Technical universities in partnership with employers like Dyson can help up-skill the population, re-industrialise the nation and solve the NEETSs crisis. And Hereford is already showing the way forward, says Byron Evans
A million young people are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Over 250,000 vacancies sit unfilled because the skilled workers needed are unavailable. Competition for graduate roles has reached a historic high, with firms receiving an average of 140 applications per graduate vacancy – up from 86 in 2022/23. It is ironic that England has more universities than ever, yet employers are crying out for technical skills. A new Policy Exchange report, Engineered for Success, endorsed by Sir James Dyson and Lord Blunkett, argues the answer lies in a new wave of technical universities.
A consensus is beginning to emerge across the political spectrum that the current higher education settlement is not delivering effectively. Burnham wants to value the hard hat as much as the graduation cap, and the Conservatives have pledged to double the apprenticeship budget. The British public have noticed the fall from grace: the proportion of people who believe a degree is not worth the time, and money, has jumped from 14 per cent in 2005 to 34 per cent in 2025.
Skill-shortage vacancies now constitute 27 per cent of all vacancies and are concentrated most acutely in key technical sectors like construction (45 per cent) and manufacturing (34 per cent). At the same time, England has the most over-qualified workforce in the OECD’s adult skills survey, at 37 per cent. A lack of traditional, three-year bachelor’s degrees is clearly not the problem: around 130,000 young NEETs already hold a higher education qualification.
The frozen fee, has instead incentivised provision of cheaper, classroom-based subjects, at the expense of lab-based courses. Between 2012/13 and 2024/25, enrolments in business and management rose by 71 per cent, while engineering and technology grew by just 10 per cent.
Our skew away from skilled trades is out of kilter compared to similarly developed economies; in 2023, engineering, manufacturing and construction accounted for just 8.9 per cent of UK first-degree graduates – against 33 per cent in China and 25 per cent in Germany. This scarcity is duly reflected in the labour market – UK STEM graduates earning 18 per cent more than the average wage – nearly double Germany’s 10 per cent equivalent.
Hereford shows the way
There is an alternative to the current model. In Hereford, the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) has designed its curriculum with more than 80 employers, including BAE Systems and Balfour Beatty. Students work in a different environment to a traditional university, with a nine-to-five workday, on tasks set by these employers directly. NMITE offers expedited degrees, completing a masters in three years rather than four, leaving with £12,060 less debt and entering the workforce a year earlier. Many of its first graduates went straight into competitive engineering roles at an average starting salary of £35,000.
Policy Exchange has mapped 57 English towns of 60,000 people or more with no university of their own, home to 5.5m people, to identify the best locations for new NMITE-type institutions. The top ten strongest cases for an NMITE, led by Hartlepool, Grimsby and Barnsley, are all in the North.
Policy Exchange has long argued that technical routes deserve parity of esteem with academic ones. Our 2025 report, From School to the Skilled Workforce, advocated for University Technical Colleges, 14-19 schools with an explicit focus on technical pathways. NMITE-type institutions are the next rung on that ladder.
The current regulatory landscape makes establishing such institutions unduly arduous. We argue the process should be made easier, with a £50m Seed Development Fund, greater powers for mayors to establish their own institutions, working with private partners, and an expedited registration process for NMITE-type institutions.
A roll-out of NMITE-type universities offers much-needed diversity in degree-level provision – and could provide the bedrock of technical skills required for any serious re-industrialisation of Britain.
Byron Evans is a research fellow at Policy Exchange and co-author of ‘Engineered for Success’.