Graduate jobs

SIR – Your report, “Student social mobility on the rise” (October 19), quotes “experts” who “argue that there are now too many graduates, leading to a saturation in the jobs market and growing numbers being forced to take roles they are overqualified for”.

If this were true, one would expect the graduate earnings premium – the average cumulative additional earnings that graduates enjoy, compared with someone who has two A-levels – to have fallen. It hasn’t: it has remained stable at £100,000.

The idea that there is a fixed number of graduate-level jobs doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The UK Commission for Employment and Skills estimates that, between 2012 and 2022, the number of jobs in Britain will grow by 14.3 million, and more than half will be graduate-level. We can see evidence of this trend in the proportions of graduates moving into graduate-level jobs. Data from this year show that, for 2015/16 graduates, 71 per cent of those employed were in graduate-level work after six months. For 2012/13, graduates, 84 per cent of those in work were in professional employment three and a half years after graduation.

In order to compete economically we need more graduates, not fewer. Some of our competitors send 70-80 per cent of young people to university, and they reap the benefits. Bill Rammell

Vice Chancellor University of Bedfordshire