Just increasing numbers of people going to university has been the fig leaf covering the general shiteness of post secondary education / training. There is a reasonable case that there are many people going to university, where it is not the most appropriate thing for them to do after school. The dearth of decent apprenticeships and the non-existent quality vocation training is scandalous. The number of people going to university is probably higher than it naturally should - some degrees are fairly worthless vocationally. But for the undergrads, there are scandalously few alternatives.
admittedly i finished postgrad 8 years ago and undergrad 10 years ago but I did think there were far too many people who really shouldnt be there - quite a few thought itd be a massive pissup and acted like utter divs in lectures, and quite a few mates who were planning to go into the family business after graduating but just about all of them quit after first year to work in the business (when they should have just gone into it on day fucking one). and of course there were quite a few courses that were oversubscribed and they cut some after year one so they could get more money by things like crap grades or in the case of medicine get rid of people who had minor cautions for little things like possession of weed when they were 14. personally think the growth of the polys to universities had a negative effect, i know it was to get more people degrees but JMU were letting people in on fairly decent courses with A levels like D,E,E which was just wrong - increase the barriers to get in (in terms of grades, anything less than 3 C's shouldnt get you in IMO), if you miss it then perhaps get them to do a foundation year with a relatively high-ish bar to get into the degree, and the cost of a course should depend on need to society and also whether they complete it (obviously there are legitimate reasons to drop a degree, but thinking of people who quit after year 1 and take away a place from someone else).
and there is my experience in work of some people who got brilliant degress from places like cambridge who are fucking useless when things go marginally out of their comfort zone, in my last job hired a lad who quit uni after a year, got a bit of decent experience and he was far better than a new grad who decided to go to the pub during a fire drill and tended to phone in 'sick' on fridays at 1pm...
but the apprenticeship point is very valid, they were totally bastardized when i was younger (one lad in school said to a teacher he was thinking of doing one and the teacher had a go at him for low standards), as you said it was all about league tables when it should be more about what they can do in the workplace than the classroom, as the former is very relevant, the latter nowhere near as much. one mate from 6th form didnt bother with uni and joined a local accountancy firm to get trained, asked him why and he simply said 'i get paid for 3 years, get partially CCAB qualified, no student debts and 3 years experience, if i go to uni i have none of those', and he was dead right