In the midst of continuing economic and political uncertainty among eurozone countries (Editorial, 30 January), the growth of emerging market economies, led by the Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), is widely perceived as vital to global recovery. The world now needs emerging markets to succeed, but must neither ignore nor underestimate the challenges they face in producing a rapidly growing supply of entrepreneurial, administrative and professional skills. To meet these challenges, a keystone will undoubtedly be the development of human capital through tertiary education.

A recent meeting in Oxford of more than 20 emerging market and high-income countries concluded that game-changing reforms in tertiary education must be anchored in new approaches to funding, organisational structures and technology. Emerging markets must be willing to reinvent tertiary institutions, create new ones and transform structures, rules, systems and curricula, with the creative and constructive coexistence of private and public institutions – and to encompass these changes in strategies that include all forms of post-compulsory education. Emerging market countries are economically, culturally and socially diverse, but all of them must increase access to tertiary education to promote social mobility, reduce economic inequality, and tackle the unforgivable waste in human capital, if their promise is to be fulfilled.
Prof Lan Xue Dean, school of public policy and management, Tsinghua University, China
Simon Schwartzman President, Instituto de Trabalho e Sociedade, Brazil
Prof Michael Earl Former pro-vice-chancellor, Oxford University
Lady English Former principal, St Hilda's College, Oxford University
Prof Saul Estrin Head, management department, London School of Economics
Sir Emyr Jones Parry President, University of Aberystwyth
Prof Janice Reid Vice-chancellor and university president, University of Western Sydney, Australia

In our pursuit of the luxury trades, many essential but less glamorous jobs have been overlooked or forgotten

Blood tests must be among the easiest procedures in a hospital, so routine that you can just turn up at the blood clinic, take a ticket from the dispenser and wait for your number to flash red on the screen. Absolutely no appointment necessary, and the wait isn't long, even though the crowd fills two or three rows of seats. My consultant's notes refer to the tests simply as "bloods", which sounds nicely cavalier ("Huzzah, sir, pick up your rapier!") compared to phlebotomy, which is this area of medicine's official name. Just out of sight, the phlebotomists are at work behind the curtains with their needles: pricking veins and turning tubes incarnadine. Your turn. "This arm please … just relax … a little scratch now … press with your finger on the cotton wool for a moment." And within a few minutes, you're rolling down your sleeve and saying thanks and goodbye to the person with the needle – grateful, though these details are never spoken, for their skill and their part, however small, in what you hope is the remedial process.

Sometimes you try to make a little human contact. Recently I asked my blood-taker where she was from. India, I guessed, but the answer was Ethiopia. Through the curtain I could hear an elderly lady ask the same thing of another blood-taker. "Are you from Nigeria?" "No, ma'am, Sierra Leone." Perhaps only an older generation asks questions about origin these days – my children's behaviour implies so – because it's come to be considered ignorant and possibly racist; asked mainly of people who aren't white by white people who have yet to adjust to the facts of the nation's demography. But my experience of the phlebotomy department in this London teaching hospital suggests Hackney or Wembley will be less frequent answers than Addis, Dhaka and Manila. Most of the staff here have migrated long distances to work.

What qualities and skills do a good phlebotomist need? From the patient's point of view, the list looks likely to include a clear head and a calm temperament, a working knowledge of antisepsis and the vascular system, a reasonably sympathetic manner and a steady hand. In a hospital, none of these would be unique to phlebotomists – all would be developed together with much more sophisticated knowledge in the long and expensive educations of junior doctors, for example. But do you want a junior doctor to draw your blood or insert a cannula? On balance, probably not. Sometimes junior doctors get sent on this prentice errand to the wards. Sometimes they fail to find a productive vein in either arm and withdraw in apology and confusion. You are better off with someone who draws blood for a living, day in, day out, for whom veins have lost all of their mystery.

