Wind up at a university: why young people refuse higher education
The rapid growth in the popularity of higher education, which has been observed throughout the world over the past half century, is slowing down. Moreover, this is happening in both developed and developing countries belonging to very different regions. Education is becoming more expensive, but it guarantees less and less career growth. It has become common for a university graduate to work as a barista, courier, or sales consultant. How serious is the crisis of higher education, how it affects Russia and whether universities are in danger of financial problems — in the material of Izvestia.
The social elevator has stopped
In the Middle Ages, university education, which was extremely rare, had religious overtones and served as fuel for the nascent science. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it trained the elite of European government officials. In the 20th century, it provided a growing engineering, medical and managerial corps, and in the 21st century it became truly widespread: in many countries of Europe, Asia and America, up to half of young people began to receive diplomas (in the 1960s, even in the richest countries, there were no more than 10%). Some even started talking about the fact that the modern world requires universal higher education, which will become a massive social lift.
However, recent data rather show that a peak may be reached in this area, and the model of continuous expansion of the number of university visitors will be broken. This can be seen quite well in the example of the United States, where people who have received a diploma work not only not in their specialty, but are not white-collar workers at all. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, by the end of 2025, almost 43% of American graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 were "underemployed" - that is, they worked in positions that did not require higher education. This is the highest figure since the pandemic.
In the UK, the situation looks even more depressing. According to a Bloomberg analysis, the "diploma bonus" (the difference in salary between a university graduate and a minimum-wage employee) in England has halved since 2007. Today, a young British specialist with a degree earns only 43% more than the minimum wage. If you subtract taxes and mandatory student loan payments, the difference narrows down to a humiliating 32 pence. Adjusted for inflation and the cost of living, a typical single graduate in the UK today has a disposable income of 30%, or 8 thousand pounds, lower than his colleague 15 years ago. At the same time, the competition for graduates averages 140 people per place (if you are applying for a specialty).
At the same time, in China, the crisis of overproduction of qualified personnel has become a national threat. The unemployment rate among urban youth (16-24 years old) regularly breaks records, exceeding the 20% mark. A country that has been forcing the graduation of engineers and managers for decades is faced with the fact that the economy, which is slowing down amid the real estate crisis and trade wars, simply does not need so many white-collar workers. Millions of Chinese university graduates are forced to accept low-paying jobs in factories or delivery services, forming a huge stratum of disillusioned and socially unstable youth (the "lying flat generation").
Supply lags behind demand
A similar situation is now observed in other countries that are different from each other, so it is not possible to reduce the problem to a strictly regional aspect. The HSE crisis has complex causes. Firstly, there is a strong imbalance between supply and demand. The higher education system around the world worked like a conveyor belt, ignoring the real needs of the economy. According to the analytical company Lightcast, from 2004 to 2024, the number of college graduates in the United States increased by 54%, while the number of entry-level vacancies suitable for them increased by only 42%. In 22 of the 35 fields of study, the vacancy rate per graduate has been steadily decreasing over the past 20 years.
Secondly, academic programs are chronically lagging behind the market. Universities continue to en masse specialists in fields that are already oversaturated. A classic example: from 2014 to 2024, the number of entry-level vacancies in the field of IT and computer science in the United States increased by 6%, and the number of graduates in these specialties soared by 110%. On the contrary, in the healthcare sector, where there is an acute shortage of personnel (almost 1.9 million vacancies in 2024), the number of graduates increased by only 5%.
The third factor, which is only now beginning to manifest itself, is artificial intelligence (AI). Previous technological revolutions (machine tools, robots on conveyor belts) have hit blue-collar workers. Generative AI primarily, though not exclusively, creates problems for white-collar workers. Writing basic code, copywriting, primary data analysis, customer support, marketing — the very starting positions that graduates started their careers from are now rapidly automating, or at least have this potential. It is more profitable for corporations to hire one experienced specialist (senior) armed with AI (the so-called 10x developer) than five junior graduates. At the same time, the effect of AI should not be exaggerated yet: problems with employment began back in the late 2010s, when the general public did not hear much about neural networks, and their capabilities were more than moderate.
But there is a fourth factor that applies primarily to developed countries. It's about the value of money and macroeconomics. The era of zero interest rates is over. Corporations live in conditions of expensive loans and geopolitical turbulence (Trump's trade wars, instability in the Middle East). In such an environment, business goes into low-hire, low-fire mode (rarely hire, rarely fire). Staff turnover is falling, experienced employees are holding onto their seats, and there are simply no empty chairs left for newcomers.
