While the thought of their child not attending university is enough to make most African parents take to their beds, it's time we gave more respect to the alternatives.

Ask a group of African parents what they consider to be the key to success and chances are 99% of them will say 'education'. It's a fair bet that most of them will also consider education to be incomplete unless it includes (at least) one degree and, preferably, some kind of additional professional qualification. Any mention to said parents by their offspring of skipping university will probably be met with anything from a frosty look of disbelief (at the kinder end of the spectrum) to threats of being ignored, disowned or beaten into submission.

But is Uni really for everyone? The ambitions of the previous British government to steer 50% of young people into university sounded laudable, in theory. But what are we seeing today? Even allowing for the recession and resultant economic downturn, we are witnessing record levels of unemployment among graduates, inadequate opportunities for using their hard-earned degrees and a real likelihood of creating a lost generation of talent that is now saddled with debt they are unable to discharge anytime soon.

University degrees are simply not necessary for many jobs. In the United States, for example, of the 30 jobs projected to grow at the fastest rate over the next decade, only seven, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, typically require a bachelor's degree.

Among the top 10 growing job categories, two require college degrees: accounting (a bachelor's) and post-secondary teachers (a doctorate). But this growth is expected to be dwarfed by the need for registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives and store workers. None of those jobs require a degree.

The implicit guarantee that three or four years of university will lead to a great job with bright prospects for a lengthy and successful career has been junked, along with so many assumptions that today's realities have destroyed. Employment contracts have been ripped into shreds with some of the most swingeing jobs cuts in recent times seen across all sectors and, as seems likely, with more to come.

The question of whether university is right for everyone is a legitimate one to consider, particularly given the state of the world today. After all, why do 50% of young people need to attend university when far fewer than half the jobs available actually require a degree?

Where is there a real skills shortage and, as technology and globalisation change the nature of the sectors open to graduates, what kind of learning and training is really going to benefit our young people?

As with any commodity, an oversupply leads to a reduction in value; degrees, rightly or wrongly, have lost some credibility among employers, not least because significant numbers of employers are bemoaning a generation of graduates that lack good communication and behavioural skills and often seem ill-prepared to handle the discipline and social skills needed in today's workplace.

Professor Lerman, the American University economist, points out that "some of the people coming out of apprenticeships are in more demand than college graduates, because they've actually managed things in the workplace."

In the United States, according to recent projections from the Department of Education, perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor's degree program in 2006 will get that degree within six years. For college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even starker: 80% will probably never get a bachelor's degree or even a two-year associate's degree – a lot of tuition to pay, without a degree to show for it.

According to a number of US economists and educators, it is time to develop credible alternatives for students unlikely to be successful pursuing a higher degree, or who may not be ready to do so.

For Richard K. Vedder of Ohio University and Robert I. Lerman of American University, the political scientist Charles Murray, and James E. Rosenbaum, an education professor at Northwestern, they would steer some students toward intensive, short-term vocational and career training, through expanded high school programmes and corporate apprenticeships.

"It is true that we need more nanosurgeons than we did 10 to 15 years ago," said Professor Vedder, founder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a research non-profit in Washington. "But the numbers are still relatively small compared to the numbers of nurses' aides we're going to need. We will need hundreds of thousands of them over the next decade." Training, he adds, that can be conducted outside a college setting.

Vedder questions why 15% of US mail carriers have bachelor's degrees, according to a 1999 federal study, pointing out that "some of them could have bought a house for what they spent on their education."

A frequently cited argument for university is that a degree is where the real money lies. While one could point out that successful business people like Walt Disney, Coco Chanel, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Simon Cowell seemed to have managed well enough without one, it is a fair point that people with college and graduate degrees generally earn more than those without them.

On average, graduates earn an extra £160,000, or 23% throughout their lifetime, according to Lovemoney.com. That's an extra £3,600 per year, compared to non-graduates – assuming you get a graduate level job, that is. This is despite increasing numbers of young people getting degrees: a third now do, compared with just 15% 20 years ago. Generally speaking, graduates are also less likely to be unemployed.

On the other hand, degrees are expensive. The average student in the UK leaves university with debts totalling £15,700 and the current average graduate's starting salary is just £22,300. Even if one's salary rises every year by almost 5%, it will still take around 12 years to pay off student debts. It's also the case, however, that 20% of students drop out of university and a third of graduates end up with non-graduate jobs.

University also offers many intangible benefits, allowing young people to take their first step into academic and social independence.

But can these experiences come only through Uni – or, as is more likely, also via more targeted and less costly routes into further education and development? Many employers today would question whether a degree alone means very much. What matters more, according to survey after survey, is that job applicants can prove that they are educated, responsible, and able to help a company achieve its objectives.

So perhaps it's time for parents to concede that Uni is not for everyone. Uni is a must for those who want a career in science, technology, maths or engineering, for example, or for those who wish to enter professions such as law or medicine; or those who genuinely enjoy learning for learning's sake. For other young people, we would do well to counsel them to research options other than university.

For those who argue that not pushing a child towards Uni is causing them to lower their expectations and short-changing their futures, we have to recognise that education cannot be a 'one size fits all' solution. Channelling the talents that our children have into directions that will best suit them and enable them to shine is more important than imposing our ideas of success and what is deserving of respect.

To my mind, this means that as parents, guardians, educators and influencers, we need to give more respect to young people who consider taking up a trade or vocational career route or what they feel is a 'cooler' career.

We need to adjust our thinking from considering these routes to be a compromise or less worthy, and encourage our young to explore how these other careers can create a pathway to financial and personal success. Because our communities need skilled, technical school graduates just as much as university graduates.

University offers no guarantees in terms of career success and it's time that we accept this. For some of our kids, staring down the frosty looks and ignoring the threats of disownment may be the best decision they ever make.