The Royal College of Nursing lists blood-drawing as one of the "sample competences" of a healthcare assistant, which in the medical world may be a similar ranking to the vocational qualifications that the government announced this week would lose their equivalence with GCSEs and be omitted from the calculations of school league tables. Of course, blood-drawing is far more responsible work than fish husbandry, horse care and fingernail technology; done carelessly, it can damage, even end, a human life. But like many other skills that depend on touch as well as thought – fingernail technology, possibly – the more you work with the physical material, the better you become. Finding a full vein in living flesh can't be successfully substituted by anatomical studies in the classroom. That shouldn't lessen its value as an occupation, and yet our addiction to the idea that the only worthwhile jobs are those that can be somehow professionalised – with years of fulltime learning and degrees – probably means it does.

Despite cuts in educational budgets, increased student fees and the general implosion of the social fabric, the addiction persists. Every week a local Scottish newspaper is delivered to our house, and the day after my blood test I saw it included a photograph of a young man in an academic cap and gown, holding a scroll in his hand. It is a nice local newspaper tradition that dates from the Victorian age – to honour the youth who has gone up to the city and returned with a degree and a broader future. This particular youth had graduated with a BA (Hons) in sports journalism after a four-year course at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), whose website promises a programme that will provide students with "the professional abilities and practical skills" for this "exciting and growing field … "

There are degrees in sports journalism in the rest of the UK, too, and hundreds of academic courses in non-specialised journalism, churning out graduates for the shrinking labour market of newspapers and other media. They aren't pointless; apart from any craft they may teach, they can also offer connections and contacts – a "way in" – which is the modern essential of anyone trying to start a career. As UWS points out, all students can expect to meet national sports writers and broadcasters, and to take up work placements in news organisations, where their abilities may be noted and remembered for a later date. But how complicated, unnecessary and expensive it all sounds compared to the old method of being sent to report a minor league football match, reading the dispatches of senior reporters and learning week-by-week how it was done.

The success of the academic route has yet to be discovered, but it will be lucky to produce writers as good as the Guardian's Richard Williams, who joined the Nottingham Evening Post aged 18, or Hugh McIlvanney, often acknowledged as the finest sportswriter of his generation, who left Kilmarnock Academy for the Kilmarnock Standard when he was even younger. Perhaps nobody can do that now – leave school for a job on the local paper; intervention by a university is thought necessary to the meanest of trades. But it would be hard to detect any improvements in local newspapers that could be attributed to the massive expansion of tertiary education.

In a broader and far more serious way, something dysfunctional seems to have happened. Unemployment in the UK now stands at 2.69 million, with more than a million people aged between 16 and 24 looking for work – a rate of 22.3%, and a new record. But several British institutions continue to favour foreign workforces, or be favoured by them. At the sandwich chain Pret A Manger, only 19% of the staff are British, while, according to the Daily Mail, a third of the people who sell the Big Issue, the paper founded to help the homeless, are Romanian. I have no figures for foreign-born phlebotomists, but in London I would guess a majority. Good for them, and me too. But in our pursuit of the luxury trades – graduates in sports journalism, for example – many essential but less glamorous jobs were overlooked or forgotten. To paraphrase the railway apology for disruptions by snow, has Britain created the wrong sort of unemployed?

Distance learning has come far since the days of late-night TV lectures. We speak to students who have turned their lives around from the comfort of their homes

Win your Future: Study for free at the Open University

Andrea Goldshaw gets up at 5am, studies for three hours and then goes to work. She is in the second year of a law conversion course with Nottingham Trent University studying under its distance learning programme, an option that allows her to get to grips with the subject in her own time at home. It's hard work combining study, paid work and motherhood, but Goldshaw* has a very personal reason for wanting to change career.

Until a few years ago she was a teaching assistant, living with her husband and children in Wales. "I was a victim of domestic violence, fled my home with my children and ended up in a refuge," she says. "I didn't qualify for legal aid so I self-litigated in the case against my husband but was given some crucial pro bono legal advice. Now I want to become a lawyer specialising in domestic violence and child contact – but my real desire is to give pro bono advice so that I can give back what was given to me."

