The issue is certainly contentious. The Government and its supporters claim that graduates earn more over their lifetime than those who go straight into work on leaving school, while detractors warn of diluted degrees and lowered standards.



BBC News asked Marshall Aerospace, a successful aviation engineering company base in Cambridge, what they thought.

“There are certainly sufficient graduates,” believes Terry Holloway, Marshall’s Group Support Executive.

“What we need is a good mixture of 16-18 year-olds who will come to us for vocational training and who will provide the backbone of the industry in the years ahead.”



He added: “We are having no difficulty today attracting good graduates.”



Some experts argue that the ‘wage premium’ which the government claims graduates can expect has decreased. “There is already evidence of falling earnings and falling returns,” says Professor Robert Bennett of Cambridge University. “There is a genuine question over whether the Government’s 50 per cent target is at all realistic or needed.”



But still others maintain that the ‘knowledge-based economy’ – jobs requiring problem-solving, analytical and other high-level skills – is expanding fast enough to need more employees with these graduate-level abilities.