Possibly one of the few moments I find myself in agreement with Willie (keep getting the Zappa playing through my head). There must be more options. Many of my family - and in particular those who where very financially successful - entered their working careers via apprenticeships. A blanket "degree" cannot be the answer.

Personally I found the attempted amalgamation of old-style academic Universities with vocational Polytechnics to be a sort of 'brave new world' embarrassed attempt to brush "lesser" physical type work, under the educational carpet by "raising" them to the 'socially aspirational' status of more classically red-brick academic degrees.
In any event I found it all that pile of poo.