Goldshaw completed her early childhood studies degree while in the refuge and then got a place on the Nottingham course. She now earns an income as a part-time Freedom Programme facilitator, working with women experiencing domestic violence as well as working as a debt counsellor. "Distance learning has been really hard in many ways, but because I'm passionate about what I want to do, that has kept me going," she says.

Goldshaw's circumstances might be an unusual motivation to study, but her drive and commitment to change her life are common among those heading back to university or college in their 30s, 40s, 50s and even older. The vast majority of those studying through distance learning have financial and personal commitments and cannot afford to give up paid work to study on campus.

The Open University is probably the best known name in distance learning, with 256,000 students worldwide, but it is not the only institution to offer degrees that can be completed at home. Most campus universities now offer at least some element of distance learning on a selection of courses, while others, such as the University of Liverpool, have developed postgraduate courses that involve no face-to-face interaction at all.

"We are at the stage now where we are a serious player in total online learning," says Alan Southern, director of e-learning at the University of Liverpool. "On some courses we have introduced some face-to-face contact, but our courses are predominantly built on the premise they are 100% online."

Further education opportunities are also available via distance learning, most notably from e-learning organisation Learn Direct but also from organisations such as Montessori, which has recently launched a distance learning website for those wanting to train to be a teacher.

"We wanted to make our teacher training accessible for more people," says Montessori's Amanda Gilchrist. "We get a lot of mums who discover Montessori through their own children but we also get quite a lot of people who want to change career from things such as the law or banking, because they want to give something back."

The idea of "giving something back" is a typical motivation for those returning to education. After the near collapse of the UK banking system and the subsequent economic downturn, newspapers and websites were rife with stories of redundant or soon-to-be-redundant bankers turning to teaching and other caring professions.

Christina Lloyd, director of teaching and learner support at the Open University, says that over the years there has been a noticeable trend towards people using the university's courses for a change in career or career progression, rather than studying for personal development or interest.

"The average age of Open University students has dropped," she says. "It used to be mid-40s to 50. Now students are typically in their mid-30s – which makes sense when you think that career change is a strong motivating factor for taking a course."

Michelle Virtue and Vincent Fernandez have very different stories to tell, but both were driven by a desire to move into more people-focused careers. Virtue, 42, had worked in banking for 16 years when she took redundancy and turned to the Open University to study health and social care. "I am more of a people person and decided that my place was helping people to make the most of their life," she says.

She is a single mother, but with the help and support of her mum, managed to juggle running a home and looking after her daughter, with sticking to a strict routine to complete her assignments. Now she manages a sheltered scheme for her local authority.

Fernandez went straight from school into his father's profession of mining, but had to leave after 28 years because of a spinal injury. "I had been involved in training people on site and I got a buzz from imparting information and seeing that used – and I knew I wanted to continue that somehow."

He saw an advert for Learn Direct, and went to one of its centres. "I was trembling like a kid when I went in, but they stuck with me and I did four certificates in maths and English." He is now a teaching assistant at his local school, working primarily with children with emotional and behavioural difficulties and is considering studying psychology online in his spare time.

The technological revolution has also made distance learning increasingly accessible and the materials more diverse. Gone are the days when most materials were printed and students tuned in to late-night lectures on television. Today, Open University students are still taught through printed materials but these are backed up by audio CDs, video DVDs, and online resources. The university even has its own channel on YouTube and students can download their materials from iTunes and listen to them on their MP3 players. Technology has also changed the nature of contact between students and their lecturers, as well as their peers.

"Students can now have realtime interaction with tutors via live online conferencing," says Lloyd. "It's quite a bit more sophisticated than Skype. Lots of people can log in at once and a tutor can see who wants to ask a question when a marker appears against that student's name."

This sort of technology has meant that courses such as those at Liverpool can dispense with human interaction altogether. However, most courses require, or at least strongly recommend, some sort of face-to-face contact.

