The path from education to employment used to be straightforward, but with fewer permanent jobs available and a glut of graduates, youth unemployment is a now major issue. Around 25% of under-25s in the Eurozone were reported to be unemployed at the end of 2013, while in the UK, there are 3.74 times more jobless under-25s than the national average. At the same time, higher education costs are rocketing – in the US, these have gone up 400% since 1980.

For the majority of young people, the traditional go-to-university, get-a-job, build-a-career life plan clearly isn’t working any more. We’ve already seen in our Generation Risk story on page 50 how this climate is changing attitudes, with a new set of workers opting to take matters into their own hands and invent jobs.

According to Enternships data, over half of all graduates don’t feel that higher education has prepared them for the world of work and over half of all employers agree. Whether they’re UK students paying out £9,000 for a university education, or those in the US racking up the country’s $1 trillion in student debt, it’s now imperative that learners get value for money.