"On average, Graduates earn more over the course of their lifespan"
"Financially it is worth it, despite the awful debt."
Twenty years ago it was still largely worth it - although, even then, nowhere near the same sort of graduate premium that there was thirty or forty years ago.
Do you have any evidence at all that current students with CE at A Level are going to get onto a university course that will provide them with any sort of 'graduate premium'?
Generally speaking, the landscape for graduates has changed drastically from what it was like when any parent here was a student.
Yes, of course, there will always be those graduates that get great jobs straight out of university and go on to do very well indeed. But with the huge increase in the number of graduates, competition for these roles has increased enormously and only a very few graduates secure these sort of roles.
Some examples, Aldi have a graduate scheme where new graduates start at £52,000 per year and will be on £98,000 after eight years (plus company car etc).
The very top legal firms ('Magic Circle') are typically offering £55,000 per year to new graduates and upwards of £150,000 after three years.
Large investment banks in London (such as JP Morgan etc) have starting graduate salaries between £50k and £80k depending on the role.
There is also a middle ground, there are many employers that have graduate programmes that start at around £30k - £35k. But, once again, due to the much higher number of graduates nowadays than there used to be, these are also roles for which recruitment is highly competitive.
However, in contrast, many other graduates spend years in very basic jobs that they could have done on leaving school at 18.
So, yes there is still very much a 'graduate premium' for those graduates that manage to obtain genuine graduate level jobs. In contrast, for the majority of graduates that are not able to secure that sort of job then there is currently very little, if any at all, 'graduate premium' attached to having a degree.