"Most students want face-to-face contact and they are often surprised at how much difference a weekend of contact will make," says Shane Russell, programme leader for the graduate diploma in law distance learning course at Nottingham Trent. "Students do miss out on certain things that come with a campus-based degree, but you have to do what is practical and fits in with your circumstances."

In common with other higher education students in the UK, one of the hardest things to manage for those studying via distance learning is the cost, with undergraduate and postgraduate courses typically costing around £15,000. The vast majority of those going down this route are studying part-time and, up until this coming academic year, there have been no loans for fees for part-time students. From August this year, with tuition fees rising, part-time students will have access to loans that they will need to pay back only when they are earning a certain amount.

Many of those taking postgraduate, professionally focused degrees such as those offered online at the University of Liverpool are either working in professions where they are paid well and can afford to fund their study, or are part-funded by their employers. Others, such as Goldshaw, rely on a combination of bank loans and strict budgeting. "You have to be practical with money and very disciplined so that studying is affordable," she says.

It's not just money management that requires discipline for those studying from home. Distance learning requires real discipline in time management and, often, an understanding partner.

Kate Bressner, who studied for a life sciences degree with The Open University, and subsequently switched her career in business management to become a medical science researcher, says discipline was key. "You have to really plan your work. I studied from 8pm until 10pm or 11pm every evening at one point. Luckily my husband had also studied through Open University and so was very understanding and supportive."

While this sort of discipline, not to mention the loss of social life and family time, can be gruelling, The Open University's Lloyd says it really pays off. Employers do notice.

"In the past people were unsure about studying through The Open University because they weren't sure about the university's credibility," she says. "Now we are getting excellent feedback on the calibre of our students and our degrees. Students are particularly praised for possessing great time management and self-motivation. These qualities can really make someone stand out in a competitive employment market."

*Name has been changed

Michael Gove referes to opponents of a London primary school becoming an academy as 'Trots'. What can he mean?

Age: 107.

Appearance: Revolting.

Something to do with horses? No.

Dodgy tummy? No.

Marxist theory? 'Fraid so.

Be gentle with me. Of course. But first I must introduce you to that leading Marxist theoretician, Michael Gove.

Isn't he a minister of some sort? He is indeed a former journalist of little consequence who has somehow landed the job of secretary of state for education.

Where he is rooting out the Marxists? That's how he sees it. Asked by the Commons education select committee this week about a campaign to stop Downhills primary school in north London becoming an academy, Gove labelled opponents of the move "Trots".

Who does he have in mind? The teachers, parents and governors who prefer to stay under the control of the borough of Haringey.

Aren't they all crazed lefties in Haringey? They are if you believe Gove. He calls his opponents "enemies of promise" and accuses them of being motivated by "a bigoted, backward, bankrupt ideology".

Where does the term Trots come from? I thought you'd never ask. Trots is short for Trotskyists (or sometimes Trotskyites), followers of the brand of Marxism favoured by Leon Trotsky, a key figure in the Russian revolution who preached permanent revolution, communism in all countries and worker control in opposition to bureaucratic Stalinism.

Where did he stand on academy schools? If governed by a workers' soviet, probably in favour.

How did Trots become a pejorative term? Trotsky was attacked as a splitter from 1905 on. Stalin, who believed in "socialism in one country", waged war on Trotskyists and had Trotsky bumped off. But Trotskyism was kept alive, and in the UK Trots became shorthand for leftwingers, notably those in the Socialist Workers party, who tried over a period of years to convert the Labour Party's membership to socialism.

I thought it was socialist. Where have you been for the past 80 years?

Seems odd for Gove to use the term. He was active in student politics in the 80s, when it was a common term of abuse, and doesn't seem to have moved on.

Do mention: The triumph of the proletariat, permanent revolution, the fourth international.

Don't mention: Ice-picks.

• This article was amended on 2 February 2012. A line in the original referred to SWP efforts to "infiltrate" the Labour party. For the avoidance of confusion with Militant Tendency's effort to sway Labour from within, that reference has been clarified.

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