Should apprenticeships replace traditional university degrees for higher education?

The chamber said No to scrapping degrees for apprenticeships, but only just — 45% yes on a 10-point margin is closer to a shrug than a verdict, the kind of result that leaves both camps able to claim the argument isn't settled.

The one bloc large enough to trust, 25-34 year-olds, split exactly 7-7, suggesting the generation actually living through both the graduate premium's erosion and the apprenticeship expansion can't agree which route it would pick again. Younger voters, 16-24, tilted more firmly against the swap (1 of 4 yes), which cuts against the assumption that those closest to the choice would be keenest to blow up the traditional path.

The gender gap is the sharper of the two available cuts: men split close to even (44% yes) while the small group of women voting leaned decisively No (1 of 5 yes). It's a familiar shape in education debates that touch class and access as much as pedagogy — this one echoes the tuition-fees arguments of the last decade more than any settled consensus on vocational training.

With a field this small, the headline is less "Britain rejects apprenticeships" than "nobody here is quite sure what to do with the university monopoly."