The reality is that employers want to see evidence of application and achievement, and are just as happy to employ (e.g.) music grads as they are to employ engineers.

Or at least they used to be. Now they just want skilled interns who will work for free, and universities are supposed to produce cowed and stunted employees grateful for crumbs of corporate largesse and turbo-charged with the sacred urge to buy and sell shit.

Independent thinking is no longer welcome.

No, what's happened is that we've conflated trade schools with universities. Mostly the fault of a middle income group pretending to be middle class and wanting all the middle class trimmings. Oh, and businesses want those new minions fully formed employees who they, in theory, don't have to train how to do their jobs.

The whole vocational training sector here has been elevated to university status and the universities have been required to become vocational training services. Just in case they'd encourage anyone to accidentally think a thought. Which is what happens when your country is run by people who qualified as school teachers so they'd have a secure fallback in case the whole political career didn't work out.