Has Britain finally fallen out of love with university?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

65% : Five years ago, everybody was expecting that 2025 would be a boom time for universities, because the number of 18-year-olds grows every year in the 2020s - so there are more school leavers than previously, and we expected that to flow through to higher education.
57% : "If you were a doctor, you would prescribe more education," Willetts said, citing studies suggesting that higher education is a driver of better physical and mental health.
56% : Applicant numbers fell in 2012 following the price rise but recovered the following year; headline student numbers "have increased to new record levels in recent years", according to a House of Commons research briefing on higher education.
51% : (Real earnings of young graduates have not seen much uplift for the past 10 years, unlike non-graduate earnings, which have been boosted by the minimum and living wages increasing.)
48% : Many universities are already suffering from a drop in numbers; looking ahead, the report warned that overall demand for higher education could fall by around 20 per cent from 2030 to 2040 as a result of the decline in the number of young people in the population by that time.
48% : His recommendations include a maintenance package that is fit for the job and matches spiralling living costs; a focus on groups who are currently losing out, such as those from low-income backgrounds and young men (who are 10 per cent less likely than young women to go into higher education); and better information for school leavers.
47% : Although the fees themselves might not make a material difference to young people's access to higher education, the broader cost of living just might.
44% : Hitting back at "edu-sceptics" this week in a report for King's College London's policy institute, he declared that higher education was still very much not a waste of money.
44% : "A report from HEPI published in October last year suggested that, after steadily increasing over the past two decades, the proportion of young people choosing to pursue higher education in England had gone into reverse in the two years since Covid-19.

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