King's College London

The study, published in Public Opinion Quarterly, involved nearly 4,000 respondents and found that possessing a university education reduced an unemployed worker's likelihood of being chosen for greater government income assistance by 10 percentage points.

The research was authored by David Hope, Hanna Kleider and Julian Limberg (King’s College London) with Sebastian Diessner (Leiden University), Niccolo Durazzi (University of Modena), Federico Filetti (London School of Economics) and Simone Tonelli (University of Bologna).

Their work highlighted a dramatic shift in perceptions of the welfare state.

In the study, participants were shown profiles of recently unemployed workers and asked which person they would prefer to receive greater income support from the government. The profiles varied characteristics including age, gender, family background and education level, allowing researchers to isolate the effect of having a university education.

The researchers found that having a university education reduced the likelihood of a worker being selected for greater government assistance by 10 percentage points. They argue that this was largely driven by perceptions of need: people viewed university-educated workers as being in a stronger labour market position and therefore less in need of help.

The researchers even found university-educated respondents viewed their fellow graduates as less deserving of welfare support.

University enrolment has expanded rapidly in advanced democracies since the 1950s, with more than 50 per cent of school-leavers entering tertiary education. As such, graduates now make up a substantial proportion of the workforce - and, increasingly, the unemployed.

The researchers said: “Despite the supply of university-educated workers expanding so sharply in recent decades, our results suggest that people still see them as having a privileged position in the labour market.

“This is likely due to the increase in demand for university-educated workers with skills that are complementary to information and communications technologies that has accompanied the transition to the knowledge economy.”