Higher education and industry — when are they going to get married?

There are just over half a million students in full‐time higher education in this country. The great majority of them go straight into higher education from school and for most of them, until they graduate at 21 or 22, gainful employment will be a matter of expediency, to provide income to eke out a student grant, rather than a serious experience of the initial stages of a career. These young people comprise about 16 per cent of the age group which has within it, speaking very generally and with no desire to sound exclusive, the most able people of their generation. About £1000 million of public money is currently committed, annually, to their education. That money is an investment in — what?