Is university a waste of time? Euan Blair on the future of education and AI
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Channel 4 News
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
Artificial intelligence is transforming the workplace. Employers are rethinking how they hire, train and retain staff, while workers face growing uncertainty about which skills will matter in the future. As technology accelerates, long-established assumptions about education, careers and social mobility are being challenged.
Euan Blair believes Britain needs a radical rethink. As founder and chief executive of the skills and apprenticeship company Multiverse, and the son of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, he argues that the country has become too reliant on traditional academic pathways and is failing to equip people for a rapidly changing economy.
In this conversation, Blair explains why he believes universities are no longer the reliable route to opportunity they once were, why apprenticeships and workplace learning should play a much bigger role in education, and how artificial intelligence is already changing recruitment and career progression.
In this episode of Ways to Change the World, Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Euan Blair about apprenticeships, artificial intelligence, social mobility, and why he believes the future of education lies beyond the university lecture hall.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We have told people for a long time, you go to university and you get a decent degree, you will get a job. |
| 0:05.2 | It's just not true. Do you think a generation or more who have been told education was the key in terms of university, |
| 0:13.4 | really started by your father's government, were they sold a pub? It's panned out as you have lots of |
| 0:17.8 | graduates who aren't getting jobs and universities also struggle to keep up |
| 0:21.4 | with a pace of change. The Industrial Revolution led to the entire creation of the modern schooling |
| 0:25.7 | system. What is going to be our equivalent response to the AI revolution? |
| 0:33.1 | Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Christian Guru Murphy and this is the podcast |
| 0:37.4 | where we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their lives and the events that have helped shape them. |
| 0:43.3 | My guest today believes we're heading for the biggest shake-up in the world of work for generations. |
| 0:48.3 | As AI redefines our jobs, he argues our education system is no longer fit for purpose and the traditional path from school to university is failing young people. |
| 0:58.0 | Ewan Blair is the co-founder and chief executive of Multiverse, a company helping employers recruit and train people through apprenticeships and skills-based learning, saying this is the key to thriving in the age of AI rather than being |
| 1:12.6 | replaced by it. |
| 1:13.5 | You're welcome. |
| 1:14.6 | Great to be it. |
| 1:15.6 | So if you could change the world in one fell swoop, what would you do? |
| 1:18.8 | I would focus on rebalancing our education system away from the academic and towards the |
| 1:24.3 | applied and vocational. |
| 1:26.4 | We've sort of allowed the pinnacle of education to be |
| 1:29.1 | defined by academics and academia what you know rather than what you can do. And this has become |
| 1:35.7 | only more urgent with the march of AI because knowledge is being commoditized. You can get access |
| 1:40.6 | to knowledge from all around the world and throughout history at your fingertips. What really matters is actually, well, what can on a practical level you do with that knowledge? |
| 1:49.1 | And this is something we're just not teaching in the formal education system. |
... |
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