This editorial was first published in print on 22 September 2025.
A degree that once served as an all-access pass today buys you a place in a long, polite queue. Employers are more selective, ‘graduate’ schemes are thinner and more competitive, and the first rung bites harder than the prospectuses admit. Universities, meanwhile, still advertise the degree of a bygone era. An era where the gown practically ushered you through a door marked “career.” If only it was that easy for today’s graduates.
The national picture isn’t one of collapse, but it certainly isn’t one of milk and honey flowing from the taps. More than 600,000 UK graduates are reported to be claiming welfare benefits, with graduates making up 12% of those being paid Universal Credit. The median salary for UK graduates in full-time roles 15 months on is £28,500. A solid minority are doing well, while many are simply treading water. The signal is plain: many face middling outcomes while costs race way ahead of returns.
Graduates still outperform non-graduates over a lifetime, with most landing in higher-skilled work. But the route from campus to a stable footing is taking longer and demanding more. In 2024, 67.9% of working-age graduates were in high-skilled jobs and 87.6% were in some form of work – which is encouraging as a destination, not as a description of the first year out of education. The dangerous gap is those early years, when confidence is fragile and money is tight.
King’s should stop pretending that the pipeline works by default. Mass emails and glossy slogans are not a strategy. As students and readers of this paper know all too well, inboxes are flooded with automated communications from King’s Careers & Employability. The subject lines may change, but the substance rarely does. They read as if written in a windowless room at Waterloo Campus, and reach a tired student body that need targeted support, not more dull mailshots.
Professional services are now outpacing teaching roles at King’s. If students could feel this expansion in their own prospects, there would be little to complain about. Instead, they find that the services that matter most at the point of exit haven’t kept pace.
Sector finances are tight and growing tighter. Whether it’s years of capped home fees or exposure to international recruitment, rising costs have squeezed headroom. These facts explain the pressure, but they don’t excuse poor priorities. Scarcity should sharpen choices, not flatten standards.
The reality is that King’s has the power to choose better. Publishing a dashboard showing individual programme-level outcomes each year – by department, salary, employment figures, and share in high-skilled roles must be the first step. Using the existing Graduate Outcomes framework to drive action plans would prevent it from falling into irrelevance.
The individual student must be the focus of every step in career support. Setting a target so that every undergraduate can see a named careers adviser within a fortnight would shift time and budgets from boring emails to in-person meetings. Not simply an optional drop–in service – but an integrated utility. A qualified person who reads the CV, provides personalised mark-ups, rehearses an interview, and most crucially – follows up. Virtual webinars and careers fairs have their place, but they do not serve as genuine guidance or practical coaching. The priority must be moving more students towards opportunity.
Another reform that would go a long way to earning credibility with existing and prospective students is a paid internship pledge. As one of Britain’s most prestigious institutions, King’s have the clout to secure paid opportunities for students by partnering with leading employers across London. Every unpaid placement or internship tolerated by a university tells students that their time is cheap. King’s should say the opposite – and prove it.
Academics must also play their part. Far too many undergraduates are trained to produce lines for essays, not the core skills anyone outside a seminar room would recognise as useful. Essays hone judgement and critical thinking; they don’t provide real-world experience. Departments that embed live briefs with real clients immediately elevate employability without turning degrees into training manuals. Health and STEM programmes tend to manage this well because their routes are regulated. It is now time to bring the same clarity elsewhere.
For students reading this with a knot in your stomach, the harsh reality is that you’ll do more than your timetable demands and far more than your loan covers. That is the world as it stands. The task of a university is not to hide it – but to help you meet the moment.
The fact is that universities must stop shirking responsibility when it most matters. It is time to stop selling the ticket and start building the bridge.
