Maybe my perspective is different, Raddy, because my profession is not global, and I'm in the US.
I still maintain that education is fundamentally useful. One of the goals of education is to learn how to think critically. It's wonderful if those critical-thinking skills translate into a job at the end of those years of schooling, and I believe most of the time (at least in the US) they do.
I've known several people with advanced professional degrees (JD or MD) who ended up in vastly different fields than law or medicine. They were/are gifted individuals who, by virtue of their education and giftedness, were able to think critically and apply their skills in fields with no training or expertise.
My profession is such that I am based in one location at a time, so my (somewhat narrow) perspective is this - I remain hopeful about the need for jobs to serve the local economy. I have seen a number of people, in a range of professions, lose their jobs in the last 2 years, but our local economy seems to be picking up again. I understand that a fair number of those jobs lost in this economy will never return. Maybe that's what you're seeing in the UK.
I'm still investing everything I can in my children's education.
