECD) claims that nearly four in ten employees in England are overqualified for their jobs, the highest rate among OECD countries. If accurate, this statistic seems to reflect a substantial waste of human capital and raises questions about the state of the UK labour market and education system. However, closer scrutiny suggests that the figure may be misleading, stemming from methodological quirks specific to the English data rather than an alarming surge in overqualification.
Dubious Comparisons
The OECD findings are based on a once-in-a-decade survey of adult skills, an ambitious international undertaking aiming for comparability across countries and economies. Yet, qualifications are inherently tricky to standardise internationally. For example, how does an English GCSE compare to a US high school diploma? The nuances of national education systems can render such comparisons tenuous.
England’s reported 37% overqualification rate, up from under 30% a decade earlier, is at odds with other data. Our surveys of the British workforce, which employ similar methodologies, show a modest drop in overqualification rates between 2006 and 2017, from 30% to 26%. If the reported OECD figures are to be believed, the rise would imply an extraordinary shift since 2017: approximately 2.5 million additional workers would have been relegated to roles beneath their qualifications within just a few years. This appears implausible. It is also at odds with a decline in graduate overqualification from 34% in 2012 to 30% in 2023, as our independent analysis of OECD’s data shows.
A more likely explanation lies in changes to the OECD’s survey design for England. In 2012, UK respondents were presented with a comprehensive list of nearly 60 qualifications when reporting job requirements and personal attainment. In 2023, this was reduced to just 19 options, with significant alterations to how response options were presented. The switch to a simplified classification may have skewed the responses, particularly below degree level, contributing to the measured overqualification rates.
This issue is not confined to England. A similar methodological shift occurred in France, where the reported overqualification rate fell from 30% to 19%. Conversely, in the US, where questionnaires remained broadly consistent, the reported increase was a more credible five percentage points.
A Structural Issue, Not a Graduate Problem
Apart from this problem of potentially inconsistent measurement over time, the rush to attribute England’s supposed peculiar problem of overqualification to an oversupply of graduates is misplaced. Our re-examination of OECD’s survey data shows that, in England, graduates face lower risks of overqualification than non-graduates: the overqualification rate among non-graduates is 17 percentage points higher than among those with a degree. This gap between graduates and non-graduates broadly aligns with our own data from the British Skills and Employment Surveys.
The Director for Education and Skills at the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, has been quoted saying that the UK’s higher education sector is “overextending” itself, with universities offering credentials that lack substantive value. However, with this oversimplified reaction, he is surely aiming at the wrong part of our education system.
A Misguided Narrative
In addition, he is almost certainly targeting the wrong side of the labour market. Overqualification in the UK is likely driven, not so much by an oversupply of graduates as by a failure to create enough middle-skill jobs and robust vocational pathways outside universities.
Overqualification is indeed a pressing issue. Even at a rate nearer 3 in 10, overqualification in England is higher than in most other advanced economies in the OECD. Overqualification depresses wages, diminishes job satisfaction, and undermines long-term productivity as underutilised skills atrophy. But this knee-jerk pinning of blame just on education, particularly on higher education, misses the mark, and forgets about the external benefits that education brings for society and the economy. Instead, England’s policymakers must address the structural deficiencies in the labour market, particularly the lack of opportunities for those with intermediate qualifications.
Simplistic diagnoses risk distracting from the real challenges. England’s education system is not producing “too many” graduates. Instead, its economy and further education system fail to provide sufficient opportunities to harness the potential of those not bound for higher education. To strengthen qualification pathways outside universities, a targeted strategy to foster middle-skill employment (while addressing skill shortages) is urgently needed. Without some recognition of these complexities, public discourse about overqualification will continue to generate more heat than light as university fees are set to surpass £10,000.
Yet further evidence of how unrepresentative our politicians are.
I get it.
We feel cold and miserable because the sun fails to offer enough heat and light. It is not our fault.
The world produces the wrong type of food to what we want and need because the ground and earth and soil and weather does not ( cannot ) operate the way we would like.
I call this type of research and education commentary “Upside down “ thinking which helps no one
Albert diagnoses the issue with this analysis perfectly. A conclusion in search of dodgy statistics.
It is in any case impossible to know how many jobs are genuinely ‘graduate’ level, meaning that they couldn’t be done by non graduates.
It is a simple task to massage numbers up or down by redifining roles. The direction of travel has always been up. The vast majority of so called graduate jobs do not require a graduate qualification, and were indeed done by school leavers.
Just two prominent examples are accountancy and teaching. Accountancy firms are exploring apprenticeships, having finally realised (admitted) that a modern day university education is no guarantee of even basic numeracy and literacy skills.
Along with the epidemic of certification and qualification inflation that began with the education act of 88/89 and was put on steroids by the 92 act, came an epidemic of expectation inflation among employers. And who can blame them. Suddenly given access to many more graduates, it was only natural for them to redefine roles as ‘graduate xxx’. In theory, this also partially let them off the hook in terms of training provision, although the reality turned out to be quite different. This especially so considering that the degree in most cases has very little rekavance to the role, beyond imaginary ‘critical thinking’ skills allegedly imparted by degree courses.
No amount of dubious numbers can change or obscure the basic facts.
Only someone who is clueless about HE degree courses, and the accounting and education one in particular, would assert that, e.g., an undergrad course in accountancy would churn out innumerate graduates. Likewise for the bigger generalisation of, to paraphrase, most degrees have little relevance to the role – really? How would you know? As for that ‘imaginary’ critical thinking, one doesn’t need to imagine its lack in the above post.