Why so many students?

When I look at job advertisements (out of curiosity!), I notice that these days employers are demanding degrees for jobs which, in my young days, they would have merely asked for a school leaving certificate or possibly 3-4 "A" levels. Why? The jobs in question are basically the same as they were then, and one might, in fact, argue that they are easier these days due to the advent of computers and calculators. Why on earth do employers now want degrees for the same jobs?
One answer is that with so many people applying for some jobs it an easy way to sort out the candidates, but this is contrary to (what I understood to be) normal employment practices where one would try to avoid employing staff who were over-qualified for the job.
The only conclusion that I have reached is that today's equivalent of the school leaving certificate, several "good" "A" levels, is just not worth the paper it is printed on. All subjects in the old school leaving certificate had to be taken at the same time, there were no modules which you could take and then forget, and if you failed (or got an insufficient grade) in one subject, you had to re-sit the lot. Now, given time, it is virtually impossible not to pass a good selection of subjects.
Thus, there is no doubt in my mind that the only reason employers now ask for degrees is because they feel that standards have fallen so much that that a first degree is now equivalent to the School Leaving Certificate of my days.

This explains why education costs have risen so much, and why we have so many students. It is now taking three years longer to reach an acceptable standard of education for "ordinary" jobs, and of course for jobs that once required a first degree, a master's is now essential.

We need to restore real standards in all our schools; we need to make sure that instead of being 25th in the league table for reading ability we are in the top five. We need to take similar action with maths, where we are currently 30th and science where we are 16th. If we were to manage this, probably only half the present numbers of students would need, or want to go to university. Our poor lower schools are to blame for this university fees situation along with constant left wing politically correct interference and a total lack of discipline, and now those students who would like to better themselves are feeling the pain.

With good standards at eighteen, possibly only half the present numbers of school leavers would want (or need) to go to university, overall costs would fall, and free tuition could be restored at a smaller number of highly respected world beating universities

As a footnote, until yesterday's demonstrations, I had some sympathy for the protesting students as I felt that the education system had let them down by not providing adequate education at secondary level; now I am starting to wonder whether they were the ones responsible for the disruption and poor behaviour in our schools which is a significant cause of this poor education.

University Education

Reading today's papers, it seems that University graduates are to be indirectly taxed according to their subsequent earnings. It would appear that this is going to be achieved by charging the graduates with a rate of interest on their graduate loan which increases with earnings. Now I'm a firm believer that University students should contribute towards their education costs, and I also believe that the cost should be sufficiently high to discourage those "students" who want to go to university because "it is the thing to do". And yes, we also need to make some provision for poorer students, but charging a higher rate of interest on a loan makes no difference if you don't need a loan in the first place!

I think that we also need to be careful not to loose our best people abroad. The son of some acquaintances of mine is currently at a US University. I don't know how true it is, but they claim that a degree from one of the "Ivy League" universities is now worth far more in the world market than an Oxbridge degree. A friend has a daughter at the Sorbonne studying languages (OK, she speaks fluent French having lived there as a young child), and they tell me her costs are less than they would be in England. Both are undoubtedly very clever, and would do well anywhere, but they are the sort of people that this country needs, but is likely to loose, if we have an inept university policy.
 

What I would like to see is for any extra money raised from students to go directly to the University from which they graduated. This would mean that the better the University, the more of its students might expect to get highly paid jobs which in turn would provide higher funding enabling them to further improve their standards. This is effectively what happens in the US, and although it is not compulsory, most wealthy businessmen will invariably give quite large endowments to their Alma mater during their lifetime.
Of course this would mean the survival of the fittest, but isn't that what the world is all about?