A forecast by consultants Business Strategies suggests that managers, administrators, technicians and engineers are more likely to be degree holders by 2006 - with less well qualified people losing out.

It says there will be 7.3 million jobs for highly-qualified jobseekers by the year 2006, up from 5.8 million in 1996.

Neil Blake: "Attitudes are changing"

Business Strategies' Research Director, Neil Blake, said: "Society as a whole appears to have become increasingly aware of the importance of higher level qualifications for gaining access to the jobs market and in particular for gaining access to better paid jobs."

At the same time, total employment is only expected to increase by one half per cent a year.

"Another way of looking at this is to say that all of the net new jobs created between 1996 and 2006 are expected to be for the highly qualified," Dr Blake said.

Impact on whole economy

"A big potential destination will be management and administration, where there is scope for displacing less well qualified people, and increasing the penetration of highly qualified people overall. More technicians working in science and engineering will be degree holders. The same is likely to be true for legal executives and other semi-professionals."

The report suggests that employers will be upgrading the skills in jobs traditionally done by people with HND or higher level BTEC qualifications. It says they will want to make full use of the qualifications of graduates who take these jobs, and it is possible that this will have a beneficial long-term impact on the economy as a whole, raising growth to a higher long-term rate than would otherwise have occurred.

The report detects a sea change in employment practices.

"Some forecasts have implied that because of quite slow growth in the demand for highly qualified people, there would be a large overall surplus of the highly qualified in the first decade of the next century," it says. "But latest evidence suggests that there have been quite rapid rises in the demand for highly qualified people in the last few years - rises that do not appear to be purely temporary phenomena."

The forecast comes after the government's announcement of a planned expansion of higher education numbers to a new target of 100,000 extra places by 2002.

Lifelong study

It underlines the importance of the parallel drive to encourage more people to continue their education throughout their lives. The national advisory group on continuing education warned in its report, Learning for the 21st Century, of a 'learning divide' in society.

"On one side of the divide stand those who have already attained qualifications and who carry on with an active involvement in learning throughout their lives, both in work and beyond. They still constitute a minority, although their numbers have been growing over recent years," it said.

"On the other side stands the majority, including those who have little to show by way of formal qualification and achievement or who have not been involved in systematic learning since leaving compulsory education, and declare that they have no wish or plans to do so."