Growth in graduate numbers alone will not help countries improve their economies, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned.
Universities must diversify the supply of graduates and keep the right balance in the number of academic courses and occupation- oriented courses, said Andreas Schleicher, the head of education indicators and analysis at the OECD.
Mr Schleicher was speaking to a global audience on Tuesday in an online debate joined by experts and education journalists from across the world to follow up on the issue raised by the publication of the OECD's Education at a Glance report 2007.
Although in many rich countries more than 50 per cent of secondary school graduates - and in some nations more than 75 per cent - were now going to university, expanding the proportion was not the only requirement to aid the development of knowledge economies.
'The challenge for higher education will be not to simply produce more academic graduates of the same kind, but to diversify the supply and to retain an adequate balance between academically oriented qualifications and ones that are more closely tied to occupational orientations,' Mr Schleicher said.
Skills demands had risen across the board, to the point where education for jobs previously provided for through apprenticeships now required higher levels of qualification, he said.