NOTTINGHAM GRADUATE BLASTS POLITICIANS FOR MISLEADING – AND NOW ABANDONING – HER GENERATION
Politicians are all talk and no action when it comes to the looming crisis of graduate unemployment, a recent graduate has claimed.
Despite the government’s claims that it is supporting university leavers through various schemes and initiatives, in real terms nothing has changed for most job-seeking graduates, she said.
“There seems to be a general awareness about the number of good graduates who can’t get decent jobs or are forced to do long-term unpaid work but beyond everyone saying ‘Oh dear’, I can’t see much going on to improve our situation,” she told Graduate Fog in a new interview.
“What riles me the most is politicians saying out-of-work under 25s should get work experience. Yes, we know this — but does it have to be endless and unpaid?”
‘Caroline’, 23, who graduated from the University of Nottingham in 2008 with a 2:1 in Sociology, also warned school pupils to think carefully before deciding to go to university – and signing up for an average of £23,000 of debt.
“All through our education, my generation has been told ‘Work hard, get a good degree, have outside hobbies, do extra work experience and you’ll get a good job.’ Well, we did — and now we can’t find work.”
“It’s just not true that a degree equals a good job anymore.”
In a reference to a recent speech by David Willetts, Minister for Universities, Science and Skills, Caroline agreed that many graduates are angry to find that their qualifications aren’t valid by employers – but that Willetts was wrong in thinking this only applied to those with vocational qualifications.
“In fact, I think degrees should be more vocational,” Caroline said.
“Graduates need to have more practical skills that are recognised in the workplace.
“Maybe there isn’t so much of a place for traditional subjects as there used to be — in which case, can somebody please tell us this before we get ourselves into £18,000 of debt for a qualification that no employer will value?
“We’re only 17 when we choose our degree subject so I think more help should be given to make sure we don’t waste our money.”
Caroline also suggested the government should provide tax breaks for businesses hiring graduates, do more to enforce the national minimum wage laws for interns – and keep tuition fees down until graduates are in a stronger position to find paid work straight after university.
Since Graduate Fog understands that David Willetts’ office is now following Graduate Fog (and I’ve just tipped them off about this post), perhaps Caroline’s ideas will be considered?
*To read Caroline’s interview in full, click here
“We’re only 17 when we choose our degree subject so I think more help should be given to make sure we don’t waste our money.”
To me, this is absolutely the key issue. The education system needs to address careers, not at some abstract concept, but as a very real, tangible and significant topic, much, much earlier. Higher education needs to be seen as choice and as a serious investment of both time and money and one which ultimately needs to pay off, financially. This means that it needs to lead to a well remunerated and rewarding career. Otherwise, it is quite simply a waste from a financial perspective. The realities of the job market and the advantages or lack thereof that a degree in a certain subject will provide should be carefully and clearly set out to young people before they decide on how to spend their time and money. I agree that people can gain a lot from attending university in terms of experiences which they may not otherwise have, life skills and of course many students enjoy the content of their degree courses but for the majority of students I believe that their decision to go to university is primarily taken in order to secure a better job(better pay, working conditions, starting off higher up the corporate ladder) after completing their degree than they would be able to without a university education. And unfortunately this is the path that the generations who have recently graduated were led up, by their schools, their society and ultimately their government. And it is, in many cases, a waste of time to go to university-many graduates would be emotionally, financially and professionally in a more favourable situation without having gained a degree. We shouldn’t be afraid to admit that because it is very clearly and demonstrably the truth nowadays. This doesn’t mean that university should be shunned by all- rather the failure of university level education to secure rewarding career paths for graduates should be seen as a wake up call to the government to drastically reform the higher education industry. Firstly by making degrees (much) more vocational and secondly by treating students as the paying customers they are and providing them with courses which represent value for money. Until this happens, universities will continue to spew out young people who have been built up to believe that the world is their oyster and who soon discover to their horror that they have been mislead and misguided.
“in many cases, a waste of time to go to university-many graduates would be emotionally, financially and professionally in a more favourable situation without having gained a degree.” I think in some cases this is true. I know people who did NVQ’s instead of going to university and are in a better position both financially and in their careers than some of those who went to university. I graduates in 2007 after doing a degree in Criminology. I applied for jobs related to my degree and had help from a careers adviser who helped me with the application forms but never even got an interview. It was very depressing to have spent 3 years studying Criminology and to not even be able to get an interview for a job related to a degree. It took me a long time to find a job and even though I made friends and had a good time at university the disadvantages of going to university (struggling to find a job after I graduated, feeling very down and losing confidence, loss of money) definitely outweigh any advantages of going to university so for me going to university was not worth it.
I’m afraid that the aspiration to put 50% of people through universities has been at best naive, at worst flat-out socially manipulative and obfuscatory.
Blair/Labour, and indeed government in general (urban planning to site council estates in close proximity to high-wealth areas is a prime example of faux-egalitarianism) have often wanted to make pointless legislation which, rather than genuinely dealing with inequality in a meaningful way, simply tries to pave over the cracks and make grand sweeping rhetoric.