It's better to go to the factory
Disillusionment with the academic path gave rise to a reverse trend — the return of the prestige of workers and service professions. Zoomers count money quite well. The cost of four years of study in the United States or Great Britain has increased significantly over the past decades. At the same time, the shortage of skilled workers has inflated wages in the real sector. That is, although jobs requiring higher education are still rated higher, taking into account the cost of tuition, the benefits are not at all obvious.
Young people are increasingly choosing vocational schools and paid internships as "apprentices." According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, enrollment in professionally oriented colleges in the United States increased by 16% from 2022 to 2023. In the UK, according to surveys by the Institute of Student Employers, the hiring of university graduates has fallen by 8% since 2024, while the hiring of apprentice trainees has increased by the same 8%.
Welders, electricians, solar panel installers, HVAC (air conditioning) repair specialists — these professions offer starting salaries that often exceed the incomes of white-collar workers, and without having to carry the burden of student debt. In addition, young people rightly believe that AI will not be able to repair a ruptured pipe or mount a windmill. Physical labor, at least so far, has proven to be much more reliably protected from digital automation than intellectual routine.
Outdated programs and self-study
This situation is also relevant for Russia (in general, we can see that the problem concerns both the "first" and "second" worlds almost equally). At the same time, in our country, the share of those receiving HSE is one of the most significant in the world. About 400 thousand people annually enter domestic universities for budget places alone (excluding the first year of the master's degree), while the number of 11th grade graduates is less than 700 thousand. At the same time, about half a million students are enrolled annually on a fee-based basis.
"Such a massive scale naturally leads to the fact that the level of training of applicants often turns out to be low, the quality of education in a number of universities in certain specialties decreases, and in the future this affects employment opportunities in the profession," said Boris Ilyukhin, senior researcher at the Center for Economics of Continuing Education at the Presidential Academy.
At the same time, as the expert noted, labor productivity in a number of sectors of the Russian economy remains lower than in some foreign countries. As a result, an excessive talent pool is being formed in a proportion comparable to international trends. These people are willing to work outside of their specialty for the sake of a stable, albeit not the highest income.
According to Olga Magomedova, a researcher at the Gaidar Institute's Laboratory for the Analysis of best international practices, the crisis of higher education occurs in those segments of the economy where skills acquired in production, or skills of self-study and rapid retraining for new business models are valued more than fundamental knowledge.
— The humanities are the first to be hit. For example, in the tourism sector, we are witnessing a clear "overproduction" of managers who have too theoretical an understanding of the industry, while in the industry itself there is an acute shortage of personnel at the level of line staff — that is, people who work with their hands. It is significant that of the 328 educational institutions providing staff training in the field of Tourism and Service, 67.9% are universities, and the remaining 32.1% are institutions of secondary vocational education (colleges), where the so—called blue—collar workers should be trained," explained the editorial interlocutor.
In turn, Kirill Lysenko, a leading analyst for sovereign and regional ratings at the Expert RA agency, said that the problem with the implementation of skills acquired in an educational institution in the labor market is widespread in Russia, despite the shortage of personnel.
— This phenomenon is not limited to higher education — in the case of secondary vocational education organizations, the course of this institutional disease is much more neglected. According to the latest HSE IIEZ statistics collection, among graduates who completed higher education in 2021-2023, the proportion of those employed outside their specialty reached about 25% as of 2024. At the same time, among graduates of vocational schools who had previously studied in mid—level specialist training programs and in programs for the training of skilled workers and employees (PPKRS), the proportion of those was already at the level of 39% and 44%, the expert cited statistics.
In his opinion, there are several main problems here: the desynchronization of the needs of the economy and the mechanism of personnel training, the spatial heterogeneity of the labor market (the needs of the regions are different, and training is carried out evenly across the country), as well as the institutional weakness of the mechanisms of transition "education — employment". For example, in the absence of normal internship programs and internships.
Many foreign universities are now worried about whether they will be hit by a financial crisis, but the system was built on the assumption that the number of students would constantly grow. But, according to Lysenko, the problem in Russia is not so acute for our universities yet.
— Universities should not expect large-scale financial problems in the near future. Firstly, public attitudes on the need for higher education are very sluggish. In addition, the educational system itself is gradually going through a natural process of evolution and the replacement of programs unnecessary for the market with more in—demand ones, including through changes brought down from above, for example, in the form of restrictions on budget and paid places in certain specialties," concluded the Izvestia interlocutor.
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