I'd agree with more training courses to help get the youth on the right track rather than having them rely on the dole and other aid programs. It would be great to require them all to go to college, but this isn't exactly realistic. It should also be made harder to get on the dole...there should be more proof that they are trying and perhaps weekly meeting to help improve their job seeking skills.

The focus on University Degree success has had two detrimental impacts on employment:
a) There seems to be less enthusiasm amongst academically successful people to undertake jobs outside their chosen area of specialisation. Universities have tended to introduce new degree courses that are 'popular' rather than useful leading to large numbers of degrees in such areas as Media Studies, Psychology, Social Sciences and some more esoteric such as 'Surf Science'. Hence opportunities available in the real world are vastly oversubscribed.
b) The lack of a degree (with such a high proportion of people leaving education with one) has become a significant obstacle to a successful career. Once you could train to be a solicitor, accountant, telecommunications engineer or surveyor with only five 'o' levels, now a degree is the required entry point. Even careers where non-academic skills are vital such as nursing are trying to introduce degrees as a prerequisite to qualification.
The cure?
We need to de-stigmatise (is that a word?) those who leave schools with intermediate qualifications. Develop the apprentice system, not as second-best to a degree but as an equal opportunity to top jobs. Our schools need less focus on academic excellence and more on practical education and training. Trade skills should be incorporated into the school curriculum and other skills relevant to the world we live in (I read recently that only 4% of those teaching technology had qualified as a programmer). We know that University degrees are not essential, ask Alan Sugar, Richard Branson and a host of other successful businessman, so why does our country's future have to be held to ransom by a self-perpetuating system that allows universities to promote the exclusive benefits of success through a University Degree?

Accountants and solicitors amongst others now offer modern apprenticeships to A-level school leavers. These lead to technician qualifications and can lead to full professional training. Firms like BAE also offer a route to the top through apprenticeships. The main reason for the lack of apprenticeships generally is the decline in the manufacturing workforce (by over three quarters) while physical production has actually increased. Which means that the remaining workforce needs to be even better educated and trained.

Skilled workers are expensive and so the first targets to be replaced by ever more complex computer controlled machines. Which need service technicians but not much in the way of human operators.

Immigration is a red herring because once the immigrants get jobs they begin to provide jobs for other people as they spend their wages. Population growth is behind a great deal of traditional economic expansion. Indeed it is one of the reasons that the UK economy has done less badly than most others in the OECD in this recession.

Branson and Sugar are salesmen. If they had ever done technical jobs, they would have needed education and training. Intelligence and chutzpah will get you only so far.