The fact remains that:
(1) Most people shouldn’t have gone to university. They would be far better served by entering the workforce immediately post-school. The vast increase in university applications means that sub-standard and shoddy educational establishments have popped up to offer the unwitting what are almost worthless pieces of paper in exchange for saddling them with huge amounts of debt.
(2) Substantially increasing the number of people with a degree utterly devalues the qualification, meaning that we see the equivalent of grade inflation and everyone has to progress on to even more costly (both in time, fees, living costs and opportunity cost i.e. what one is foregoing to study for 4+ years, e.g. 4+ years of wages and career development) qualifications to get an edge. All this does is lead to an ever worsening spiral of grade inflation until everyone is still just as pointlessly qualified, except now they have tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt.
(3) None of this actually achieves equality. We would be far better served, both socially and economically, by opening doors for employment and training beyond degrees. A focus on training less academically-gifted students in skilled labour instead and striving to equip everyone with employability skills would be far more useful. Of course we should aim to put those who wish to study at university (and are academically worthy of it) in to higher education. What we should not be doing is foisting upon the younger generations some completely misplaced sense of NEEDING to go to university.
(4) The fact is that degrees, besides vocational ones and those largely tied to a competitive career sector one wants to get involved with, are completely useless per se. The only thing which is of use to an English graduate trying to work in Banking and Finance are the transferable skills they have developed, the degree itself counts for naught. Surely, then, it behooves us to cut the pointless hoop-jumping and get people who want to work in to work without saddling them with a mountain of debt?
We live in a culture where everyone has to be equal and everyone has to be a winner, where even competitive sports are disliked by many schools because of the fact that it exemplifies that some people are superior in some respect to others. Everyone seems to have forgotten that equality of opportunity, which we should set at the heart of our society, is completely separate form an equality of outcomes. Ensuring that the kid from a council estate and a terrible comprehensive school has the chance to study PPE at Oxford if he wants to and is capable if REAL social egalitarianism. Effectively obliging people to take a degree in some pointless mickey mouse degree and calling it progress, because otherwise they wouldn’t have entered in to higher education, is not.
It’s been a common theme during Labour’s government to massage statistics and create compelling sounding figures rather than genuinely dealing with underlying problems. Sadly, a whole generation of debt-laden students have fallen victim to the caprice and hubris of the outgoing government who are sat in their ivory towers built on the shifting marshes of political populism and obfuscation.
@Christopher, Claire and Gareth
Thanks so much for your thoughtful posts. We all seem to agree that something is very, very wrong here…
@Gareth wrote:
This is a big concern of mine. Every time I see a news story about the number of university applicants ‘disappointed’ by the lack of places, i want to scream!
WHY is the university places / tuition fees debate never tied in with the graduate unemployment stuff?
It’s so clearly two sides of the same coin – i can’t BELIEVE nobody every ties them together – it’s nuts…
As a former Careers Adviser in schools and colleges I have seen at first hand the pressures that 6th formers are under to go to university. Although my colleagues and I always focussed on what the individual wanted to do after college, school staff would always ‘encourage’ pupils (especially the more academically able) to go to university. These teachers have a great influence on their pupils, not to mention the parents who believe it’s the best path to take. When you have both parents and teachers championing university, no wonder many feel they ‘should’ go, rather than ‘want to’ go to uni. I always had great admiration for those unsure about uni, who decided to go and work for a year or two first. For me, it’s a wise path to take.
I often wonder, if people couldn’t start university until the age of, say 20 and therefore had to work for a couple of years, how many would actually decide to go to university? I’m sure the decision to go would be a more careful, mature one. I’ve heard many a Lecturer say that real world work experience makes for a better student too.
To balance things up, I have come across many clients who wish they had gone to uni, despite the debt they would have accumulated. Whether you go to university or not, there is no easy career path. If you feel you’ve made the wrong decision in the past you can’t change it – you can only learn from it, look to the future and be positive. Then contact you’re old school and see if you can get invited in to talk to the pupils about your ‘reality’.
Mark Anderson
I went to uni in 2005 aged 39 with lots of administrative and life experience behind me. I was given the impression at the time that mature students are more attractive to employers because of our previous experience and life experience. At the very least I expected to be put on a level playing field with younger graduates, but I have only had TWO interviews since graduating in 2008. I thought that a degree would improve my job prospects, how wrong I was. Its not just younger 2008 graduates that have been dumped by the current political regime, its all of us. We have been lied to, cheated, dumped, forgotten. In any other society we would have been storming parliament by now!! I don’t think that politicians or business leaders have the faintest idea of just how angry some of us are about the way in which we have been treated. I for one have considered several times going back to Bath Spa, storming into the Principal’s office and slamming my degree certificate on his desk, shouting “here, you can have the damn thing back. It’s worth bugger all to me!”