I do think this was forgotten a bit in the mid-late '90s. In the UK, at least. Deindustrialization was really hitting, the "service economy" was booming, and th

I do think this was forgotten a bit in the mid-late '90s. In the UK, at least. Deindustrialization was really hitting, the "service economy" was booming, and the New Labour government realised that "number of people getting a degree" was a metric it could make go up by shoving more and more people into worse and worse courses. Nobody sat down and did an end-to-end analysis of society's needs. They just wanted headlines.