There are too many young people in schools, colleges and universities, Cambridge University professor of education and senior government adviser David Hargreaves said this week.
More young people should be encouraged into traditional work-based apprenticeships instead of staying on at school and going into higher education, he told the Economic and Social Research Council's social science conference, "Future Britain - revitalising policy through research".
"There has been a belief that expanding formal education and entry to universities is a cost-effective way of equipping young people for work," he said. "But there isn't a lot of evidence that people do very much better if they spend longer time in formal education."
Professor Hargreaves was appointed to the Government's new standards task force this week. His paper, Equipped for Life, says that traditional, school-based teaching is "passive, abstract and often fragmented". Traditional work-based apprenticeships, on the other hand, are "active, concrete, intuitive and rehearsed through experience".
"It is quite compatible with the Government's policies to ask what is the most cost-effective way to educate people for work," he said. "Labour is committed to lifelong learning - they should reconsider the institutional structure that can provide this. The assumption it is a good thing that 19 to 21-year-olds should be spending more time in universities has to be questioned."
But his assertions were challenged by a paper from John Bynner, director of the social statistics research unit at City University.
He said that the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" in society was widening. Education is a key factor in social inequity, he has found in his book, Twentysomething in the 90s - Getting on, Getting by and Getting nowhere.
The "high-flyers" from a cohort of 9,000 people born in the same week in 1970 who were "getting on" had degrees. Those who were "getting nowhere" had left school with no qualifications "and went on training schemes".
* More ESRC research, page 9