One of the historic failures of UK public policy has been to conflate quality higher education with attending a university. It has led to diminished public value for technical education and created a ‘one size fits all’ offer that increasingly fails to deliver the best outcomes for employers or students.
In the law, this had the unintended consequence of reinforcing a belief in the value of a law degree obtained from a very limited number of institutions, and in so doing has excluded thousands of potentially outstanding—and often diverse—lawyers from accessing fast-track careers.
The recent Skills for Jobs White Paper calls out the illusion that a degree is the only route to success. Writing the foreword to the White Paper, Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education, says: ‘Unlike many of our [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] peers, this country has not always shown further education the esteem it deserves, with too many people—and too
